Up hill and down dale - trail running on Fremington Edge

Quarry path up to Fremington Edge
It helps doesn't it when it's sunny? For me and when exercise is concerned a sunny, clear morning leaves me with no possible chance of finding an excuse not to get out and run, ride, swim or walk and the bank holiday Monday morning of the week we were staying in the Yorkshire Dales was just that - perfect...

 I'd taken up my trail running kit; Saloman Speedcross 3 GTX, Skins A400 3/4's and a few base layers, just in case I got the chance to get out onto the fells but with the weather forecast to be rain for most of the week I hand't got my hopes up.
View from the cottage... perfect
So, when woken at 6am for the morning feed by our 8 week old daughter, I was pleasantly surprised to see no clouds and hear no rain and decided to make the most of it and head out for a short run up to Fremington Edge, the nearest high point (430m), which was just behind the cottage.
Looking across to Fremington Edge
I'd looked at the route on an OS map the night before but as I had no idea of the paths and hadn't even walked along any part of the route I decided to download the 1:25k OS maps onto ViewRanger (via my Nexus 5) and take this along with me as well as my Forerunner 910XT that I use for recording and pacing while running (or swimming).  This proved invaluable as a couple of the paths were very difficult to pick out in the long grass.

 The hill started pretty much straight out of the front door, leading up a narrow road/track next to the cottage and up to a cluster of houses that makes up High Fremington.
From here the road became less defined as it wound its way up through the disused quarry - by now my legs were burning nicely, not really having run much recently and unused to any real hills when they last did!
Memorial half way up the quarry path to Fremington Edge
The quarry path gave way to a short rocky section of track, littered with uneven chunks of stone that made maintaining a decent pace almost impossible - which was fine with me as I was far from being able to maintain a decent pace by that point!
Looking out across the Dales
It's steeper than it looks

Once up onto Fremington Edge I stopped to catch my breath and take a few pics just to prove that I'd made it up!  The edge itself is a wide flat ish section that maintains a fairly steady altitude and has a number of old, disused, mines scattered along its flanks.

Fremington Edge

The route down was far quicker than the slog up which had taken me almost 25 minutes! Grassy paths through sheep fields and small tracks lead me down sharply to a reasonably flat footpath that runs along the lower edge of "the edge", flanked by low stone walls and scattered with bluebells.
The final path back home - flat for a change!
This path brings you back out into High Fremington and from here I descended on pretty much the same path to bring me back, sweating and aching, to the cottage.

 All in the run was 2.98 miles and took me a staggering 41 minutes - it really was steep, honest!

The perfect place to sit and admire the view

The Garmin route log (recorded on my Forerunner 910XT) can be viewed here

Track of the run recorded via Viewranger on my Nexus 5;
Location: Reeth, Richmond, North Yorkshire DL11, UK

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