On December 8th Damian Hall and Beth Pascall will be starting their quest to get the fastest known (FKT) time for the Cape Wrath Trail which starts in Fort William and goes to the north-western tip of Scotland, Cape Wrath, over 230 miles of rugged Scottish countryside.
It takes in 12,000m of ascent and the dynamic duo plan to do it in less than seven days.
The current FKT is held by Przemek Szapar of Poland. In April, he traversed it in seven days, nine hours and 31 minutes. Winter conditions will add a significant extra challenge to Beth and Damian’s attempt.
So why this challenge and why in winter? Damian explained in his blog for inov-8.
“It’s all Ellie’s fault. About two years ago I was scheming up winter adventure ideas with my good friends Ellie and Matt Green from Summit Fever Media. We’d only just started, when Ellie said, “I know! Running Cape Wrath. In winter.”
We stopped scheming immediately. We knew that idea would be hard to top.
Firstly, we didn’t know of anyone who’d run the Cape Wrath Trail in winter – probably for good reason.
Secondly, in doing so we would hopefully demonstrate how Britain – a comparatively small island with a lot of people on it – still has areas of magnificent wildness and unsettling remoteness.
We’re all passionate about showcasing this country as a place for genuine adventure (we met on The Spine Race after all). And thirdly… wait, er, who exactly is going to run it? Oh pants.”
