Here's an event which seems to have definite Fortean overtones:
A race to the stones along the Ridgeway
The new 'Race to the Stones' endurance event along the Ridgeway, Britain’s oldest path, promises some memorable sights. Jolyon Attwooll went along for a preview.
By Jolyon Attwooll
2:01PM BST 07 Jun 2013
'It was the giant porcupine coming out of the shadows that stopped us in our tracks.”
When you weigh up the risks of navigating long-distance trails, pre-dawn hallucination rarely figures in the checklist.
But Nick Tuppen, one of the organisers of the new Race to the Stones along the ancient Ridgeway trail, was adamant.
“All of us saw it at once,” he insisted, jogging alongside me during a press preview run last month. “We’d been going for 21 hours on our recce of the course, and it just seemed to materialise out of the darkness. Definitely not a hedgehog. It was like the kind you see on the African savannah.”
I pondered the empty path ahead. As we leaned into a gentle incline away from the North Wessex village of Ogbourne St George, it was hard to imagine a sharp-quilled creature emerging from the bluebells, but I erred on the side of courtesy and decided to stay quiet.
Even without such a cameo apparition, there will be plenty to see along this 100km (62-mile) course. Nick and his colleagues at Threshold Sports – including the Telegraph writer and Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell – could hardly have chosen a more apt route for Britain’s latest endurance event.
Travellers have traversed the Ridgeway for centuries, even millennia, making use of its dry, high ground above the downs. The remains of Stone Age burial chambers and barrows, built by Britain’s first farmers, can be seen nearby; Iron Age forts survey the landscape, bastions of security until the Romans came, saw and conquered. Vikings and Saxons used the route – often as a vantage point – in between skirmishes in the battle for Wessex. In more peaceful times, Welsh drovers herded their flocks towards the Home Counties for auction.
Next month, the latest mob to maraud along the Ridgeway will limber up in the Chilterns, preparing for an epic journey back the other way. This will be a thoroughly modern troop, pushing 1,000 in number, armed with GPS-enabled Garmins, energy gels and Camelbak hydration packs, ranging from elite ultra-runners to walkers on an extended jaunt. At a varying cadence, they will wend their way from the Chilterns into the North Wessex Downs, past the Neolithic tomb at Wayland’s Smithy, above the mighty Uffington White Horse, and by the Iron Age hill fort at Barbury Castle, into the Salisbury plains.
etc...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activ ... geway.html
More info:
http://www.racetothestones.com/
