A guard of honour
Sending off a great man who most of you will never have heard of
On Thursday I drove to the Lake District. I went to a unfashionable part, a farm and campsite at the end of Borrowdale, the wettest valley in England. I was meeting my clubmates Hilary, Sheelagh, Ann and Caroline and we were there for a special event.
At least, I was accidentally there for a special event. I had had some bad heartbreak news that had sent me back into the depths, and I needed to get away. Hilary messaged and said, join us in the Lakes, so I did.
Joss Naylor was known as King of the Fells. He was an amazing fell runner, a Cumbrian sheep farmer, and an encourager of any one who ran or walked on the fells. There is a Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge, which I plan to do one day even though
The Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge route leaves Pooley Bridge to traverse 30 summits over a distance of 48 miles and climbs 16,000 feet (77km, 4877m).
But the Joss Naylor challenge is for oldies veterans and when I turn 55 this year I’ll be given 16 hours to do it. Though that’s still tight so perhaps I’ll wait until I’m 60 or 65 because:
Most fell runners will have known of Joss Naylor. He was one of the greats. A man who ran the fells in short shorts and because he loved it and he was exceptionally good at it. He broke the Lake District 24 hour record three times. Some things he got up to:
1971: The National Three Peaks Challenge (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon): 11 hours 54 minutes including driving time.
1973: He ran the the Welsh 3000s (the 14 peaks of Snowdonia) in 4 hours 46 minutes and his record stood until 1988.
1986: at 50, he completed the Wainwrights in 7 days, 1 hour and 25 minutes and his record stood until 2014.
1997: at 60, he ran 60 Lakeland fell tops in 36 hours
2006: at 70, he ran 70 Lakeland fell tops, covering more than 50 miles and ascending more than 25,000 feet, in under 21 hours.
He was quite good at running.
But he was also good at fundraising.
Mr Naylor was a patron for the Brathay Trust, which said he used his long-distance races to raise about £40,000 for the youth charity between 2007 and 2019.
"He's known for his incredible running achievements, but he used his running to support local charities, including disadvantaged children and young people," fundraising manager, Scott Umpleby, said.
The charity said Mr Naylor "didn't hesitate" to say yes to becoming a patron in 2007.
He ran 30 miles aged 80, still fundraising. He was awarded an MBE, but he still had no airs about him. He would still wait on the bridge near his house in Wasdale that marked the end of the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge for the latest contender to finish, and always greet her or him with a handshake. He had no truck with people who chose to run records only in optimal weather conditions or who used spreadsheets. He was a terrible navigator and never got to grips with a map and compass. But by ‘eck he was quite good at running.
Here are some fell running tips from the King.
In 2021, Joss Naylor had a stroke, and this June, he died at the age of 88. A call went out from the Fell Runners’ Association and his family to anyone who loves or loved to run on hills, mountains and moors: come and celebrate him.
Instructions were posted online: five departure points were suggested, and a meeting time of 12.30pm. Come and sing, we were asked, and wear club colours.
So we came. Even if we’d never met the man, we came. On Friday maybe a thousand of us came over the high passes to celebrate the life of Joss Naylor. We ran, we walked, we came however we could from Seathwaite in Borrowdale, Eskdale, Honister, Langdale and Ennerdale. We streamed over the fells in vests from North Leeds, Keswick, Ambleside, Newburgh, Carnethy; in club colours from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
We descended to Wasdale each at our own pace, club mingling with club, and there we waited for the hearse.
When the hearse came, a cornet player from Ambleside played a verse of Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Then we walked the coffin to the tiny St. Olaf’s church, led by a fell running vicar, his dog collar visible underneath his yellow Keswick club vest. The club flags were held at the head of the procession, and they swayed to a backdrop of the high fells. We all sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot as Joss had requested (he also wanted his coffin to be carried over the four passes but that was a bit much), the words changed to “when I looked over Wasdale, what did I see?”
At Friday lunchtime you would have seen the absolute best of our niche sport of fell running, celebrating a man for his achievements, but also his relentless encouragement of anyone who loved the fells, his gigantic fund raising, his generosity. As the coffin arrived, bearing flowers and a can of Guinness (of course) the flags were dipped in respect, and I thought of this:
Go to 3.52 to see what I mean, or watch the whole thing and marvel at how many people wore hats; how noble and proud yet pissed off the lone black man looks when the camera lingers on him; and how very beautiful “I vow to thee my country” is.
At the funeral service, Joss’s friend Ken Ledward, 91, gave a eulogy. They had been friends for more than 60 years so he had a lot to say and it went on for as long as a fell race, but the endurance effort was worth it. Only family were in the church; the fell runners stood, or eventually sat, in a field outside and listened to the funeral through loudspeakers, and watched the mourners, one of whom paired a funeral suit with walking gaiters. The dogs got a bit bored.
On 28th June, Ken said, a runner was doing the Joss Naylor challenge. Joss was bed-bound by then and in a care home. But he wanted to be updated by phone. At 17.58 Joss was told that the runner had successfully completed the challenge. At 18.00, Joss died.
What a day. It was moving, glorious and full of affection. The BBC called us all “a guard of honour,” and it honestly felt like an honour to be there. As Joss’s daughter Sue walked past on the way out, she turned to the field of quiet fell runners and said, “You’ve done him proud.”
All in all, I’d quite like a funeral like it when I die, please.
Sithee, Joss Naylor, fabulous fell runner and honourable man. Safe travels.
Reading corner
Spain is using an algorithm to assess whether women who have been subjected to domestic violence are at any more risk. ¡Qué sorpresa!, it’s not working
Robert Altman, author of Bowling Alone, on why we are getting lonelier.
That’s it, as the Times has deleted all my saved stories.
Animal hero of the week : smelling dogs
We already know that dogs are amazing and that we do not deserve their unending love and affection and abilities. But we also know that we don’t know everything about them. We know they can smell cancer and medical conditions. I know my cat can smell unhappiness and stress, because she is more affectionate when my heart is in my boots, and another cat we had became a different cat when my stepfather got dementia. Before, she wouldn’t go near him; when he got ill, she never left him. Now though, scientists at Dalhousie University think that dogs may also be able to sniff a post-traumatic flashback.
Whut? Wouldn’t that make them wizards? Seers? Soothsayers?
"PTSD service dogs are already trained to assist people during episodes of distress," said Laura Kiiroja in Dal's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and first author of a paper in Frontiers in Allergy.
"However, dogs are currently trained to respond to behavioral and physical cues. Our study showed that at least some dogs can also detect these episodes via breath."
PTSD arises from exposure to a catastrophic event: symptoms include re-experiencing that event, hyperarousal, avoiding reminders and cognitive or mood issues. Among other forms of assistance, dogs can help patients by alerting them to and interrupting episodes when their companions are struggling with symptoms. If dogs could respond to stress markers on the breath, they could potentially interrupt episodes at an earlier stage, making their interventions more effective.
Humans have a scent profile of volatile organic compounds that are formed and influenced by our genes, history, activities, age and other stuff. By everything, in short. Scientists knew dogs could smell VOCs. But they didn’t know that a post-traumatic flashback created special VOCs or that dogs could smell them.
Here we learn that there is such a thing as a “scent donor.” I once wrote a feature on faecal transfusions which introduced me to the “stool donor,” but scent donor is also cool.
The scientists recruited 26 people as scent donors. Participants were also taking part in a study about how people react to reminders of trauma they had experienced; 54 per cent met the diagnostic requirements for PTSD. To donate scents, they attended sessions where they were reminded of their traumatic experiences while wearing different facemasks. One facemask provided a calm breath sample that acted as the control and another, which was worn while the participants recalled their trauma, provided a target breath sample.
25 pet dogs were also auditioned but only two were good enough at smelling to be recruited. Ivy and Callie “found this work inherently motivating,” said one of the study authors. “Their limitless appetite for delicious treats was also an asset! In fact, it was much harder to convince them to take a break than to commence work! Callie in particular made sure there was no dilly-dallying."
Ninety percent of the time, Ivy and Callie, upon sniffing a bit of face-mask, distinguished between a stressed and non-stressed sample.
They were then presented with a series of samples, one sample at a time, to see if they could still accurately detect the stress VOCs. In this second experiment, Ivy achieved 74 per cent accuracy and Callie achieved 81 per cent accuracy.
Ivy was better at shame; Callie was good with anxiety. Have some science: “We speculated that Ivy was attuned to sympathetic-adreno-medullar axis hormones (like adrenaline) and Callie was oriented to the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis hormones (like cortisol). This is important knowledge for training service dogs, as alerting to early-onset PTSD symptoms requires sensitivity to sympathetic-adreno-medullar axis hormones."
I’m not sure of the real world implications of this study: do we clone Ivy and Callie and supply them to everyone with PTSD? But still, nice to know dogs are even cleverer than we thought. Here they are: golden red retriever Ivy and German Shepherd Callie.
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