Common(dale) People

Eight GG Yorkies ventured out into the North York Moors to support a local fell running group. With only the organiser Dave and a couple of other people, without our help they could not have put on the event.

We began by directing traffic to the car park and Nick did a fine job of getting the cars parked up in an orderly fashion. One van had to reverse back out when the driver realised he’d left his running shoes 👟 at home! ☹️

Debs arrived to join us helpers along with a couple of fellow Yorkies who were running. Myself, Nick and Debs then drove out a short distance to our first marshalling point where we had to get the runners safely across a fast road. Mitch and Louise were timekeeping (using old-style parkrun-type timers) ⏱ and Kathryn and Laura were on the finish funnel noting down the runner numbers as they finished. Michal was the tail runner with the task of collecting in the direction marker sticks on his way (one of which he missed and ended up taking one runner an extra km or so)!

Our marshalling trio got thoroughly windswept (and a tad chilly) so were glad to move on to our next marshalling point further along the road. Here we had to cross the runners safely on a blind bend. Debs ventured through the ferns and bracken to be a Marshall “scarecrow” to guide the runners in the right direction (this part was a change to the original route). However this was only semi successful as lots of the runners came up the road towards us instead of through the fields and some came from the opposite direction! A few made it to us vaguely on the correct route (we think) especially after Debs went further along the route to stop the runners from missing the turn.

Finally we saw Michal and the last couple of runners appearing through the undergrowth and we pointed them on their way. The signs were collected and squashed in the boot and we headed back to base to wait for the last runners to arrive.

Prizes were given out (and leftover beers distributed amongst the volunteers) then it was just time for a group photo and we headed off as it was starting to get dark.