Traceless

"... a fine double-twined homage to loved landscapes and a shared means of moving through them"

Robert Macfarlane

Traceless was published in October 2020 by Little Peak Press.

In November 2019 I started collaborating on a project with fellow fell-runner and writer Geoff Cox. Over the course of a year this became Traceless.

Geoff and I wanted to explore and express our love for fell-running in the Lake District with poetry, prose and art. Traceless takes inspiration from the Lake District, the Gerry Charnley Round and Gerry Charnley himself. Charnley is little remembered, but was a prolific fell runner, orienteer and climber who founded the Karrimor International Mountain Marathon (KIMM), now the OMM. In his early 50s he tragically died on Helvellyn, his namesake Round was established in his memory by his friends. The ethos of the Round is on self-sufficiency and leaving no trace. The runner is encouraged to plan their own route to visit all the checkpoints, then navigate that route, creating their own line from multiple route choices.

The book came together during the pandemic, much of it was written, painted and sketched during the first lockdown in the spring. While this added a poignancy to our work in that we couldn't get out to the fells, there was also a solace to be found in writing about and painting them.

Traceless is illustrated with 20 of my paintings and sketches, a few of which are shown below.

Traceless was launched at Kendal Mountain Literature Festival on 23rd November. An online event, you can see it on catch-up here until the end of December.

You can order a copy using the link below. It's also available on the Little Peak website, from your local bookshop and Amazon.