Report By: Stuart Jones

Race Date: 21^st August 2022

Every Teesdale village and town has a show of some sort (though variously known as a Carnival, Fun Weekend, Meet, Show, Fete and Feast). Scorton, a village just north of Northallerton in North Yorkshire, has a three-day ‘Feast’ complete with fairground, gymkhana, flower show and various sports, centred on its (almost) unique raised village green. The mixed-terrain 10k is part of Sunday’s itinerary.

‘Mixed’ is a good description – the first and last kilometres are a lap of a cow pasture, with all the expected ankle-turning surface. Then there’s a short tarmac section, a gravel section, a lakeside path, a section of bridle path across new-mown grass, a stile to climb twice (two laps of the ponds) and plenty of side paths as opportunities to veer off route if you mis-interpret the plentiful signs and arrows (as I did – costing a place or two at the finish). There’s a new RAF memorial at the lakes in tribute to RAF 219 Squadron stationed here from 1939 to 1952. The area later became a quarry, owned by Tarmac; Tarmac is currently finishing off reclamation work after the holes were used as landfill sites.

Sunday was another warm day, and in places the high hedges caught the warmth of the sun and made for humid running conditions; some runners found this hard.

But the good weather, and the offer of tea and cake to every runner who finished, kept a good crowd at the finish line until the tail-runner had completed the course shortly after the 99^th runner. The winner (Chris Alborough of Durham Fell Runners) was warmly applauded, but so was each local, each member of a Club and right through to the last to finish. It was a notably positive and supportive crowd.

There was only one Steel City Strider in this year’s race, Stuart Jones, who picked up a prize as first finisher in his age group, but everyone enjoyed the event (and the cake afterwards) – the gold and green generated lots of comments for travelling so far for a small race.

There were good numbers running from Swaledale Runners, Ripon Runners and Quakers, alongside many unaffiliated locals – we got £2 off, but they got a separate prize category. An interesting quirk of the event is a prize for the fastest runner from the Parish. (In the results ‘PR’ stands for Parish Resident.)

At the finish line, we were discussing what’s next – possibilities for team entries at Cross Country and pre-Christmas road relays. I suggest you take a look at the McTaggart Trot; a pre-Christmas Fancy Dress mixed-ability teams of three race where the slowest drops out after 3.5 miles, the second after 7 miles and only one of each team completes the full 11 miles.

The official race results available here.