Buckley or Bust? How not to have a paddy when your Paddy goes wrong
- mrtomseddon
- Jun 22
- 11 min read
Updated: Jun 23
This was always going to be extremely hard. The Paddy Buckley round is the Welsh equivalent of the Bob Graham Round, with a goal of reaching 47 summits in a route which takes in 105km with ~9,000m climb. The Paddy differs from the Bob in that a 24h finish isn’t strictly required to be listed as a finisher, however it is required if you want to be an official finisher of the big three rounds (a pipeline dream!), and so I knew I wanted to target under 24 hours.
This was a slightly daunting prospect as the general rule of thumb is that a Paddy is 60-90minutes slower than the Bob, which I finished in 22hours and 57minutes, so knew it was going to be tough, without much wiggle room!
Consequently, everything needed to go right for me on the day: I chose the date, 7th June, months in advance as it was close to the summer solstice and highly likely to be warm and dry underfoot, and picked a crackpot team of local pacers and nav. I also knew I had to be ontop of the nav. Having spent so much time around Snowdonia in preparation for UTS100m I felt I knew the landscape, and some of the route, reasonably well. The route is rough-going: technical throughout, and the crotch-deep bogs of the Moelwyns are a nightmare to navigate, and so I topped up this knowledge up with four reccee weekends to hit the difficult parts of the route which, to be honest, was most of it!
The Paddy can be started from anywhere on the round (unlike the Bob Graham round which must be started from Keswick moot hall) and so I chose to start from Llanberis at 6am. The first leg passes through the mines above Llanberris taking in the rock strewn landscape of the Glyders before making a notoriously difficult descent from Glyder Fach (adjacent to the ‘Devil’s Kitchen’ crag, which I now refer to as ‘Devils Bum Slide’) and ascending Tryfan. It continues through the rocky Carneddau and the bogs of the Moelwyns before the night section, which traverse the Nantile ridge before a final ascent of Snowdon, returning to Llanberis via Garnedd Ugain and the ‘rolling’ hills of Moel Elio.
I had a good training block in the buildup: a marathon PB followed by a lot of time at box hill traversing up and down the North Downs Way ridge. However, three weeks out some of my prep started to unravel, as it was announced that the Dinorwig quarry, part of the route straight of Llanberis on leg 1, was being closed for the filming of House of Dragons. I’d planned a diversion, which added ~2km and 15minutes, but it wasn’t ideal. With the 6am start I was hoping security wouldn’t be present, but still decided it would be best to go up and check it out the night before. Two of the crew went up (I was saving legs!) and found the security guards not willing to letting any runner’s pass. However, whilst up there they did manage to work out a small diversion (~2minutes) around the location the security was stood which allowed us to keep to the original route, which follows the old mining train tracks straight up the mine, intact.
I’d also been planning my navigation and pacing team well, with local fell ‘ninjas’ supporting for the more complex navigational legs. Unlike the Bob, you don’t formally need to be witnessed at each peak for a successful Paddy, just submit your gpx. However, there is some difficult navigation along the route, and whilst I’d recced everything, having local nav support means they can find you the best lines, takes the mental strain of decision making off - and they can help to carry a bit of weight. Unfortunately, in the week leading up to the event I had four of my most experienced pacers unfortunately drop out, two of them the day before and one on the day. This led to a big change of support strategy, with me leading most of the nav and running a big chunk of the route alone, and the support runners who had committed to pick up additional legs.
In addition, the weather looked questionable, with rain forecast through much of the morning and parts of the afternoon. Through May I had reports of the bogs of the Moelwyns being ‘quite runnable’, but the continual rain throughout the preceding week was certainly going to make the course slow under foot - as well as making the rocky leg 1 and the Nantile ridge slippery and slow going.
All of this made me really quite nervous in the lead up to the event. I’d predicted a 23:40 finish time, which was generous and left 20minutes to spare, but I knew that it was going to be close - looking back over my pacing for the Bob I was well-aware how much my pace dropped off once my muscles got wrecked, and so I could see the 20minute buffer being eroded fast!
6am on Saturday came, and whilst standing at the Llanberis interchange nerves were high. David was my pacer for leg 1, he’s a runner from Cornwall who I met whilst supporting Jeev’s Bob Graham round. He’d not run any of the Paddy before, and so I’d lead navigation, but I knew he’d be good company and as a strong fell runner he’d be a great mule. At last minute he’d also agreed to step in for Leg 4, the Nantile Ridge, too - so was stepping in to run the two most technical sections of the round!
We set off up into the Dinorwig quarry, taking the diversion to skirt around the perimeter of the House of Dragons closure, passing a security car and hurriedly shouted that we were turning off before their closure. Before they comprehended that there actually wasn’t a waymarked park up ahead, we’d past the truck and had jumped up onto the train tracks, onwards to Elidir Fach, the first summit of the round.
Visibility was low and specks of rain were falling as we continued up around Elidir Fawr and towards the Glyders, but nothing serious and so the first part of the leg was fairly smooth. Getting to Glyder Fach the rocks were getting slippery, and the summit really is a big messy dump of rocks which need to be scrambled. I’d never been clear where the exact summit was, and had spent plenty of time watching YouTube videos as well as practising the approach in reccees, but handed David my poles and scrambled to the highest point and over the top to make sure there was no chance of missing it. The ‘Devil’s Bum Slide’ descent to the Tryfan saddle is always hairy, with the line I’d worked out with Luke during a reccee being to hug the left-hand side as much as possible. In our reccee, I’d come down the centre of the field of rocks and Luke had beaten me down easily by 5 minutes.
Ascending Tryfan, I irritatingly left the path early to ascend over the first (false) summit before realising the real summit was lying further along, with a nice path behind. The descent down the west face lost even more time; the rocks were slippery and our descent was necessarily tentative, by the time we reached the runnable section I knew we were behind time and had already started to question whether 24hrs was a realistic target. We made it down to the changeover 10minutes over time.
For Leg 2, the Carneddau, one of the big decisions to make is how to ascend Pen Yr Ole Wen: there’s a short sharp western path or a longer slightly more runnable Eastern path. I chose the runnable Eastern path, where the terrain is grassier and changed into my Terrex SGs for the aggressive 7mm lugs to help me rip through the climb. I knew the short path was 5minutes quicker (I’d recceed them both and timed myself) but was worried about impact to muscle fatigue with the more aggressive climbing. Knowing I was behind schedule I made sure to put my foot down for the runnable section, and by the time I reached the summit I’d made back the 10 minutes and was on schedule. All helped by a bit of weight saving by having my driver for the day, AJ, hike up to the summit to hand me off water and gels as I passed - my pacer for the leg had dropped out two days before, and so I was navigating the section on my own.
Once on top, running was fantastic, however I’d recced the route only once and was running some quite inefficient lines, which was frustrating me. In addition, the boulder fields at the top were slippery and made pace slow going. To add to the day’s difficulties, one of my poles snapped as it landed between two rocks. I was trying to keep calm and convince myself that it didn’t really matter but was actually very worried: the poles were a vital part of me saving my legs, i couldn’t afford the substantial reduction in pace I’d experienced on the Bob, and so knew I was in trouble and this would make the rest of the day very difficult. I rang the crew and asked them to go to Joe Browns, the outdoor store in Capel which was the changeover point and see what my options were. They got back to me and my options were either to buy a pair of chunky steel walking poles (£65) or drop £170 on a brand-new pair of black diamond carbon poles to replace the one which was broken! I was frustrated and not sure how to proceed, so asked them to let me think about it. In the meantime, Jo explained to one of the staff members that I was running the Paddy, which caused them to pull out all the stops. The guy brought a single pole from out back and said I could take it to finish the round – result! At the time I assumed was a test and trial pole – but later transpired to actually be his own personal pole! (I left him a box of chocolates and five cans of Madri, which doesn’t quite do the gesture justice!)
The scramble up Pen yr Helgi Du is one of my favourite routes in snowdonia. The views weren’t quite as glorious as usual but I made sure to take it in and enjoy it, before the grassy descent into Capel. Gus ran up the road to meet me early with a protein shake and banana (my go-to aid station fare) and I settled in the boot of the car outside Joe Browns, new pole ready to go! I’d made back 10 minutes on the schedule so was now even, but speaking with the crew I could tell I was down and my mood was off - I’d spent far too long being frustrated, thinking the 24h was unachievable.
I’d always thought of leg 3 as ‘the back’ of the round. As the longest leg with the most difficult nav I knew I wanted to get it over and done with, so I put my music in and foot down for the climb up Hebog. I was on my own for the bogs as my intended navigator was pulled into an emergency on-call the evening before. Whilst I’d recceed the Moelwyns five or six times, and at no point do I feel like I’d really nailed the lines, so I decided this would be a good one to take on my own - and save pulling in someone else and have them lose substantial energy following me around. As expected the nav wasn’t perfect, but it was generally enough to keep me to time.
The crew had hiked up to an abandoned mining town in the Croesor Qurry which sits halfway through the leg, and so I met them there for an interim stop. At this point Gus joined for Foel Ddu, Moelwyn Mawr (which aptly translates to Great White Hill) and Cnicht. This second half of leg 3 is one of my favourite parts of the round, with dramatic view of Snowdon and the rest of the national park interspersed with the abandoned industrial feel of the mines, which contracts with the new-industrial feel of the Afon dam and reservoir. The sun broke through and I was thankful for company and conversation which pulled me away from thinking about the set-backs of the day. Cnicht is definitely one of my favourite ridges in Snowdonia and my favourite summit in UTS100m, as it’s generally ascended around sunrise, though the paddy ascent from the East is a grassy slog and doesn’t quite have the reward of continual sweeping views. Nevertheless, we made it to the top and following a time check knew we’d made up a chunk of time. As the sun started setting spirits were high for the long decent to Aberglaslyn.
At the changeover I was meant to be meeting a local to navigate me through the Nantile ridge of Leg 4, which can be quite treacherous, but they’d dropped 2 hours before. Thankfully we suspected this might happen and David, who’s being coached by Damian Hall, was able to step in and grab a few tips from Damo before coming out! Fuelled with coffee and spaghetti we set out on what feels like the longest and most trudging climb of the round, up the side of a grassy hill with no way marked paths. We left 15minutes under schedule, and as we made it up to the top of Hebog the sun was getting low and our view to the rest of the Nantile ridge fading.
I could feel myself tiring and this really hit me as I was navigating towards Bwlch-y-ddwy-elor, where the route follows no discernible paths through heather and bracken to reach what feels like the most contrived peak of the round, with few redeeming features. The route was slippery, the rain had started coming down and a few times I tripped and fell, literally flat on my face. After we made it closer to the Nantile ridge the rain stopped, but hitting the ridge the rock was extremely slippery and we had to move slow. I knew I was losing time, we were taking far too long to pass the ridge and I was resigning myself to sub-24 slipping away. I was tired, frustrated and the darkness and fog made the length of the ridge not visible and so once we eventually made it to Y Garn I was surprised and slightly confused - I wasn’t expecting the turnaround. I’d resigned myself to us being very behind schedule now, and our time check at Y Garn clocked us as 20 minutes behind schedule, which meant we’d lost 35minutes against the schedule on the one leg (!!). We ran hard down the hill and through the Beddgelert Forest, calling ahead to the crew and informing them there wasn’t going to be a proper stop - I was going to run straight through, so they met me early in the forest and took protein shake, banana and caffeine bullets on the move before heading straight out.
I made the changeover at 1am, 20minutes late, giving me 5 hours to complete the final leg. I’d purposely scheduled Luke to join fresh for this leg, to take the brunt of the navigation for the tricksy grassy ascent through the farm to Craig Wen and keep us to time. We powered down, with Luke leading the nav and Gus running just ahead of me so I could follow his feet. I was moving well and Yr Aran passed quickly, with the climb up to the Snowdon summit seemingly taking much longer. At 0330 the summit was busy with walkers, albeit with some very cold driving wind making us keep our heads down and running well. At the summit we’d made back 20 minutes, which got me back on schedule and leaving only the rolling hills of Foel Goch, Foel Gron and Moel Eilio. The sun was rising, leaving a pink hue in the sky, and as we ticked off each of these summits we generally kept to time, meaning once we hit Moel Eilio I knew the sub24h was going to happen.
I’d spent so much time throughout the day thinking that the sub24 had got away from me. Knowing I’d made it (and didn’t have to come back to give it another go!) made the descent into Llanberis feel quite emotional. I finished and collapsed on the planter at the Llanberis bus exchange for the classic understated Paddy finish, overcome with emotion and grateful to my support team for pulling together to help me make it.
