Every year1 since 1973 a 100 mile event has been held under the auspices of the Long Distance Walkers’ Association. In 2010 the ‘honour’ of organising the 2014 hundred was awarded to the South Wales local groupof the LDWA. A team under the enthusiastic leadership of David Morgan was immediately formed to organise the event and, following 4 years of hard work, ‘The Valleys 100’ was successfuly held; the full story can be read in the comprehensive event report. While the event was highly successful it turned out to be one of the toughest LDWA hundreds ever held2. To preserve the history of this event we have replicated the Valleys 100 web-site. Visiting that web-site will provide full details of the event covering the route (map displays, description, gpx files), photographs along the route and all the information provided for entrants, checkpoints, marshals and supporters.
Read all about the Valleys 100 on the event web-site and follow the links below for videos, photographs and a selection of participants’ reports.
Videos: Preliminaries, Main Event by John Pennifold.
Photographs by: Steve Clark, John Pennifold, Al Rodger (see mud slide below3), Andrew Clabon, Nick Ham.
Various reports: Ludlow Runners, Nick Ham (scroll about 2/3rds of the way down), Cleveland LDWA, Reading Road Runners (page 8), Devon and Cornwall LDWA
[1] Except for 2001 when the hundred was cancelled due to the foot and mouth epidemic.
[2] The toughness of the Valleys 100 was due to the extremely wet weather (e.g. see BBC News) over a four day period from two days before the event through to Sunday night. This was so severe and conditions underfoot so bad that the drop-out rate of entrants was very high at nearly 50%, the worst since 1989.
[3] The wet conditions caused a mud slide across a lane before the climb to the Folly Tower. The first finisher had to clamber over it, luckily a local farmer cleared the lane shortly after. The photographs show the depth of the mud. This was, unfortunately, omitted from the report.