A few comments from an ‘anonymous’ ‘new’ member 😊:

1. The vast majority of user names on here are anonymous (derby tup, muddy retriever, the oracle etc) and it’s only really over time that people have become (sometimes) known

2. An anonymous comment is just as valid as a non-anonymous one if what they’re saying makes sense or at least has a point

3. I can’t talk for anyone else but I am a fell runner through and through and run from home in the fells every single (uninjured) day. The trouble is there’s not much left to say about fell running on here, partly because right now no fell races are actually happening, but mainly it seems because most of the remaining hard core posters here don’t actually run in the fells. Stagger posts about golf ffs!

4. Running in the hills and mountains is very much a visual thing to me and fell running is often best viewed that way. It’s more a thing you do and if you can’t do it you at least look at the mountains and other people doing it. This forum to me isn’t visual in any way and being stupidly fiddly to post pictures on doesn’t help

5. The forum also became over the years an increasingly unfriendly place that absolutely put off many of the old regular contributors. Especially females, like onehillwonder and Emmilou (both of whom I’m still in contact with on Facebook and Instagram), but many others too. And if someone really new posts on one of the many fell running threads here, they very rarely even get acknowledged or replied to anyway

6. The remaining hard core now like to look down on Facebook, judging it perhaps just by the fell running group page, but like travs said that has lots of race pictures and results, neither of which you see here, and even when racing isn’t happening it has pictures of people actually running in the fells and people actually posting enthusiastically about their hobby

7. But it’s not just about the Facebook fell running page anyway. There’s shed loads of specialist fell, ultra, trail and running groups on Facebook, as well as dedicated race pages and obviously local club group pages. A huge portion of my fb friends are fell runners and we keep in touch directly that way. I personally don’t post much on Facebook nowadays to be fair but I do know that I can go there and tap into really positive fell running stuff whenever I want to

8. So what’s left to tap into here?

9. Well, to me, choosing to occasionally drive a coach and horses through some of the right wing and, occasionally, ultra right wing views of the bulk of the remaining membership is quite fun 😊