I have added the option of running a shorter version of
the Groovy Kinder Love with a totally uninspired name "Groovy
Baby Love". Both races start together and follow the main race route to Jacob's Ladder Top CP 4 (the baby bypasses the down-and-up to Jacob's Ladder Bottom CP 5) and splits again at Broad Clough ford CP 7. The "baby" crosses the ford and goes over the stile while the main race turns right to
follow the fence-line/Broad Clough for 30(ish) metres before going through a
gate to climb back up to the three knolls path. The baby continues around to
briefly meet the main route again at Benny's bridge/bottom of Sandy
Heys CP 10, where the baby turns left to climb up to the Shooting
Cabin CP 12, while the main race climbs up William Clough. Both routes
then meet again for the final descent from the Shooting Cabin CP 12 to
the finish. There are instructions in the attached "Baby" PDF and
an image at the bottom of this page.
2024 was the first year running the two options, it worked
OK(ish). The idea of the "baby" was that it was meant to be an easier
alternative to the main race, but in retrospect there was not enough of a
difference between the two options. The "baby" is still a hard race
and anybody who could do it would also be capable of doing the longer one, so
in effect they were in competition with each other.
There are changes from 2025. South Head CP has has been removed for both races to remove confusion with trying to get some people
to bypass it while sending the Groovy over the top. The main change will be
removing the Jacob’s Ladder CP for the baby. That removes 2Km/170m climb.
The stats for each race will then be:
Groovy 24.5 Km 1290m
Baby 16 km 675m
There is just a single entry for both races (so you just enter the Groovy Kinder Love). You can decide at race number allocation which route you want to run. The race limit of 200 then covers both races so there will not be 400 running.
Google Drive link to a PDF and PNG of the full race map.
The introduction of the second race has necessitated moving the Broad Clough and Sandy Heys Bottom CPs.
The Broad Clough CP has been moved back down to the Broad Clough Ford as that is where the races split and the marshal can ensure runners go the correct way.
The "Bottom of Sandy Heys CP will be by Benny's Bridge as the baby will be coming around the side of the hill to briefly meet at that CP before spliting again.
This will make for an ideal first AL for anybody wanting to give this category a go as it is right down near the minimum acquirements for this category.
Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)
This area is a SSSI, which does limit where the race can go. Hence there are a lot of checkpoints, to stop people going "off-piste", which would endanger getting permissions for future events. The CPs are not set in stone but the route will be more of less what is shown below.
This is the route details that have been agreed with the NT and have been submitted to Natural England
Route Detail
This is a fell race to there is little or no route marking. A number of people went badly wrong in 2024 becaue of heavy route marking for a trail race that also went through the area.
The two races split at three different locations. So be careful at these three locations that you do not blindly follow somebody on a different course.
1CP4 Pennine Way Jnc./Top of Jacob's Ladder
2 CP7 Broad Clough
3 CP 10 Bottom of Sandy Heys/Benny's Bridge
Groovy Kinder Love Start Valley Road, Finish Scout Hut
Start to CP 1 (Christine's Gate)
CP 3 South Head has been retired so ignore that CP.
Remember CP 4 Pennine Way Jnc/Top of Jacob's Ladder is the first split.
Jacob's Ladder to Edale Rocks & Broad Clough. The consensus seems to be that the longer way is actually faster.
Broad Clough to Kinder Downfall. CP 7 is the second split. A number of people went wrong here in 2024 so be careful.
Kinder Downfall to William Clough Climb
CP10 (Sandy Heys) has been moved back down to Benny's Bridge as the baby will be coming around the side of Sandy Heys.
William Clough, Mill Hill, Leygatehead Moor
Shooting Cabin, Snake Path
Snake Path to Groovy Kinder Love finish by Scout Hut
Groovy Kinder Love - SSSI Notification
Groovy Baby Love ONLY
Instructions for getting from river Kinder to Sandy Heys
Cross the River Kinder bridge and follow the path to the left. Climb to the wall corner and then follow the fence line towards the reservoir. N.B this is different to the 2023 version. There is now no need to go to Hollin Head.
I have added the option of running a shorter version of the Groovy Kinder Love with a totally uninspired name "Groovy Baby Love". Its details are below. As a BM it is still a challanging route. Both races start together and follow the main race route to the Broad Clough CP and splits at the Broad Clough ford. The "baby" crosses the ford and goes over the stile while the main race turns right to follow the Broad Clough for 30(ish) metres before crossing and going through a gate to climb back up to the three knolls path. The baby continues around to briefly meet the main route again at Benny's bridge/bottom of Sandy Heys CP, where the baby turns left to climb up to the Shooting Cabin CP while the main race climbs up William Clough. Both routes then meet again for the final descent from the Shooting Cabin CP to the finish.
I will just have a single entry for both races (so you just enter the Groovy Kinder Love). You can decide at race number allocation which route you want to run. My race limit of 200 then covers both races so I will not have 400 running.
The Groovy race numbers will start at 1, while the baby will start at 150.
RACE DETAILS - Groovy Kinder Love
Date & time: Sat 6 Sep 2025 at 11:00
Start time info: Valley Road Electrical Substation
Back for the fourth (and my third year) running of the event. Thank you to you for entering the event. We hope you have a good ‘un.
Please read the below info thoroughly...
Start:
Age limit:
Records:
Saturday 16 Sept at 11.00 am
18 Male 2021 02:14:40 Female 2021 02:51:03
Kit Check
There will be 100% Kit Check.
You will have to sign the FRA Consent on the Senior Entry Form (Fabian entry covers this requirment).
Pens and forms will be available on the tables in the Scout Hut. All personal data will be destroyed once
the race is over.
If
anybody is stuck, I have a handful of whistles and compasses that I can
sell at cost price (£1 and £4). I have also printed off 12 race maps
that are in an A4 plastic sleeve. If anybody wants to buy a map on race
day for £1 just let me know, I can easily print off some more based on
demand.
There will be a table inside the Scout Hut where we will take the consent form and give you your number. Safety pins are
in the scout hut.
Race entry details are above the limit is 200 runners.
Entries are currently open.
Registration
·Registration CLOSES at 10.20 am.
·Registration is at Hayfield Scout Hut on Swallow
House Lane
·(GR035873), approximately 10 min walk from the
start.
·Please park with due consideration to residents.
Competitors should try to lift – share and use the main village car park
adjacent to The Sett Valley Trail. Limited parking will be available on hard
surface adjacent to the Scout Hut, please don’t park on the grass. Please don’t
leave your cars there after the race as we need to lock the gates.
·As always cars are parked at owners’ risk and no
liability can be accepted for theft or damage.
·Please allow plenty of time for registration.
Route
See the route descriptions at: Race Details and take note of the three hour-thirty cut-off at the bottom of Sandy Heys (take note this is a change from the previous cut-off at Broad Clough). I would expect the back markers to be no more than 75 minutes to complete the route from here meaning that everybody will be home in Four hours-Forty-Five minutes. I am happy for anybody timed out at Sandy Heys to continue straight up to the Shoot Cabin to rejoin the race route for the final descent, which means they will only miss the William Clough climb.
·Much of Kinder is part of one of the 54 Sites of
Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in the Peak District National Park, which
has considerable effect on events that can be held in these areas. Keeping the
event on Public Rights of Way(PRoW) within an SSSI’s, considerably eases the
process of gaining permission from Natural England (NE). For this reason this event does have limited
route choice with the main “off-piste” section being the difficult section from
Edale Rocks, through The Three Knolls to the ford on Broad Cough and then back up
to Cluther Rocks. The descent here is particularly difficult without any “trods”
though the thick heather and rocks. It may be best to try to follow one of the
stream beds down as shown on the map.
·Jacobs Ladder, is a very busy walkers route so
as a safety measure runners will be directed through the gate to follow the mountain
bike track to the bottom of Jacobs Ladder.
·The Checkpoint at the top of Jacobs Ladder path
is only active for runners descending.
·The Edale Rocks checkpoint is on the South Side beneath
the over-hang
·All field boundaries, on this path must be
crossed using stiles. Please do not climb gates or jump walls (the local
landowners do look out for this). I have agreed that if people are not using
stiles, or damage stiles; this will result in disqualification. Our permission
to continue to run the event depends on the goodwill of local landowners.
·This is a Category AL race. The route does
traverse high mountain terrain and weather conditions at this time of year may
be hostile. Weather is often unpredictable. Competitors should have experience
of this type of event and it is not suitable for novices. The route is a
combination of marked and unmarked paths. Navigational skills are required,
especially in mist, and prior knowledge an advantage - it’s all open to
recceing in advance. The kit list is mandatory and if you don’t have the
correct kit (including map and compass) please don’t try to take part.
·If conditions are difficult on the day and/or
you don’t feel comfortable or confident in being able to be safe – don’t take
part. If it’s called off we will review whether we will carry entries over
to next year. We won’t run a bad weather alternative route.
·Remember to be respectful of other people out on
the hill and to look after one another. There will be other people out on
Kinder so say hello if you can manage it.
Equipment
Competitors MUST carry at least all of the following
equipment regardless of the weather on the day:
a)Waterproof
whole-body cover with taped seams, hat and gloves
b) Compass
and map suitable for navigating the course
c) Whistle
d) Emergency
food
The route will also be on show on the wall of the scout hut
at registration if people want to mark their own maps up.
This is a fell race and the course is not flagged for the
majority of the race. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN NAVIGATION AROUND THE
COURSE. You need to provide your own map (and compass) and be able to navigate
by it on your own even in bad visibility or bad weather.
Monitoring of competitors
At registration, you will be allocated a number which will
be recorded out on the course, so please ensure it is clearly visible on your
chest.
IMPORTANT!!!
If you retire at any point, after collecting your number
and wristband, you must inform the race organizer and hand in your number at
THE FINISH FUNNEL – YOURSELF, IN PERSON. This still applies even if you’ve told
someone out on the hill or a marshal out on the course.
If this is not done the mountain rescue (MRT) may have to
initiate a missing person search. Do not drop out and tell someone else,
thinking they will inform race control or take your number back for you. This
has happened before and MRT were out looking for someone who was in their
friends’ car on the way home!
Checkpoints!
Race numbers must be clearly displayed at the ford at the
bottom of Broad Clough. There is a two hour cut off at Broad Clough. Anybody arriving after that time will be required to head directly back to the finish.
Be respectful to the Marshals and Mountain Rescue Teams who
are volunteering to support
your safety on the hill.
Prizes
In the previous three years I gave prizes for MU23, MSEN 1, MSEN 2, M40 ,M50, M60 & M70 plus the same for the women, so fourteen in total. I was never really happy with this as with the small fields in the race (often there may only be one person in a category) some runners were guaranteed a prize just by turning up while the third place male may get nothing. This was especially true on the women's side with so few women entering with the result that nearly every woman that has run over the previous years has won a prize.
I mentioned this to Pennine Committee members and was told that some races do allocate gender prizes in relation to the proportion of entries for each gender so I may have to think about that.
I have the added complication with two two races and until the races start I will have no idea how many are in each. I think this year I will just give prizes to the first “x” males and females in each race so that the total will be approx fourteen again. What “x” is I don’t know and it will be different for men and women and in each race.
I will still publish the category results as before.
Prize giving will probably be around 1430 in the Scout hut.
Pennine put together a Spunch type event that proved very popular. Speaking to the creator afterwards I learned the most difficult thing was correctly identifying the checkpoint positions. Below shows the difficulty. Say you want to put a checkpoint by the little island in the river south of the "S" of Mermaid's Pool below Kinder Downfall.
This is what you have to work with. If you have something distinctive like a path/wall/river junction, etc it is no problem finding your checkpoint otherwise you have a challenge.
Above are the instructions that we were provided with to enable us to produce a course - The section requiring the use of Google Earth to precisely fix the checkpoints is not easy.
My profession is in software development. Back during the first lockdown I had a go at writing an Android MapRun type of app using Java. I did not get very far on it but I got the basics of establishing my position going. From a OS map it is very easy to get the Eastings and Northings for the desired position, you just need to convert that into Longitude and Latitude. There are rather scary maths involved but it is possible to convert between the two systems. After chatting about the issues highlighted above I did a bit of Googling and it turns out it is actually very easy to get a Longitude and Latitude from a OS map using Bing maps.
Below I am just expanding the instructions in the attached PDF and adding my own alternative for getting accurate CP locations.
This is now the area that will be printed on an A4 sheet.
4) Click on the map at the desired start point to display this menu
The first checkpoint must be the start and then progress though all the CPs until selecting finish as the last one. Ensure that the finish position is selected so that the competitors do not accidently pass through it while waiting to start or while out on the course. Use whatever features are available on the map to correctly position your checkpoint. If that is not possible just position it vaguely in the correct position.
5)Once you have selected all the CPS then progressively start to click down through these map sizes to get the smallest one that will contain all of your CPS. The blue dot can be used to move the map frame around.
6) Click on KML to download the list of checkpoints.
Click on KMZ to download the actual map
If desired click on the PDF map button to download the graphic of the course.
7) Now we need to fix any suspect checkpoints
Checkpoint 7 is intended to be at the wall corner directly south of the "D" of District. But it was pure guess work when positioning it.
Use a text editor to edit the "kml" file that was downloaded. The simple notepad that is in Windows would do; but a much nicer one is Notepad++ which can be downloaded for free from here. Notepad++
The KML file will look something like below.
In my case I want to fix the highlighted number for CP7
It is as simple as go to Bing Maps zoom into the area and switch to OS view
Zoom right in to just before the OS view disappears and right click on your desired CP to view its longitude/latitude at the bottom of the popup.
Now you just need to replace the longitude/latitude values in the KMZ file with those you got from Bing. Be careful you do not loose the zero at the end.
The Bing values are less accurate. However with six decimal places they still go to 1/1,000,000 of a degree, which is still more than accurate enough for a Spunch event. What would be nice is the ability to re-upload the KMZ file to the website so that your CPs will be "fixed" on that as well but it is not possible.
The chart below provides more details on the level of accuracy provided based on the number of decimal places in the coordinates:
Decimal Places
Degrees
Distance
0
1.0
111 km
1
0.1
11.1 km
2
0.01
1.11 km
3
0.001
111 m
4
0.0001
11.1 m
5
0.00001
1.11 m
6
0.000001
111 mm
7
0.0000001
11.1 mm
8
0.00000001
1.11 mm
8) Without a MapRun account it is still possible to upload your course for testing purposes using this site: CheckSites
Fill in the details and Click "Add the Event" to receive back a unique code for that event
On MapRun on your mobile phone click the menu in the top-right corner (on Android - iPhone may be different) and select CheckSites. Input the number from above and you are good to go to test your route.
I created a test route in the hills behind my house with 33 CPs. All of them I "fixed" using the method outlined above and went for a run. It got every one. The only problem was the app stopped a number of times. I went though locations I knew should have "beeped" and it did not. On checking the phone the app had stopped, I clicked resume and went back to the CP and it "beeped". I am guessing a power saver mode was stopping the GPS while using the app in CheckSites mode - need to look into that.
After the activity the CheckSites mode allows you to analyse the accuracy of the CPs. Even down to 2m accuracy it would have still got all of them.
You now require a MapRun account to upload it, which I do not have. The attached PDF has the detailed instructions, and recommended best practices, for this stage of the process.
An Ordnance Survey account can then be used to produce the competitor OS maps and there are many image editors available that will allow you to draw the CP locations such as the two examples below to supply to the competitors.
