Alison, Dawn and Lisa tame 'The Beast'!

Alison Milborrow, Lisa Hatchard and ladies' team captain Dawn Teed, joined in with a Honiton RC organised event on Sunday 27th January. It isn't a race, but more of a long training run with 100 other people tagging along for company! You have to self-navigate from the instructions (similar to the coast to coast info) a 16 mile course from Dunkeswell to Smeathorpe (7.45 miles) where you stop at the village hall for a pasty and mulled cider! Then it's on to Upottery, where you stop at the Sidmouth Arms. This is the 10 mile point where some people choose to leave us and a minibus takes them back to the start. The rest of us go on another 3.3 miles to Luppitt and we stop at the Luppitt Inn for further refreshments if required!. You have a choice on the final leg of 2.6 miles on road with a very nasty hill or off road with more mud back to the start at Dunkeswell where we finished off with chips and coke at the Highfield Sports and Social Club.

There is more mud than the Grizzly! And to give you an idea the 7.45 miles took 1hr 45mins (no wonder, with all that food and alcohol slowing you down, jokes ed.!!!!!)

But it was a lovely run in the crisp, winter sunshine and no rain! Easy to follow instructions (Lisa is an expert, it turns out!), but there is usually someone in front you can follow (if they go the right way, which Parrett Trail experience has told us, does not always happen!)

The three ladies ran together (as a team) and since it wasn't a conventional race and there were no prizes, there was a relaxed and highly social atmosphere to the event.

If all of this noshing and swilling interspersed with sections of running through stunning countryside appeals, then they have a sister run, the Blackdown Beauty, on 13th July which Alison, Dawn and Lisa are thinking about. It fills up early but it would be great to get some of the other Harriers there... and rumour has it that instead of a pasty there is a cream tea on offer at this one! Yum!

Alison and Lisa running across the snowy fields of East Devon

At pit-stop number 1, pasties were provided!

The ladies, en route to the next watering hole!

The 3 merry troughers, having completing the 16 muddy miles