Bowland Ultra & Trail Half- 10th January 2026

The race starts and finishes at Slaidburn Village Hall, in the beautiful Forest of Bowland. Slaidburn is 20 miles from Lancaster, Blackburn and Preston, and the nearest public transport is Clitheroe which is 8 miles away.

Race entry is £69 for affiliated members (of a national running association such as UKA, ARC, FRA or TRA) and £75 for non. This price includes 4 on course aid stations with hot food and refreshments, a finishers meal and finishers momento, GPS tracking for your friends and family to follow at home, and a great day out on the Bowland Fells. This is the early bird price and will go up closer to the event, so hurry!

The ultra race start is 0800hrs Saturday 10th January 2026.

The Trail Half starts at 1000hrs Saturday 10th January 2026.

Ultra registration in race HQ opens on Saturday at 0530hrs and closes at 0730hrs opening. There is a mandatory race briefing at 0745hrs in the village hall.

Half registration opens after the ultra has departed at 0830hrs and closes at 0945hrs.

There is no registration available on Friday night as there has been in previous years, only on Saturday.

There are cut offs, see our route page for details. We chosen these cut offs not to make an elite race, or to ensure we can get to the pub before closing, but to make sure runners and volunteers stay safe and everyone gets home at the end of the weekend. This is a mid winter race, as conditions in 2025 showed we can have some extreme weather and we have teams on the hill keeping everyone safe. We can’t have teams on the hill for 24 hours, so have designed the cut offs to make sure runners pass the highest and most remote sections before dark. We hope these cut offs offer everyone a good chance of finishing, even if you intend to walk a lot of the route (if that’s the case, you still have a good chance but you should be efficient at aid stations).

There will be a kit check at registration and spot kit checks on the course!

• Full waterproof top and bottom (taped seams)
• Bag to carry items in
• Gloves and hat or 2 buffs. Hat should be thermally insulating, i.e. not a summer cap or bucket hat
• Survival bag or foil bivvy bag, a foil blanket is not enough. E.g this or this, but not this
• Reusable mug that can hold hot liquids and stand upright unsupported (i.e. not a squashable mug)
• Spork or similar
• Whistle
• Map (supplied at registration)
• Compass (that can take accurate bearings; mini Christmas cracker compass not allowed) and the knowledge of how to use it
• 400 emergency calories (should be unconsumed at finish line), should be easy to eat (beware items freezing) and digest
• Emergency base layers to include (you should plan to not need these, if you think you will be cold, bring extra layers on top of the emergency layers) 2 full sleeve tops and 1 full length bottom. Should be sealed in waterproof bag.
• Headtorch and spare battery or recharging capacity
• Water containers suitable for 750mls of water
• First aid kit to include bandage material, safety pins, plasters (x3) and easy on the iboprofen please!
• Fully charged phone, and left on so that race HQ can contact you if needed
• Item for donaton to food bank. Please check what they want and don’t want to best meet their needs.

• Food suitable for your mighty efforts, the checkpoints will offer food but runners should be prepared to sustain themselves between checkpoints
• Extra warm layer, its going to be cold, and could be wet too just for good measure
• Reflective clothing
• Electrolytes, aid stations will not be providing them so please prepare your own. The aid stations will have plenty of squash, tea, coffee and salty snacks so you can get your salts in the old fashioned way!
• Ice studs or shoe chains

Please lift share where possible. Everyone who does gets free cake at the HQ! Parking is charged in the public cark park opposite, so it will save you money to share. We will be running our good egg prize again in 2025. So if you lift share, use public transport or pick up litter in the race let us know and you might win a prize!

The course is not marked not because we can’t be bothered but with high winds and adverse weather, we don’t want markings blowing away. On top of that, don’t drop any litter on the course. The course is swept for safety, not to clean up after you, you should be following the countryside code at all times.

At times you may want to be running through the glorious bog, not on the main footpath (at other times you will be glad to have the good sturdy path), but please note that the route is agreed and vetted with Natural England and through our ecological risk assesment to ensure we don’t damage any fragile habitats or important peat bogs. If you are going to recce sections that involves bog traverses, please avoid running on bare and exposed peat which is very fragile and take care around any of the restoration work ongoing on the fells.