Turbine Tangle Recce

The Rossendale club has come up with a challenge for September known as the 'Turbine Tangle'. Essentially navigate yourself round all 26 (no, I couldn't believe there were that many either) on Scout Moor in 3 hours, starting and finishing at Cowpe. Details on their website and facebook page www.rossendaleharriers.co.uk and go to the race diary page.

I should point out that it's as many as you can get in the 3hrs, but did wonder if us lesser mortals with a bit of navigating nous could manage 26 and not just the racing snakes. So is it possible? I spent the evening looking at the map to work out what I thought would be the optimum route around the various sections.






I parked up in Cowpe, outside the Sunday School (Race HQ) and my route onto the moor followed the ROW via the Pennine Bridleway (there may be a more direct flagged route on race day) to my first turbine no 20, I finished with no 25 and went back down to Cowpe to the east of the reservoirs and back to the car. That's about as much detail of my route as I'm going to divulge on a public website! It took me 1hr48 from touching the first one to the last, and just over 3hrs in total. The tracks (blue on site plan) are very wide and smooth and good 'fast' running, I made a very huge assumption that it was 'ok' to traverse the moor (it is access land) between the various sections. This meant there was only a small 50m section of the track that I did 'out'n'back'.

A little bit of fine tuning may be required, but overall happy that my computer navigating matched up well with what I found on the day. At best guess I reckon I did about 11m and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. Today's pace was very comfortable, so a sub 3hrs is well within my reach, I just need to see what further details appear on the race website. I certainly don't think I'd be bothering if you had to just stick to the tracks and ROW's, that'd make it a lot more time consuming.

Any way you don't need to do the race to give yourself a challenge, just print off the maps and away you go.

TF