Rebecca Hormann has completed her 275-mile Ethels challenge, linking all 95 of the Peak District’s hills, tors and summits in a continuous round despite battling storms and difficult conditions.
The ultrarunner returned to Hope in Derbyshire after 4 days, 11 hours and 44 minutes, establishing the first benchmark for her Ethels route.
Hormann set off from the village at 11am on Thursday, October 22, on a journey that involved more than 40,000ft of ascent and took her across exposed moorland in high winds and heavy rain as two named storms – Austen and Boelo – hit the UK.
And after completing the challenge, she paid tribute to the support crew and members of the public who helped her along the way.
‘I had to dig deep’
As we reported in our preview, Hormann had designed the route to start and finish in Hope, bringing together all 95 Ethels in one continuous round.
The challenge was inspired in part by her completion of the Lake District’s Bob Graham Round earlier this year, as well as her own experiences exploring the Peak District while training for her first 100-mile race.
But the weather added another layer of difficulty, with those two storms bringing high winds, heavy rain and saturated ground.
“It was a crazy adventure, a tough challenge, and I had to dig deep!” Hormann said.
“I’m so thankful to everyone who was a part of it because it’s not about the person running it; something like this isn’t completed without the community and a support crew who were totally reliable and incredibly selfless throughout.”
Hormann also received treatment at a petrol station during the multi-day effort, illustrating some of the practical challenges involved in keeping moving over such a long distance.
A legacy beyond the finish
The Ethels are named in honour of Ethel Haythornthwaite, the environmental campaigner whose work helped establish the Peak District as the UK’s first national park in 1951.
For Hormann, who explored the area by “bagging” Ethels after moving to Manchester, the challenge was both a tribute to Haythornthwaite and a way of celebrating a landscape that had become her training playground.
She hopes that the route will now encourage others to explore the area – whether or not they choose to take on all 95 summits in one go!
“Quite early on when people came onto the course to cheer me I was totally thrown,” she said. “Then the more it happened the more I realised this wasn’t just a personal passion project but something that has the ability to involve and inspire people.
“Even though my round is now finished it doesn’t mean it’s over; one of my favourite things I heard throughout was people realising we have access to these trails. This was the whole point, the legacy of Ethels275.”
And she already has a message for anyone considering a repeat: “I can’t wait for someone to try and repeat it – hopefully they’ll have better weather!”
A remarkable year
The Ethels275 adds another achievement to a busy season for Hormann, who competes under the Swiss flag.
She claimed an outright victory and set a women’s course record at the 200-mile Terra de Gigantes in Portugal, before adding another course record at Italy’s TOR100 by Kailas FUGA in September.
This time there was no race field to contend with, but the challenge of connecting the 95 Ethels – and the conditions she encountered along the way – provided a different kind of test.
