Speyside Windfarm Challenge

From our Scottish holiday base in Grantown on Spey we head to the Margach Hall near Knockando to register for the Speyside Windfarm Challenge. From there we have to drive two miles out into the middle of nowhere to Kirdelbeg Farm from where the race starts. L again opts for a 10k while I do the full distance which in this case is 12 miles.

The mission, should we chose to accept it, is to run up the hill known as Paul’s Hill to the windfarm and back. Those doing the 12 miler get to do a lap of all windfarm as well. So it wasn’t flat. In fact is was 1400ft of climbing in total.

Allegedly from the top there are views of the Cairngorms, the Spey Valley and the Moray Firth. None of this scenery looks remotely likely as it starts to rain again almost as soon as we get started. Amazingly though it does fine up and some views are possible as we do a tour through the turbines but I couldn’t tell you what I saw.

The rocky surface isn’t ideal for my ankles but I manage to get through it without twisting anything and, in an admittedly small field, we are both top 20. I do the 12 miles in a time of 01:41:17 which seems fairly decent and come 18^th. L was 15^th in the 10k.

Back at the hall there are loads of sandwiches and cakes. There’s also a raffle which we don’t buy any tickets for but end up with four prizes. They take so long getting around to drawing the raffle that everyone else on our table goes home and leaves us with their tickets. We accept two of the prizes but ask them to redraw the others.