At some point north of Manchester, England begins to rise, its landscapes begin to breathe, the hallmarks of humanity become less obvious. Whether you’re traveling by rail on the West Coast Mainline or driving along the M6 motorway, as you enter the county of Cumbria, the road, the rails, the cars and the trains all start to feel like toys. You’re suddenly tiny beneath the verdant folds of the Howgill Fells, like a Lego figure dwarfed by green bedsheets.
Maybe 10 minutes before this, you’d glanced to the northwest to see outlines unlike anything else in the country – mountainous shapes silhouetted by the afternoon sun. These are the fells of the Lake District. Anyone who’s visited the national park will be familiar with the term “fell”, a northern English term for a hill or mountain, derived from the Scandinavian word Fjäll (as in Fjällraven).
This landscape of fells, mountains, lakes and tarns was the cradle of fell running, a cultural phenomenon in the UK that has somehow retained its sense of community and friendly nature through the ages. At its heart, fell running is a simple idea – let’s see who can run up to that summit and back down again the fastest. Its rich history is brimming with fascinating characters, from ‘Iron’ Joss Naylor to modern legends like Jasmin Paris and Finlay Wild.
Here we reveal some of the greatest fell runners of all time and their achievements.
Who are the greatest fell runners of all time?
Joss Naylor: ‘Iron Joss’ is a legendary figure whose exploits earned him the title ‘King of the fells’.
Billy Bland: A colossus whose Bob Graham Round record stood for 36 years.
Kenny Stuart: Talented fell runner whose Skiddaw, Ben Nevis and Snowdon race records still stand to this day.
Nicky Spinks: A legend of the Three Big Rounds, Spinks is fell running royalty.
Jasmin Paris: Before the Barkley Marathons in 2024, even before the Spine in 2019, Paris was already a true fell running great.
Finlay Wild: Scottish destroyer of FKTs (Fastest Known Times), Wild’s ability over rough, rugged terrain is arguably unequalled on UK shores.
What is fell running?
Fell running’s roots can be traced back to the farmers and shepherds of northern English regions like the Lake District. These hardy individuals began competing against each other, running on the hills, or fells, where they worked. Over time, this cultural phenomenon has spread and you can find fell races right across Britain’s uplands.
A few things mark fell races and fell running apart from the similar but distinct world of trail running and trail races. As its name suggests, trail running follows trails, whereas fell runners simply find the fastest way up or down the hills, regardless of whether there's a path or not. A fell race doesn’t follow a pre-determined course, instead competitors are required to simply reach checkpoints in the fastest way possible. This all makes fell running a rougher endeavor and one that requires solid navigation skills and mountain nous to truly excel in.
Finally, there’s the lack of commercialization. Major fell running events and challenges aren’t sponsored, the audiences are mostly local people and media coverage is sparse. Nevertheless, some fell runners have taken advantage of sponsorship or written books to make at least some money from the pursuit, while some dabble in trail running or other sports too.
The Three Big Rounds
It seems sensible, before diving into the legends of fell running, to provide a bit of background on its most notable challenges, namely the UK’s Three Big Rounds, as they’ll come up quite a bit.
The Rounds are broadly comparable in terms of challenge, each entailing somewhere in the region of 60 miles of mountainous terrain to cover and in excess of 8,000 meters of elevation gain. Imagine sizing up a hugely challenging ultra marathon distance and then being told that you’ll also be doing around about as much uphill as it would take to climb Everest from sea level and you’re somewhere in the right headspace. One more thing – you’ve got to complete it in 24 hours for your attempt to be deemed worthy. Got it?
The original round was the Bob Graham, a loop taking in 42 of the English Lake District’s principal fells that was first completed in 1932 by – you guessed it – Bob Graham. The Welsh equivalent is the Paddy Buckley Round, a 61-mile rollercoaster in beautiful Eryri/Snowdonia. Finally, taking on a grand loop of some of Scotland’s highest mountains is the Charlie Ramsay Round.
Joss Naylor
When Joss Naylor passed away on June 28 2024, Britain lost one of its most charismatic sporting heroes and Cumbria lost one of its greatest sons. Nicknamed ‘Iron’ Joss, the gruelling nature of the challenges Naylor took on during a purple patch in the 1970s and 1980s earned him legendary status.
Beyond his many victories at Cumbria fell races, he also had an affinity for the bigger runs, becoming only the sixth person to complete the 42-peak Bob Graham Round within a day, back in 1971. Not content with 42 peaks, Naylor was curious to see how many he could achieve in a single 24-hour run. In 1975, he managed 72 Lakeland peaks, an outing that took in a whopping 11,582 meters of elevation gain. For context, that’s just a little less than doing Denali from sea level, twice. It was a feat that he considered to be his greatest achievement.
In 1986, at the age of 50, he set out to achieve the unthinkable: all 214 Wainwright fells in a single push. He managed the feat, one that takes some hikers an entire lifetime, in 7 days, 1 hour and 25 minutes. The record stood until 2014; it currently stands at 5 days, 12 hours and 14 minutes, set by American John Kelly in May 2022. Naylor continued to push himself even in his later years, famously running to 60 fell summits when he turned 60 and then 70 when he turned 70. Remarkable.
His legacy lives on in the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge, a 48-mile route across the Lake District that’s open to over 50s only.
Billy Bland
One of the greats, Billy Bland’s name will forever be associated with the Bob Graham Round, as well as some of fell running’s most prestigious races. He was born in 1947, in Borrowdale, one of the Lake District’s most beautiful valleys. He took up fell racing in the 1970s and by the 1980s he was dominating Lakeland’s race calendar.
Two of the most revered (also rhymes, fittingly, with feared) fell races are the Wasdale Fell Race, considered one of the toughest in Britain, and the Borrowdale Fell Race. Bland won the Wasdale Race nine times in a row between 1980 and 1988, and the Borrowdale Race ten times between 1976 and 1988. This is impressive in itself, yet the fact that he still, to this day, holds the records for both races is testament to his incredible speed. At Wasdale, no one in history has come within five minutes of Bland’s 3 hours 25 minutes and 21 seconds, set in 1982. Consider the supposed advances in running gear and sports science in the intervening years and it becomes clear just how fast Bland was.
Three weeks prior to his Wasdale record, Bland set the benchmark for the Bob Graham Round, running it in 13 hours and 53 minutes, just under 4 hours quicker than the previous record. It would take 36 years for his record to be broken, when a certain Kilian Jornet rocked up in the Lake District to give the Round a go, taking an hour off Bland’s time. The record was bettered again by American Jack Kuenzle in 2022.
Kenny Stuart
Born in Penrith in 1957, Kenny Stuart lived in the shadow of one of Britain’s great mountains, Blencathra, the flanks of which provide ideal hill training. As well as a love of the trails and the fells, Stuart was also a keen road runner. It was time spent hitting the tarmac that some believe enabled him to maintain the impressive leg speed he was renowned for.
Indeed, it was his blistering pace in classic up-and-down fell races that Stuart would have to thank for his greatest achievments. In a hugely fruitful spell during 1984 and 1985, he set incredible records on the Ben Nevis Race (1:25:34), the Snowdon Race (1:02:39) and the Skiddaw Fell Race (1:02:18) – three of the most prestigious fell races around. Here’s the thing, in a similar fashion to Billy Bland's Wasdale and Borrowdale records, these records still stand, 40 years on. It's testament to what a talent Stuart was in his prime.
Nicky Spinks
Few people, if any, know the UK’s Big Rounds as well as Nicky Spinks. After completing the Ramsay Round in 19 hours and 39 minutes in 2014, she simultaneously held the women’s records for all three, a feat that would be repeated, and therefore bettered, in 2016 by Jasmin Paris. However, seemingly not content with this remarkable achievement, Spinks went on to complete double rounds of all three, the only person in history to do so.
Away from the Big Rounds, Spinks has had two cracks at the Barkley Marathons in 2019 and 2023. In 2023, she was given the notorious number one bib, given to the athlete that race director Lazarus Lake believes is least likely to finish a single lap. She proved him wrong, completing the first loop of the brutal course, though she missed the cut off for the second, just as she had in 2019.
Spinks is also a legend of the Fellsman Race, a 60-mile race through the Yorkshire Dales National Park with around 3,400 meters of elevation gain. She won the race on four consecutive occasions between 2010 and 2013.
Jasmin Paris
We’ve written a whole feature about the remarkable Jasmin Paris, the British endurance runner most famous for becoming the first woman to complete the full five laps of the Barkley Marathons within the 60-hour time limit. However, the Green Runners founding member was running royalty long before she ran her name into history at one of the world’s most legendary trail races. In fact, throughout her career she’s made something of a habit of running her name into the record books.
During the 2010s, she won various iconic fell races, winning the British Fell Running Championships in 2015 and 2018. Also in 2015, she took on the gruelling Dragon’s Back Race across the length of Wales’ hilly spine, winning the women’s race. Then, in 2016, she took on all three of the Big Rounds, with the Bob Graham in April, the Charlie Ramsay in June and the Paddy Buckley in October. She not only set women’s records for each, she took the overall record for the Ramsay – though this has since been broken by first Es Tresidder and then by Finlay Wild (more on him in a moment).
It was her dominant win on the 268-mile Winter Spine Race in 2019 that propelled her name to wider renown beyond the world of fell running. She destroyed the former record, male or female, by around 12 hours, all while stopping to express milk for her daughter Rowan.
In 2021, she set the women’s record for the number of Munros – prominent Scottish peaks above 3,000 feet – ran in a single day, chalking up 29 summits. Then, she turned her attention to the Barkley Marathons and the rest, as they say, is history...
Finlay Wild
Perhaps no one in Britain currently holds more significant FKTs than Finlay Wild. The Scottish mountain runner is based in Fort William, the town beneath Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest mountain. With the Munro peaks of the Mamores, the Grey Corries and Ben Nevis as his training ground, Wild moves across rugged, scrambling terrain with a speed and grace that very few in the world can match.
Ready? Go: he currently holds the record for two of the UK’s three Big Rounds: the Charlie Ramsey Round and the Paddy Buckley Round. He also holds FKTs for the Lochaber Traverse (the point to point traverse of the Grey Corries and Ben Nevis ranges), Tranters Round (an extended loop of the Grey Corries, Ben Nevis and Mamores ranges) the Cuillin Traverse (the point to point traverse of the fearsome Black Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye) and the Welsh 3000s (the challenge of summiting all of Wales’ 3,000-foot peaks) – just to name a few.
For context on just how quick Finaly Wild is, visit the Ramsey Round’s list of sub-24 hour completions list. Scroll through back through the times, where you’ll see hundreds of 23s, the occasional 22 and, very rarely, times of under 20 hours. Then you hit Wild’s 14 hours 42 minutes from 2020. It’s so jarring, you assume it must be a typo. It isn’t. Wild smashed Es Tresidder’s previous record of 16 hours and 13 minutes by an hour and a half. Stunning. Oh, and he won the Ben Nevis fell race no less than twelve times in a row between 2010 and 2023. In 2024, he won the Trofeo Kima race, the Italian stop on the Merrell Skyrunner World Series, setting a course record of 6 hours, 5 minutes and 4 seconds. Rapid isn't a strong enough word.
Wild hosts Go Mountain Goats, a podcast about all things mountain running in the UK.
