Returning to web scribe duties after yet another Ultra effort is Matthew Scott! Back in February he took on the little matter of a 75 miler…

LAW75 – https://www.nav4.co.uk/lady-annes-way-75 

If you’re a regular reader of my writing, which let’s face it, you’re probably not, as I don’t write much nowadays apart from for work, you’ll know I like to start off with a teaser. So, this is the story of how I ended my longest ever ultramarathon on my hands and knees cleaning a toilet floor. Along the way, I terrified a small child, made a new canine friend, and learned to hate stiles. 

This is the story of my LAW75, an event put on by the wonderful people at NAV4. The route follows Lady Anne’s Way from Skipton to Appleby in the Yorkshire Dales, a distance of (supposedly) 75 miles. Lady Anne was a remarkable woman, the race description says, not least because she must have loved stiles. Regardless, after a relatively successful 2025 on my feet, interspersed with moments of what can only be described as self-pity at getting older, I decided to start 2026 by taking on something new. An event of firsts: my first 50+ mile adventure, first time going through the day and into a night, first time doing a serious winter ultra. 

I arrive in Skipton the night before, where I religiously observe mine and DB’s tradition of eating a massive pizza and chips at a local pizzeria before an event. In the morning, I scoop alarming quantities of granola and oat milk down my chute, apply a Gulf state’s worth of petroleum jelly to my feet, and quintuple check my kit. A short walk through the town takes us to Skipton Castle, where we will begin our adventure. I’m excited, focused (mostly), and ready to go. In the four weeks it’s been since I signed up for this, I’ve obsessed about it a lot. My watch pings to announce it is ready to light the way, although like any good adventurer, I have not one but two other forms of navigation with me, analogue and digital, plus a last resort third method of placing myself, aside from the GPX. I use none of my three alternative options, apart from once, in anger and frustration, about 17 hours later. 

After a no-nonsense pre-race briefing, the minutes are counted down. At 9am on Saturday 7 February 2026, shouts go up, and we set off to trace Lady Anne’s footsteps northwards through the Dales. 

Skipton-Kettlewell

The first 20 miles pass pleasantly enough. On the climb out of Skipton, we are greeted by the first of 7,650 muddy fields and the first, second, third, and fourth of 80,000 stiles across the route. Not only are there so many stiles, but each one has seemingly been designed to bring a unique and exciting form of peril to the unsuspecting race participant. 23 or so hours later, close to Appleby, with my legs and hips screaming each time I clamber over one, I resolve never to see or interact with another stile ever again. 

Happily, at Barden the stiles soon give way (a bit) to a gorgeous, runnable trail alongside the River Wharfe. I am a bit too hot in my base layer, North Face fleece, and waterproof, but feel joyous nonetheless: the river froths and gurgles through the valley, the sky is miraculously blue, not grey, and only a light tickle of wind caresses our skin. We move through Burnsall and then the quaint town of Grassington, where I wrestle with whether or not to buy a sandwich of some kind from one of the shops, eventually deciding not to. Then our calves are called into real action for the first time as a gradient appears. However, the joy of being in this landscape stays with me despite the climb up through – you guessed it – more fields and stiles. The clag descends, or rather we ascend into it, but the navigation is simple enough, and I arrive at CP1 in Kettlewell feeling fresh, alert, and hungry. 

I have spent a lot of time before this event planning my CP activities. I have packed my drop bag meticulously: cables and electrics at the top; food to carry below that; with other items (including my chocolate pistachio truffle eggs and white chocolate Toblerone triangles – more on those later) towards the bottom. Feeling efficient, I jab my watch into the charger connected to my power bank, take off my gloves, and stuff my headtorch and some flapjacks and the like into my pack before setting it down. I then demonstrate my unwavering commitment to CP gluttony: pizza, sandwiches, banana, some crisps for salt, a bit of brownie for sugar, all are consumed. I am feeling so smug at my efficiency that I completely forget to fill my water bottles until one of the several incredibly kind and helpful volunteers asks if they can do it for me. Leaving the CP with empty water bottles would not have been wise. I gratefully accept, popping an electrolyte tablet into each before asking for them to be filled with ‘the purple one’ – blackcurrant, or similar, surely. 

Kettlewell-Askrigg

Then we are off again, into what is to become an eternal drizzle. Between CP1 and CP2 is the highest point of the route, and also the segment where darkness will fall. I therefore try to move in a way that is not daft, but that maximises the use of the light. My aim is to get off the hilly section before darkness completely eats the sky. However, I am severely delayed near Cray, for the simple reason that I stop to gape in wonder at the waterfall gracefully cascading down the west flank of Buckden Pike. I am then delayed again when I stop to scoff some jelly babies at the nearby vehicle point. Shortly afterwards, I make a navigation error. By the time I am up on Stake Moss, darkness is stretching its long, ceaseless fingers across the Dales. I make good progress, nonetheless, arching around the sharp stubble of Addlebrough and down towards Askrigg. Here, I am left despairing for the first, but not the last, time about the mud. I get the navigation wrong again, more than once, which means my headtorch is soon on. The little dog leg east of Askrigg and then back annoys me. But finally, CP2 is within reach. 

Coming into Askrigg, I do my best to scare the locals. Peering around the main road, my headtorch alights upon a child sitting in a car on a driveway, who looks at me with a mixture of terror and shock. A small, inexplicably delusional part of my brain wonders if this is the CP. It very obviously isn’t, but I’m so desperate to find it this part of my brain tricks the rest of it into thinking it might be true, just for a moment. My headtorch therefore stays trained on the child a second too long, causing a considerable enhancement to the terrorised and shocked look. Thankfully – I think – her mother comes out the house at this point, having evidently told her daughter to get in the car while she locks up. She understands – I think – my confusion, and directs me towards the village hall. I apologise profusely, so profusely that in the end the situation punctures and we both laugh. I carry on towards the CP, utterly embarrassed and wondering if I’ll be disqualified or even banned from the Yorkshire Dales entirely. 

CP2 cheers me up. I am greeted by a border collie who spends the next 15 minutes staring expectantly at the mountain of cheese, bread, and pizza on my plate. I tell the border collie’s human that I too have a border collie for a companion, and their human replies that this marks me as a soft touch, something border collies know to recognise. The attention of the wonderful CP volunteers and my new collie friend lift my spirits. I slurp a cup of tea and then return to my kit. My watch has been charging for a good 20 minutes, and I pop another layer on, grab my gloves off the radiator, stock up on food, and grab my powerful handheld torch – a largely futile innovation intended to help me find stiles and lines in the dark, prompted by something PS said a couple of weeks prior.  

Askrigg-Winton

CP2 done, and it’s out into the cold, wet, and dark. I move slowly, my feet squelching and breath steaming. Rain flashes across my vision like greyscale Matrix code. It’s measured, careful movement at this point, and it continues uneventfully until we reach the climb to the final high point of the route. Almost out of a shared, quiet fear, a few of us gravitate together for this climb, trudging noiselessly upwards, around the western edges of Lunds Fell as if we are bison wary of wolves. At the top, starting to feel a smidge cold in my hands and legs in the endless drizzle, but convinced I’m okay, I decide to push on to warm up and get off the higher ground as quickly as possible. This is effective at warming me up, but in hindsight, probably hastened the decline of my legs (a decline that was coming anyway, to be fair). 

Later, as I move through Kirkby Stephen, the decline accelerates like a skier starting a black run. My mind also starts to slip. The yawns begin, and I find myself stumbling along, basically unable to run for more than a minute or so. For the first and only time, I check my last resort third option for seeing where I am, the event live tracking on my phone, to see how far it is to CP3. Not far. I wander into Winton and through the doors of CP3, knackered. Immediately, I am offered tea, soup, pizza, and a seat. My gloves and waterproof come off, and I check my penultimate layer, the North Face fleece, for moisture. It’s perhaps a touch damp in a couple of spots, but apart from that, the Montane – all praise their craft – waterproof has kept me dry. The rest of the CP passes in a haze of tea, pizza, and two cheese sandwiches. I stuff my pockets with Soreen, change my headtorch batteries, charge my watch, and put on my Montane Fireball over my North Face fleece. The waterproof goes back on over the top. Hood up, one last push. 

Winton-Appleby

I leave the CP with a fellow adventurer. I realise later that we’ve been swapping places since before Kettlewell, and in an unspoken pact, we move together in determined, steely silence. As the miles begin to crawl by, we chat football, running, and help each other (sometimes unproductively) with the navigation. Irony bites not long after, when I ask him if he fancies a little jog. Go on without me, he says valiantly, commenting that I’m obviously feeling stronger and should push on. Not 2 minutes later, my legs commit high treason, and I can no longer hold his heels. He marches into the distance, rightly practicing what he has preached, and for a while I pass the time by focusing on the flashing red light on the back of his headtorch. Pretty soon, it’s gone entirely. 

Those last 7 miles or so are torturous. My feet are suddenly throbbing, my joints are wooden, and my muscles are starting to fade to nothing. I play a game with myself: I am only allowed to check how long I have to go at half past the hour, which is also how I will remind myself to eat. Each time, I will guess the remaining distance. 0630 passes, I eat, I guess, 0730 passes, I eat, I guess, the sun rises, 0830 passes, I eat, I guess. I guess correctly zero times. The final stretch along the river into Appleby is an agonising cesspit of mud, tree roots, and sharp, hideous climbs. But eventually, I am staggering into Appleby and down the hill towards the finish point. A beautiful, caring soul in a blue hi-viz is stood there, beaming at me like I am the messiah, dragging me onwards with his gaze. I stride past him and touch the market cross. Done, just over 24 hours after starting. 

The aftermath

Post-race is a bit of a farce. I sit on the floor of the finish line HQ, trying to take my shoes off for so long that a fellow adventurer, long finished and now heading home, asks me if I need some help, with some concern. ‘It’s too late for that’, I try to joke, eliciting an awkward laugh. Later, prior to eating some of NAV4’s legendary carrot cake, I am sitting on the floor in a toilet cubicle trying to get changed. My leggings peel off, distributing 24 hours of mud across the floor. My socks do the same, and I examine my feet. Two chunky blisters in identical places on the inside of my little toes, and soles that are the colour and texture of a jellyfish that’s been washed up on a beach. A sinister part of me momentarily considers abandoning the mud now coating the toilet floor, but the good side prevails. I ask for a mop and a dustpan and brush, and so it comes to pass that my LAW75 adventure ends with me on my hands and knees, cleaning a toilet floor. Soon after it’s the long train home, and return to the North East, to my border collie, Dexter. 

So, what did I learn? There is no point in doing these things, if not to learn something about yourself. Well, I learned I can move for 24 hours without crying, collapsing, crashing (fully), or quitting. That’s something, and despite a fair few yawns I didn’t feel the tsunami of tiredness that I’d been warned about. 

I learned about kit and layering: mostly confirmation that my approach is sound, keeping me both warm and dry for the full adventure. The energy organising my layers, electrics, and food the week before was also well expended, minimising my faff time and maximising my eating time at the CPs.

I learned about feet. My feet coped okay, but in hindsight, I should have changed socks at CP3 and taken the chance to let my feet dry and air. Although, my little toes were already blistered by this point, and if I’d have changed socks, I might have popped them with the safety pin and disinfectant I carry for this explicit purpose – something that in the end wasn’t necessary. But either way, the searing pain in my feet I experienced in the last 14 miles would no doubt have been reduced if I’d have taken a bit more time to give them a proper breather. 

I learned about food. Mercifully, I learned I can still eat anything on this kind of adventure and not experience stomach issues. But it didn’t go perfect. Coming into CP1, I was hungry, which you should never be. Despite leaving each one feeling full, I should have eaten more at all three CPs. I didn’t have enough variety of things with me on my feet, which meant eating – especially after CP3 – was pretty laboured. Worst of all, I forgot all about the zip bag of chocolate pistachio truffle eggs and white chocolate Toblerone triangles in the bottom of my drop bag until after I’d finished. A few of them would have been ideal fuel in the latter stages, when chewing Soreen was becoming difficult even for this Soreen ambassador. 

I learned about resilience. Walking those last 14 miles or so was hard. My feet groaned, my joints complained, my muscles mutinied. But I remembered some perhaps unexpectedly sage advice from two friends: PS’s adage of ‘you’ve just got to get it done’, which I repeated to myself internally and out loud more times than I could count, and AT’s slogan of ‘the Metro is for quitters’, which kept me smiling sardonically – there’s no Metro out here, after all, and if there was it wouldn’t turn up.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think I learned this distance might not be for me. I might change my mind about that, but the last 15 miles or so crossed the boundary from adventure to misery. When I reached Appleby, I felt no elation, no rush, no relief, only muted, suppressed sorrow. It was underwhelming in a very unanticipated, overwhelming way. Now I’ve got a bit of distance from it, I can appreciate the resilience and the achievement, but I’m not sure I’m keen to replicate how I felt for those 15 miles ever again. In other words, it might be time to go back to the 50k distance I love.

Having said that, with better fuelling, better foot care, and now some experience, it might not be like that next time, right? I guess we’ll find out soon. Next up is the Fellsman. As all researchers know, a sample of 1 is a poor number on which to base such a definitive conclusion, so more data is required. Maybe in April, I’ll learn that a sandwich at Grassington can be the difference between success and real success. Either way, there’s only one way to find out. 

Shout outs

If you’re still reading, you’re probably getting bored by now, so let me end with a thanks and shout out to the NAV4 team. You’re all mint and I appreciate you. For just how mint they are, I sent them some feedback, which they have published here. Read it and sign up to their events: you won’t regret it. 

Shout out to my fellow adventurers for the comradeship and shared suffering, and to DVRC – especially those who joined me on my last long run before doing this – for the wise advice. Finally, shout out to G and Dexter, as always, for putting up with this nonsense and for tolerating yet another itch temporarily scratched.