Spooked by a navigational error on a solo mission around the northwestern fells, and fixated on an arbitrary target time, Matt Poulton nearly forgets the real reason he's running on the hills in the first place - for the sheer joy of it.

Eight hours. Eight hours to run the 30 miles of the George Fisher Tea Round. Eight hours to confirm that I may be ready to run the Bob Graham this year.

My friend ran a sub-24-hour Bob Graham Round. He then went on to run an eight-hour Tea Round. At the time of my friend's completion, I was not a runner, peering in at the sport from a walker's perspective; but I did have a fascination with the Bob Graham, and a desire to one day complete it. So, I hypothesised: 'If I could run an eight-hour Tea Round, I could complete the Bob Graham Round'. A few months later, I started running, and that thought stuck with me as I did.

I would hasten to add that nothing scientific went into this; no evaluation of distance vs ascent between the two rounds, just the simple reasoning that one of my friends ran a sub-24-hour Bob Graham and then went on to run an eight-hour Tea Round. However unscientific it may be, this assumption, devised before I even became a fell runner, before I even understood what undertaking either round would imply, stuck with me like a mantra.

When one makes a mistake there is a period before its consequences are realised

A few years later, and I was ready to take on the Tea Round; I was fit and felt relatively well prepared, confident in my ability to achieve the time I wanted. Due to my lack of organisation, I had not reccied all of the route, trusting that my local knowledge and solid map reading skills would carry me through the unknown sections. I packed and repacked my bag, read and re-read the splits I had calculated to ensure I finished within the eight hours, and went to bed.

I slept poorly, feelings of excitement and trepidation keeping me awake until late at night. At some point, I must have drifted off, as my alarm jerked me awake from a fitful doze. I rose, groggily, dressed, ate some breakfast and began the short drive to Keswick. Parking the car and heading towards George Fisher's, I received odd looks from early passers-by heading to work at the sight of me heel-flicking my way through the town, but you've got to watm up somehow. Arriving at the start point, I checked my watch, put my hand on the door of the shop, hoping I wasn't preventing someone on the other side from exiting, and set off, starting my watch as I did.

What is the George Fisher Tea Round?

Devised by staff member Jacob Tonkin in 2017, the George Fisher Tea Round is a testing route around all the fells visible from the top floor cafe window of George Fisher's store in Keswick. 

Covering 46km (nearly 30 miles), and with over 3100m of ascent, it can be run or walked, and while a lot more achievable than a Bob Graham it's still far from a stroll in the park.

This is not so much a write-up of the route itself, more an examination of how my mindset and determination to beat a self-imposed time limit blinded me as to why I was on the fells. This means that the description of the time between setting off and reaching Grisedale Pike, hill seven on an anticlockwise traverse, will only be summed up in one word: solid. I ran well, made no navigational blunders, kept to the splits I had calculated and felt good. Food and water were consumed in due course. In fact, this section was almost uneventful, if any run in the fells could be called that. Of course this couldn't last.

By this point the wind was howling and the visibility was growing poor, a far cry from the clear skies forecast. After dropping off the fell, I found myself at a section that I hadn't reccied previously, with only a rough idea of the direction I needed to go. In a moment of foolhardy arrogance, I chose not to check my map, and instead trusted misguided instinct, beginning a descent that would undoubtedly cost me the round.

My round was over, but an afternoon of fell running was afoot. With a smile, I set off back into the hills

When one makes a mistake there is a period before the consequences of that mistake are realised. I look back fondly on those innocent moments descending the wrong hill, not knowing that, upon reaching the bottom, any hopes of an eight-hour time would be dashed. Only when I reached the base of the fell did I recognise I had in fact descended the wrong one. All that planning, all that preparation undone by one simple lapse of judgement.

In hindsight, the mistake was not catastrophic. I was slightly off course, but not majorly, I had still reached all of the fells I had needed to on that section. In fact, I'd only added a few miles of road running to the round. What it should have been was a sharp lesson to always check my map before making a route choice. Instead, I began to spiral, my mind solely focused on the time that I had lost and how I might make some of it back.

I continued to run; I hadn't been pushing myself too hard on the prior section but I ran furiously now, arms and legs pumping. In my head I tried to bargain with myself, convincing myself to stay positive, that all was not lost and the time could be clawed back. I continued along the route in a near-fevered manner, rejoining the round at Buttermere before heading up the steep sides of Red Pike. I was still feeling on edge, the mistake having thrown me in a way I had not expected it to, but as I began to ascend, now back on the right track, I grew calmer. Looking back, I am still surprised how much this small error affected me; it is not ideal when you go the wrong way, but I was in no danger. It would make reaching my eight-hour target more difficult but so what, it was an arbitrary figure, no reflection on my fitness. At the time of doing this, I had not done any previous rounds or races, merely going into the fells to explore. Following a route or hitting a time had never been important, and now suddenly it was everything.

I reached the cairn on top of Red Pike and headed over the rocky ridge towards High Stile. As I neared, I began to grow nervous as I knew another unknown section was approaching. I remember learning about pathetic fallacy in secondary school English, where emotions are linked to non-human things such as the weather. As I had summited Red Pike, the first drops of rain had begun to descend, and now they had grown heavier, reducing visibility and making the rocks slick below my feet. They suited the mood. As I reached High Stile and began the descent, the rain was drumming a heavy rhythm on my hood, making thought near impossible.

Progress was slow on the steep, treacherous slope, and, with poor visibility, no matter how many times I checked my map to assure myself, I was convinced I would plunge into an abyss. In a moment of panic, I reascended before descending again as if I would find a better route on a second attempt. I repeated the move twice more, a panicked frustration filling me: not for my safety but for the seconds lost against my eight-hour schedule. By this point the showers had eased off, with the clouds being whipped away by the strong winds: logically I should have waited, let the visibility improve while calming myself before descending properly. I was more than capable of this descent: I had years of experience on the fells both running and walking, yet an arbitrary time limit was becoming my undoing. In a frantic desire to keep moving, I headed back to Red Pike and descended that way, still determined to finish the round.

By the time I reached the shores of Buttermere, I knew it was over; I was over two hours down on my schedule, an amount I could in no way make up. I sat by the shore of the lake, looking out over the water feeling sorry for myself. I thought about the squandered opportunity, the mistakes I had made wishing I could go back and rectify them. I sat for a while, letting despair wash over me until an epiphany came. The clouds in my mind parted, my hands reached down to my watch, fingers methodically pressing buttons until I had found the correct option. I looked up at the hills. There was no need to be disheartened; I wasn't going to finish the round in the time I wanted, but I was fit and uninjured. It was mid-afternoon and I was sitting in the lap of the Lake District Fells. I pressed delete on my watch. The GPS trace vanished, lost in cyberspace. I pocketed my split times and stood, feeling the tensions and the frustrations of the day melt away. My round was over, but an afternoon of fell running was afoot, surely that was something to cherish?

With a smile, I set off, back into the hills.

The next day I returned to Grisedale Pike, this time ascending from Whinlatter Pass; it was a warm, sunny day the sort the forecast had promised for the day before. How different things may have been if I had chosen today to try the round. I sat on the summit looking out to where I'd made my first blunder. If I had waited until today, would I have checked the map, seen the correct line and not lost time? Upon reaching High Stile, would I then have been in a better frame of mind to find and make the treacherous descent? A smile stretched my lips as I stood, my aching legs protesting as I did; 'but would I have learned why I was on the fells in the first place?', I thought to myself.

Since then, I have completed numerous rounds in the Lake District and Scotland, including returning to complete the Tea Round. On each occasion, I have ensured, with mixed success, that completing the route was the secondary objective, and to never let it distract me from the real reason I was on the fells: to enjoy myself.