THE Bishop of Kingston, Dr Martin Gainsborough, has embarked on running the full distance of the Pennine Way — 268 miles — for charity, aiming to complete this feat of endurance in ten days.
The route along the “Backbone of England” starts at the village of Edale, in Derbyshire, and ends at Kirk Yetholm, on the Scottish Borders. The trail has a combined ascent of 40,000 feet — exceeding the height of Mount Everest — and passes through some of the UK’s wildest scenery.
The Bishop started the challenge on Friday, and has a target to raise £30,000 to support children’s education in the diocese of Matabeleland, in Zimbabwe, with which Southwark diocese is linked.
By the second day, he had completed 60 miles. He stopped for the night in a barn on Ickornshaw Moor, near the Lancashire border, where he had enough signal to speak to the Church Times. He and his border collie, Jem (who has done all the training with him), had run and walked 24 miles that day. “I’ve landed on my feet here,” he said of the barn. “It’s a sort of glorified summerhouse.”
He knows that he won’t be able to keep up this early pace, but wanted to get some miles under his belt in the first few days. The physio whom he saw during training had instructed him on what to do while resting. “Certainly, my legs do need some serious massaging,” he said.
He was not running “particularly fast”, he said, he is carrying some weight: at the outset, his backpack, which included water and extra rations for Jem, weighed 30lbs. In considering what he might be able to jettison, he was tempted to dispose of some of the emergency rations and just keep one day’s worth.
Of the challenge so far, he said: “I tend to run the best I can in the early part of the day and then walk later.” Jem, “family friendly and curious”, is usually at least 50, sometimes 100 metres, in front, but is responsive — “I can call him; so I’m not having to look out for sheep. He’s great company; so I don’t feel as if I’m doing this on my own, though you do think about your family, and their love for you is very important.”
Dr Gainsborough is wearing a T-shirt that displays the words “I’m running for children’s education in Zimbabwe”, and he hands out cards to people he meets. At the time of going to press on Wednesday, he had raised £22,608.
He is spurred on by Isaiah 40.31, which he has quoted in his publicity: “But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint.”
Food and rest are, of course, motives. Asked to describe what he could see from his barn on the Ickornshaw Moor, he said: “A sunny garden and stone cottages. . . And my sleeping bag. . . And my dog completely crashed out. I think I’m still in Yorkshire.” He was all set to cook: the previous night, he had managed to eat at a pub that he had seen on a recce of the route. It was “the only pub for 30 miles; so I was determined to get to it.”
justgiving.com/crowdfunding/bishop-martin-kingston