Early in 2010 I posted a reminder that 25 years had elapsed since the conception (by Andy Harmer) and the first successful completion by (Peter Jones, Bob Segrove and the writer) of the Fifteen Trigs circuit. The inaugural round took about fifteen and a half hours. It had been embarked on in a spirit of joyful improvisation, involving us in exploration of some unfamiliar terrain on the western side and a collective slowing down towards the end. During the long homeward leg, however, the idea of the 15-hour ‘standard time’ was taking shape, and that same summer it was consecrated together with the other minimal ‘rules’ for the enterprise. The rest is history, but an ongoing one…
My idea for celebration of the 25th anniversary was to encourage as many people as possible to participate during the year, hopefully replicating the 15/15 symmetry with a total of at least 25 completions. John Dalton quickly declared this aspiration to be quixotic, and he bet me a pint that it would not be achieved. He proved to be right, and he has already downed his pint.
However a good clutch of DPFR members and some other worthies did enter into the spirit of the convocation, and I’m glad to report that the 25th anniversary was suitably marked, certainly in quality if not in quantity. 12 successful attempts have come to my attention, by no means all by paid-up members of DPFR, which does mean that the status of the challenge continues to gain recognition. My apologies if I’ve missed anyone in the following review
Dave Bollington and Willy Kitchen worked a 15 Trigs outing into their BG preparation, to very good effect as was demonstrated in June. The ‘rank-and-file’ category also includes Ray Baines, Paul Orton, Andy Robinson, together with the Yates tandem putting in a token 16-hour-plus effort. Rob Woodall and Mary Gillie set the ball rolling in May, with a start from Glossop, for which innocence they were, initially, ‘disqualified’. After it emerged that they had incorporated a big loop to visit The Sportsman they were duly instated in the roll of honour. Their effort had been witnessed by Yiannis Tridimas, who subsequently performed a celebrity tour of his own.
The highlight of the anniversary was without doubt Simon Bourne’s heroic achievement in getting round in a minute or so under 10 hours, thus being the first ever to go through that barrier, with the added satisfaction of breaking Andy Harmer’s long-standing previous record of 10h 4m. A gallon of beer was on offer for the first DPFR member to pull off this feat. Unfortunately, Simon had resigned from the club, after his move away from Sheffield, just a few months before his big day! His account of this was published in the DPFR Newsletter of March 2010: an inspiring read for everybody, with the excessively modest but utterly appropriate conclusion that ‘you can’t beat the 15 Trigs route for a classic day out in the Peak District’. Something of this spirit evidently lay behind the legendary Tony Wimbush’s decision to incorporate our classic in his programme of 3 big challenges devised to celebrate a major ‘over-the-hill’ landmark in his long-distance career. He reported on the full sequence (‘A Treble at 60’) in the FRA magazine of November 2010. This national publicity will doubtless spread and enhance the reputation of our home-grown favourite tour, especially as Rob and Mary had previously featured in the Summer 2010 number of the same publication, with a full and lavishly illustrated article on their own day out.
I hope that this brief summary of quantity and quality in the 15 Trigs 25th anniversary year will keep the challenge to the front of the DPFR collective mind, with (first-time and repeat) successes regularly coming to our attention from 2011 onwards.
Alan Yates
January 2010
P.S. For details of Tony Wimbush's Calder Valley Round click here