FKT: James Graham - Coleridge Way (UK) - 2019-06-15

Athletes
Route variation
Standard route
Gender category
Male
Style
Self-supported
Finish date
Total time
9h 19m 27s
Report

With abundant water supplies en route, my initial intention was to complete this run unsupported. However, arriving in Porlock after about 35 miles I was struggling to keep down the last few gels and was seriously flagging, so I dived in to a shop for a 500ml bottle of coke. This did the trick, but I think also means that technically this is now a self-supported FKT. I should add that I was met by two other runners in the Oare valley, around 5 and then 3 miles from home. Ben and Nick provided much needed encouragement, though I did not take any aid from them (I even went so far as refusing Ben's hand up when I took a fall a couple of miles from home!).

The route I followed is the 51 mile Easy-West version provided in the official guide here: https://www.visit-exmoor.co.uk/coleridge-way/cw-route-guide

There are extensions both signed en route and in other guidebooks - to Dunkery Beacon and Culbone Church - but I avoided these.

I'm claiming the FKT as in the visitor book in Lynmouth the only other running time I could find was for over 12 hours. It's possible someone has run faster West-East, but I was not able to check the vistor book in Nether Stowey.

The route is beaut. For the most part it follows runnable trails, over the shoulders of the Quantocks, among the valleys of the Brendon Hills, and then finally into Exmoor for the final run in alongside the Oare and East Lyn rivers - surely one of the finest sections of trail in the UK. Despite the huge growth in running events along the Exmoor coast, this route is not yet being used. Thought I'd get this up here now, as it's only a matter of time before it is!