Quote Originally Posted by Travs View Post
That is very interesting...

Given the usual perception of the fell running community to shun away from publicity, etc, i'd have expected the inter-counties was to provide a genuine tough fell test and see who is the best county, regardless of whether Kent/London/etc can get round it or not.

Given that an inter-counties field is usually of a very high level (in athletic competence, if not always mountain-craft), it's a wonder why they don't pick the hardest courses.

Ok, Wasdale/Ennerdale/Peris probably aren't going to be picked, you'd expect a medium distance course to appeal to most types of fellrunners... but i see no reason why it couldn't be something like Buttermere Sailbeck or Coniston (in fact didn't the Sailbeck race grow out of the old Northern Counties Champs race?)
But Travs all that would do is give runners from Yorkshire and other typical UK "fell counties" the opportunity to show how much better they are than runners from Devon, Hampshire - which are counties as well - in fell races.

Yes the first one (1997) was Buttermere Sailbeck, it was held in poor weather and, as I say in Spring 2016 Fellrunner page 38, this was a surprisingly tough choice for a pilot event and one I don't think has been repeated.

The events were set up for the UK Counties Athletics Union and that title suggests the sort of event the customer (which was not the FRA) wanted.