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| Cooling off in an Orchard on the Greensand Way |
During a heatwave in July, Rosanna and I set a new Fastest Known Time on the 108 mile long Greensand Way. We invented ‘Ice Hats’, tackled apple orchards that disorientate you and leave you facing the wrong way, ate at the most haunted pub in Britain where the Darling Buds of May was filmed and for the second time on this trail enjoyed the hospitality of a Cricket Club.
The Greensand Way holds a very special place in my heart. It started my obsession with long distance trails when I spotted the signs out near my house and googled it to find out it was 108 miles long and started near the Romney Marshes in Kent, finishing on the High Street in Haslemere with the midway point exactly on the border between Surrey and Kent.
The Greensand Ridge is nestled between the North and South Downs Way in the UK. Much of the trail is designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty From the Apple Orchards and Oast Houses of Kent to Leith Hill Tower and the Devils Punchbowl in Surrey this trail is one of the lesser known gems in the South of England.
The previous fastest known time for the trail was 4 days and was set in 2012. Our plan was to nearly half this time depending on the heat and try to have as much fun on the way as we could without impacting a new self supported record. Rosanna lives near the trail too and enjoys running on the area affectionately known as ‘Little Switzerland’ which comprises Leith , Holmbury and Pitch Hill in Surrey.
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| Lee-Stuart Evans in a Kent Apple Orchard on the Greensand Way |
We set off early on a Saturday morning from Ham Street and very quickly encountered some serioud heat and high humidity. The first 15 miles was mainly in open fields with very little shade. The barren and very dry landscape combined with the smells and sounds of crickets made it feel like we were in Spain not the UK.
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| The Greensand Way near Pluckley |
We got out of the midday sun in Pluckley and had lunch at the most haunted pub in the UK called the Black Horse . This was also one of the major filming locations for the Darling Buds of May series in the 1990s.
On two occasions we entered apple orchards planted in neat rows with a diagonal bearing for the right of way passing through them. Because the rows are so neat and uniform at all angles your eye quickly gets tricked into picking the wrong ‘line’ and we twice found ourselves leaving an orchard 90 degrees off and in the wrong corner. One of the orchards did reward us with a leaky irrigation system that we happily used to cool down as we passed.
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| Rosanna Kuit wearing an insect mesh hoodie on the Greensand Way |
The evening and sunset did not bring the temperatures down, and worse still our headtorches attracted loads of insects. Rosanna had a mesh hoodie that kept the insects off but looked like Joan of Arc. We kept moving until about 2am where we slept in a field with just sleeping bags just outside Shipbourne about 40 miles into the trail .
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| Greensand Way sunrise near Shipbourne |
We woke up to a beautiful and cool misty morning sunrise and started the 15 miles needed to get to the half way point. Very quickly It was obvious that I was suffering badly with heat exhaustion and even when the temperature was 16C I was sweating excessively and feeling unwell. It took the rest of the day with Rosanna nursing me to keep me moving and get me back to normal and as a result we were far slower than we planned. By lunchtime we sought refuge in a shady pub garden and Rosanna poured ice cubes into our buffs and created hats full of ice. These were VERY EFFECTIVE and had a huge positive impact on me when combined with a large amount of rehydration salts.
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| Enjoying the View from One Tree Hill on the Greesand Way |
We celebrated passing the half way mark on the morning of the Saturday by finding the marker in a stone that shows the equal distances to the start and finish.
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| The Half Way marker on the Greensand Way |
We then pushed on for the rest of the day through the heat hoping to get to familiar places by sunset but again the heat slowed our progress and we finally got to Leith Hill Tower around 3am early on the sunday morning. The long slow steady climb up to Leith Hill never seemed to end, made worse by the knowledge that the top was where we then planned to sleep for a few hours.
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| Moving through the night on the Greensand Way Fastest Known Time |
After a few hours sleep near Leith Hill Tower we made our way across Leith Hill, Holmbury Hill and Pitch Hill.
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| A few hours sleep near Leith Hill Tower on the Greensand Way Fastest Known Time |
Our rechargeable power packs ran low at Holmbury Hill and luckily a local Cricket club were kind enought o take us in for 30 mins while we got enough charge in for the rest of the day.
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| Holmbury Cricket Club on the Greensand Way |
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| The summit of Holmbury Hill on the Greensand Way |
The descent off the hills towards Hascombe was tough going in the heat, and after a break in the White Horse Pub to get out of the midday sun we made it to Thursley where Rosanna succumbed to the heat and needed time to rest in the shade of the Church while I knocked on a local house and refilled all of our water bottles.
Rosanna had picked up blisters early on in the trail, but by Thursley the combination of some huge blisters and the heat made things really really tough for her. She showed enormous mental strength and carried on for the last 10 miles in a lot of pain and we steadily tackled the issues with heat and fatigue as we went.
The climb up to Gibbet Hill was brutal and slow and the last 3 miles down from there to the finish was very tough indeed on Rosanna but she didn’t give up. We got to the finish ( which also marks the 55 miles of the Surrey section) in under 60 hours breaking the old record by about 24 hours.
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| The Greensand Way Fastest Known Time Lee-Stuart Evans at the finish |
The previous record for the Greensand Way that Rosanna and I beat is detailed here. The previous record was my first ever FKT and set with friends 6 years ago at the start of my love for multi day ultra trail running. Back then it was a huge adventure and it still was this time round. In Dahab in Egpyt where I have dived a few times the locals use a phrase ‘ Same Same But Different’ to describe the place they love. The Greensand Way was Same Same But Different in a very similar way this way round. It was familiar and unfamiliar and new and the same. The first time I did the Greensand Way we had help from the Cricket Club at Limpsfield with somewhere to camp so I was hugely amused at Holmbury Hill when another Cricket club helped us charge Rosanna Watch .
I felt at home on this trail in a way I don’t with any other.
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| The Greensand Way Fastest Known Time Lee-Stuart Evans napping in the shade near South Nutfield |
The weekend was a cathartic revisit to everything I’d done in running in the past 6 years, and the perfect way to round off my time in the UK before heading to the USA for 2 years in August. We had passed the point where I had competed in Wife Carrying and where I had been the official pacer for the Greensand Way Marathon and also Pitch Hill where my first ever blog here talked about.
Dealing with the extreme heat drew on skills I had gained in the Marathon des Sables, moving through the night and wild camping were skills I had picked up on the Monarchs Way and finally 6 years of testing and rejecting and perfecting gear choices meant I had run the Greensand Way this time round with a pack that was half the weight from back then.
This year I’ve bagged 874 miles of Trail FKT in the UK. More than anything I ever thought was possible and I’m still, As Lindley Chambers the Trail Running Association Chairman put it….
‘Greatly Inexperienced’.
I’m just a little bit less Inexperienced now than I was back then.
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| Greensand Way Fastest Known Time Lee-Stuart Evans at sunset near Reigate. |
