Fred Keate Trails

Petrified coral in the Wadi Musa, Jordan. From a trip in March '23.

Great day out scrambling on the south face of A' Chailleach last weekend.

Beautiful day up Beinn Glass and Ben Lawers today, making the most of the wintery weather.

Scottish Islands Peak Race 2023 (SIPR23), a very brief (and slightly late) race report.

The SIPR is a sailing/running race which takes teams of 5 (2 runners and 3 sailors) from Oban to Troon, via Mull, Jura, and Arran. That's 4 runs, and a lot of sailing.

Oban: Excited to be on a start line with some of Britain's ultra running royalty. 
Managed to hold our own, for about thirty seconds.

Mull - Ben More: Called Ben More, because there's just more and bloody more of it. Hit the wall hard about 15km in, spent the next 20+ km moaning at Rory, who ignored me with the patience of a saint. Arrived back at the boat to find a big pot of Bolognese ready on the stove, the sailing team are also saints.

Jura - The Paps of Jura: Fun fact, "pap" is actually Scots Gaelic for "steep, stony, bastard". Foggy, dark, rocky, slippery, Jura was a lot of fun. I am now a master of scree-running, and need new trail shoes.

Arran - Goatfell: This run would have been a lot easier if someone had thought to stick the mountain down. As it was we had to contend with the hillside rolling like the deck of a ship. Looking back, I may have been quite tired. Big push to the finish, didn't even take time to stop for a photo on the summit. 

Sailing: Our sailing team were absolutely top tier. They would consistently move us to the top of the leaderboard (only for me to drag us back down to the bottom again). Sailing was new to the two of us, and made the whole race experience novel and slightly surreal. I've never before started a run by rowing to shore, through the fog, at 1 in the morning. 

All in, a wild and pretty memorable weekend. Massive thank you to the boys who made it a really fun ride.

On our first day, as we hiked through Petra and on to the Jordan Trail, someone (against all the advice of our pre-expedition medical brief) stopped to stroke one of the stray dogs.
He clearly had a sore paw and limped along with us for a while before we lost sight of him.
Until, 12 kilometers later, we stopped for lunch, and he appeared out of the Wadis behind us.
Named Wadi, or Drifter (depending on who you asked), he joined us for the remaining 200 Km to the sea.
The paw soon recovered and he turned out to be a massive pushover, a genuinely happy, friendly little fluff ball.
Happily, Muhammad, our guide, adopted him at the end of our trek, the two of them seemed to have a real bond.

A couple of weeks back I was lucky enough to head over to Jordan to take an excellent group along the Jordan Trail.

We made our way from the ancient city of Petra, through the Wadi Rum, down to Aqaba on the Red Sea.

It's been a while since I led a long distance hike like this and it was incredible to be back on the trail.

Had a great day on Saturday working with and the amazing Hero Hikers raising money for

Big effort by all involved, and we were blessed with a (relatively) dry and sunny day!