Itera-Lite SW England '26: A Scoundrel's view (extended cut)
(Images variously: Richard Taylor/Taylored Outdoors, Robert Campbell, Helen Farquhar, and the team)
When the Itera-Lite for 2026 was announced as the South West of England I was a bit intrigued. While everyone knows of Exmoor and Dartmoor, the rest of the area seemed a bit odd for AR - not much wilderness and a lot of country lanes. I was even more intrigued when I got a message in November from Izzy, who I've never raced with before, asking if I'd fancy teaming with her for it. We had a brief chat on aims, intentions, training needs and other bits and I was in, feeling like we'd get on well and have fairly similar mindsets towards it. The main aims discussed were to have as much fun as possible, do longer stages where it appealed and shorter where we wanted or needed to, and to finish still as friends and still talking to each other. Oh, and hopefully to get chips somewhere on course.
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We met up for a walk and talk in Keswick just before New Year and probably sized each other up again - I still felt good about the pairing, and our entry went in not long after to lock things in - we were officially the Scafell Scoundrels. We never did manage to get any training in together, despite a good eight months of run-up, but Izzy was working hard towards her ace ride at the Frontier 300 in May and I was just trying to deal with a bunch of hip and foot niggles, get out on my bike a bit more, and not totally fall apart in amongst it. I admitted at some point that I got to the event "not as fit as I'd like to be, but probably fitter than I think I am", and that bore itself out over the course of the weekend. Izzy had said in her write-up of Frontier about doing "a big challenge every year, to check that I'm still made of grit" and while she already had hers in the bag for this year, Itera-lite was likely to be mine. I've had my fair share of ups and downs on expedition races, both physically and mentally, so personally I would be happy to get through it with all of me intact and the right way up, having made good decisions and not pissed anyone off too much.
The journey down to Devon was uneventful for me, with steady drive down and a poignant Thursday night at a hotel at Taunton that I've stayed in twice before, once for a good friend's wedding and, sadly, a second time for his funeral. I'd packed my kit fairly well, with only food left to go in, and gave myself the night to take the race-prep head off and just be in the moment a little before a last sort-out and a couple of hours to Slapton the following morning. Izzy's drive down on the Friday was worse, an already long haul from Cumbria made significantly worse by a 2hr tailback on the M5 near Bridgwater. Fortunately she's hugely efficient with her packing, and on arrival we could sling her kit straight into the transition bags, get the bags and boxes weighed in quickly and get straight to the briefing.
The course reveal was interesting, a bus up to Minehead in Somerset for the start, a group pic at the front gate of Butlins, then off along the coast before turning south to effectively race Devon coast-to-coast. Some big stages, a lot of ups and downs, a 'Queen Stage' trek across Dartmoor, and a finish back at the Field Studies Centre at Slapton Ley - coincidentally, the furthest South I've ever been on the UK mainland, I'd have to be careful I didn't get nosebleeds. We plotted our maps, discussed route options, set a plan for the race, and headed off to the dorms - which were far too hot to get a decent night's sleep in. A snooze on the bus North to the start would have to patch the gaps, and in seemingly no time at all we were standing ready at the start line, off for a little adventure...
Stage 1 - Coastal kayak, Minehead to Lynmouth (29km)
After a short Le Mans-style running start, we were in our boats and headed west along the Devon coastline, trying to avoid eddy currents in the bays and stay a little wider out to see to maximise the benefit of the westward outgoing tide. One CP at the slipway in Porlock harbour was very pretty but caused a little traffic jam as teams queued for the SI box. We continued west to the getout, paddling steadily as a few teams got better tidal lines and accelerated away, but my first error came at the end of the stage: not taking into account that Izzy isn't quite as fond of portaging heavy boats over horrible terrain as I probably am - we didn't paddle/wade far enough up the East Lyn to make it to the minor slipway (which you couldn't quite see from the mouth of the river) and ended up carrying and hauling the boat over the very chunky boulder-strewn foreshore, with a few stops and a lot of choice cursing - sorry Izzy!
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We opted to only do the four mandatory CPs for this one, with the temperature in the high 20s we wanted to move steadily but minimise our distance and particularly our climb. The path up through the woodland was nice and steady, then a slightly overgrown and spiky trod took us up onto Hollerday Hill, along the tops and back along the rocky ridge, before dropping down to transition. Good navigation, no major fuss, and another stage ticked off.
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Stage 3 - Bike, Lynton to Belstone via Braunton Burrows (55km bike, 5km orienteer, 75km bike)
'The long bike' as we'd both flagged it, this was a game of three halves really. The first bike section was a mix of coastal singletrack, forest road and quiet lanes, where we started understanding just how lumpy Devon is. Some really long climbs, just steeper than you want this early in a race, and it became clear to me that Izzy is a good chunk stronger than me on a bike as she starts riding away from me uphill and I have to put the work in to stay on her wheel - no complaints as it kept us moving well (and I mean it, she took a Strava QOM along here...). We have a little dither at a CP in Combe Martin, before a quick stop to bag the CP at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe and have a bite to eat at the 'Stoned' pizza van parked up at the theatre. Refuelling on ham, pineapple and mozzarella (while guarding the box from the local seagulls), we sat for a few minutes and saw a couple of other teams through, before getting back on the bikes to head over towards Croyde and round to Braunton Burrows for an orienteering section.
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Braunton is massively complex with a lot of small paths through complicated dune formations, and the format of the section with dual OS and Orienteering maps is not going to make this one easy, but fortunately for us it's the usual 'pick as many or as few as you want'. Some teams skipped this entirely, but we fancy an hour or so off the bike and I'm very happy on an orienteering map, so I pick two of the navigationally simpler CPs, both on ponds, and we head out to take a steady trot around them. We nail the nav to both despite the challenge of the dual maps, and are also happy to see a young badger trot across our path in the twilight, prompting a vague question (for those of a certain vintage) as to whether it likes mashed potato...
In about an hour we're happily back to transition and back on the bikes, properly in the dark now, and Izzy's on the front setting a cracking pace again. The next section is mainly the Tarka Trail, old railway line top to Barnstaple, round the Taw estuary and up the river Torridge - easy going, easy to keep a good pace, but a little monotonous. We ride with or pass a lot of other teams who were stopping to sleep along here - some on verges, some under a gazebo behind an old station and café, some sat upright on benches, becoming almost indistinguishable from the slightly creepy sculptures sat upright on some of the other benches. We push on, through one long draggy climb that seems to go on for several days, then start a gradual descent towards some old quarry workings. Another minor error for me, we pass through some sections of really cold valley air and I start getting cold so pull on my waterproof to stave off the windchill, within a few minutes I've gone from 'cold but awake' to 'warm and really sleepy'. I try drinking, eating sweets, even pinching myself and slapping myself in the face, but eventually just have to take off the waterproof and put up with a bit of chill in favour of staying upright and feeling less cross-eyed. Not long after we emerge onto the road by a farm and find some honesty boxes, one of which is selling fudge - thanks Rosie, whoever you are - so stick some cash in and grab a little bag of sugary vanilla goodness that perks us both up a bit.
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Onwards into Hatherleigh, with a minor nav snafu and some time wasted searching in the dark for a monument - we'd have been more efficient here if the feature for the CP had actually been in the circle on the map, not outside it, 200+ metres down the road. We search, alongside Sarah & Gavin, for a while before abandoning it, riding in the intended direction and then spotting a memorial of sorts (also outside the circle on the map) and saying that'll do. We take our pic, then ride away, past the actual intended monument which is set back from the road, far bigger, even further outside the circle (can you tell I'm still a bit sore about this one?), and pretty much invisible to us in the gloom and mist. We get credited anyway, as does everyone else I think, which makes it a little better but we've wasted a good 20mins. Anyway - we continue on round Okehampton and up to Belstone with more hilly lumps to be circumnavigated, some of which seem frankly unnecessary after 120km+ on a bike. We roll into transition eventually and pull kit out for an hour's sleep - me just curled up in a bivvy bag on the grass, Izzy in her spare layers and waterproofs with a mat - before we get up and get our stuff together for 'the long trek'.
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This is the crux section for both of us, having both had foot issues on previous races, and while the morning is cooler, more overcast and a bit breezy, it's still going to be a warm day and pretty much a full day on the moors. It's clear from some rule variations that the race organisation expect it to be the crux for the event itself - normally a Short Course team can't leave a transition before the lead Full Course team, but that's been relaxed for the first three TAs of the course to get teams to the start of the Trek in good time. We opt to go mandatory minimum again, skipping the optionals in favour of steady movement forward and then taking a longer but safer pathed route towards Princetown in the last third of the trek. We make really good progress across Oke Tor and Hangingstone Hill before hitting a great pathed line down towards Postbridge. We have a quick snooze on the hillside near a stile, both getting a bit weary, and the sun comes blazing out from behind the clouds as we lie down and as Jill & Zoe sneak past us whispering "I think that's Pyro & Izzy..." - subtle, guys. Vaguely refreshed after 20mins of shuteye we get up and head down to Postbridge and stop in at the Stores there, along with a bunch of other teams, where pasties, ginger beer and a top up of water help with the fatigue. I get a wave of tiredness as I sit down at the picnic table, but food and fizzy sugar brings me back to some semblance of life. We ramble onwards, down to Dunnabridge in the brief company of Dave & Gavin, then along some riverside paths that are supposedly bridleway, faintly laughing at the folks ahead who are pushing, carrying and manhandling bikes along a hilariously rock and unrideable trail, and who look utterly blankly at me when I make a crack about "needing to be called MacAskill or Akrigg to ride along here" - turns out they're foreign and have no idea what I'm talking about. Honestly, me neither sometimes.
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Stage 5 - Bike, Princetown to Totnes via Pridhamsleigh Cavern (30km bike, caving, 15km bike)
We head back out the way we came, with a bit more sense of urgency for this bike section. There are two particular time checks we want to make, and especially the latter means putting some work in and not losing too much time: firstly, we want to get the Special Stage at Pridhamsleigh Cavern which only runs until 11pm, a short caving section which sounds like really good fun and a nice way to break up another long-ish bike leg; secondly we want to be at the next TA at Totnes before the midnight high tide, so we can get the benefit of outgoing flow and make the paddle leg a bit quicker - not that we're pushing for time or places, but there's no sense wasting energy if there's a handy natural pull to help you along! We have a good first part of the ride, with more lumpy lanes along the way, seeing Steve Ashworth at one point and making it briefly into the Day 2 highlights video riding uphill in the late afternoon light. We steer a good route along to Buckfastleigh and to Buckfast Abbey, though fortunately there's no glass of 'Buckie' as a challenge here, just a nice pic outside the Abbey, and we're soon spinning over Dart Bridge and up to Pridhamsleigh in great time. We're at the bike drop at the same time as one of the Nav4 teams - Paul, Eddie, Jen and Matt - and get kitted up and walk up to the cave with them, hopping in front as the guides explain the stage and give us our cave maps.
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Izzy again starts setting a good pace in the muddy, slippery darkness, lead by the intermittent glowsticks around the loop, and we work our way through the crawls, squeezes and tight corners that make me glad I still do yoga every week. The battery on the helmet light I have dies at one point, but we've been told to take our own headtorches in as a backup, so I pull my BD Icon on and am glad that even on low beam it's brighter than the one I had been using - feels like cheating a little bit! Photographer Richard is stood in one cavern and snaps some pics of us coming through a tight spot, and we're soon back up to the surface, giggling a little bit at the muddy fun we've just had. We have to wait a while at the bike drop - the "no Short Course teams before a Full Course team" rule is back in place, and we're ahead of Endurancelife who, it turns out, are the only team left on the Full Course - the two Questars teams who complete the podium have both dropped CPs - so we wait 15-20mins, chatting to the other teams and to Helen & John who are marshalling the transition and planning our last bit of route. I nibble on a pack of boiled new potatoes, a great diversion from the sweet stuff that's been a big part of the snacks so far - although the heat has meant that eating has been sporadic and far less of a mandatory feature than drinking has been.
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We set off in a mini mass-start as Endurancelife leave, uphill with a bunch of other teams, and somehow I end up in front of my powerhouse teammate, who arrives at a junction telling me she "feels like someone's unplugged her": not a great sign. We've got less than 15km to the paddle transition and time's on our side, so I take the lead for a while and we move steadily together, walking and pushing the bikes when we need to, to keep the momentum moving us forward towards Totnes. The route I've got plotted is pretty straightforward, but there's lots of country lane junctions and small byways to keep an eye on to make sure we stay right, and an awkward and tiring off-road climb and descent into town to push, pull and generally curse our way over, but it puts us into town on the correct side of the river for the transition, and as we roll towards the Rowing Club it's just approaching 11pm, so we're right on the money for the tides - the effort has paid off very nicely.
Stage 6 - Kayak, Totnes to Dartmouth (18km)
We get ourselves sorted fairly well, get a hot drink in and a bit of food, get our bikes packed away, plus the usual bits of extraneous stuff we're not going to need on the river - we'll see the bike boxes at the end anyway. Again, tiredness means we're probably not the most efficient through here but we're in good time and no major rush - there's a bit of dithering over exactly what clothes to wear, the night is cooler but still comparatively mild, but there's always a chance of cold patches on the water; I stick with bike shorts, a single thermal top, and my light drysuit and end up warm and sleepy again, which doesn't necessarily help when I'm the navigator!
The stage itself is a bit surreal and confusing. While theoretically simple - follow the river downstream - we're wary of the ebbing tide and the possibility of sand and mud banks along the route, plus in total darkness (there are very few houses or other man-made light sources along the upper reaches) you're reliant on your head torch, which a) doesn't necessarily reach both banks and b) reflects off your hands and paddle blades back into your eyes with every stroke. We stick, broadly, to the river left back, rough reasoning being that the two longest tributaries - Bow Creek and Old Mill Creek - both come off to the right, and if you couldn't read the shoreline properly it was at least better to minimise the number of side quests. We paddled steadily on, with some confusion in places, especially in the few places where lights on the banks and their reflections on the water make for very muddled visual feedback. In a lot of places, only the steady river flow and the occasional marker buoy point out that we are in the right channel, so we keep paddling and hoping!
One shallow nearly caught us out, the only alerts being small fish jumping as we disturbed them and the paddles scraping the mud underneath, and we skirted close to some mudbanks a couple of times as we both tried to focus against the dark and the tiredness. We went very slightly off route into a small creek (Galmpton Creek), disoriented by the marina lights there, going round another bay while trying to find the river again. Rather than panic and maybe makes things worse, we take a couple of minutes pause to read the current, check the compass direction, spot some boats at anchor and re-align ourselves from there - that time pays off as well as we find the flow again and are back on it. The last surreal moment came just above the end of the stage, when race-addled brains couldn't interpret a wall of coloured lights at some indistinguishable distance, including two bright reds seemingly high above the rest. We paddled closer, wary in case of a hazard, and eventually managed to make it out as a marina full of posh boats with a crane above, a great locating feature that told us we were only about a mile from the get-out. We were soon paddling in to what we were pretty sure was to be our final transition of the race, yomping the boat up the rough, seaweed-covered slipway (at least it was an actual slipway this time...) and carrying the kit into TA a good 45mins-1hr ahead of our predicted schedule. The marina facilities were warm and had a couple of sofas in the foyer by the bathrooms which were really tempting to have a snooze on, but we took ourselves back out into the car park transition, got our kit broadly sorted out, put a quick brew on, glad we'd thrown a stove and brew kit into the transition bag, and then bedded down in our bivvy bags for a few hours sleep on the grass nearby.
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After about 3hrs kip, we got up and got our kit together for the final ride home. There were three possible options from the TA: the full course would ride another 30km from here and then trek 20-ish back to Slapton Ley; the intermediate would ride to the last TA but return to Slapton via another 15km of bike; or our choice was to take Shortcut A straight to the finish at about 15km - a possibility we'd talked about right from the map handout. It's a choice we were glad of and happy to commit to, two days of pushing reasonable well in high heat was taking its toll on us both, and with having worked to get through to the paddle early, we were happily up in amongst the pack and able to take our time with the last ride through to the end. We got across the Dartmouth ferry with another team and some minor confusion as to whether we'd got on the right one, then rolled through town straight onto another 'oh for f's sake' climb out of the valley. Devon has a lot of lumps, and they're mainly right where you don't want them. We hop off and push, riding where we can and walking where it hurts, until we summit at a crossroads and start dropping down the other side of the lump. Soon after, there are nearly lumps of a different kind as an up-coming driver in a 4x4 unexpectedly meets two tired adventure racers descending at pace down a very narrow lane. Some skiddy moments (in the sense of the wheels not the pants) and we're safe, though the driver has a slightly shocked expression on her face and we're a bit wide-eyed too, and we proceed slightly more sedately down into the valley, up again on the main road to Strete, and the start our roll down onto Slapton Sands, chatting over the race, have we achieved our aims, are we still friends, have we definitely done what we wanted to do? The answer are all 'yes', except for getting chips, and the pizza and pasties have made up for that. In a final act of moderate indignity, we end up walking up the hill towards the Field Studies Centre. We ride the final stretch into the finish line after a minor misalignment into the wrong car park, roll across the line, and are done!
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It's a happy just-before-9am finish. We're first across the line, Dave & Gavin not far behind us had stopped for a sleep on the beach before the last push, Paul hands us medals and beers and tells us there'll be pasties ready in the next few mins as a finishers treat. We do the necessary handing back of trackers and SI dibbers and sit down at a shady picnic table by where we sat plotting our maps a couple of days ago. Izzy cracks her 6.5% finishers beer open, a can of Edge of the World, and I do the same - one of these and a pasty for breakfast and I'll be both very happy and also asleep until lunch time...
And that's it. Huge thanks to Paul as RD, Nick as Course Planner, all of the race staff and volunteers, all of the teams and good friends that made up the actual racing side of the event. And the hugest thanks of all to my amazing teammate Izzy: powerhouse all the way along the course, great company throughout, tolerant of my terrible humour and faff, very much made of grit, and very much still a friend.
For me personally, I'm really proud of how our race went, that I was right that I'm "fitter than I think I am", that my body and head held up well for the weekend, and that we made good decisions when we needed to. That will very much do.
(And thanks to anyone that actually read this far. You deserve a medal as well...)
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