TRYING TO GET A TEAM TOGETHER
Blaven a Munro (l) to Garbh Bheinn a Corbett (c) adding a huge technical challenge to the relay. Photo Margaret Dearman
In the winter of 1991/2 I started looking around for a team. Dave, John and Tony from 1990 were all interested as were Colin Powell's sons Ifor and Alyn (provisionally) who together had been shaking the mountain world with their mountain marathon performances. A number of other people expressed a provisional interest. Then Steve Jones from North Wales was incredibly enthusiastic, and transmitted this to two North Walian friends Trefor Jones and Ross Powell. Suddenly we looked like having a team and I started making definite arrangements. In addition Trefor would come with wife Julie who seemed keen to do the catering, launderette etc. for us all.
I provisionally booked Flexihol and the boat and went about trying to get a charity interested. I did not like asking more than one charity at a time, but realised I had to as one sat on the idea for 2 months. One problem was that the boat hire on top of the extra fuel and maps made this this relay very expensive, and it would be essential to find some means of getting some money back, as many of the people interested were lacking in funds.
The ferry timetable meant that it would be necessary to start on a Friday morning, although the majority of the team would not be required until much later in the day. The scheduled finish would then be on the Saturday morning three weeks later, but with the risk of delay eating into the following working week. At first I had opted for just one extra runner than the Munro, but was persuaded that this was far too marginal. It was therefore necessary to find nine people who could afford both the time and the cost. It seemed all the more essential to secure a charity's backing.
We had a provisional team of Dave, John, Tony, Ifor, Steve, Trefor, Ross and myself with Colin and Julie in support, and I felt reasonably confident in finding another two. I had a large number of people who would like to do it but could not commit themselves so early, but there were also a number of positive reactions which on reflection decided that it was just too big a commitment.
With nearly a year to go and still no charity, Dave rang me to say that his life was too uncertain at the moment to commit himself, he wanted to withdraw. It was at this point that I realised the that the project was just too big – the risk of failing to line up a team was too high. I settled back onto the smaller task of repeating the 1990 relay. However I was only interested in doing it with the intention of trying to beat the peak per hour average.
Ben Loyal, a beautiful Corbett in the far north. photo Margaret Dearman
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