The 10 toughest challenges to tackle in Britain

Doing anything exciting this summer? Fancy a 1,000-mile bike ride? Me neither. Yet instead of settling for a gentle drive through the Cotswolds or relaxing on the beach, scores of cyclists will early next month be setting off on the Ride Across Britain, a nine-day cycle ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats across 23 counties of England, Wales and Scotland.

It seems more of us than ever are embracing tougher challenges. Maybe we’re sick of sweaty gyms and hanker after an outdoor test – and a genuine sense of achievement while escaping from an increasingly indoor world. Whatever the cause, the number of endurance events increases by the year, attracting more entrants participating for fun, not hairy-chested bravado.

So the cross-Britain ride got us thinking: for those looking for something a little more stretching than the sun lounger, what are the greatest activity challenges in Britain? Our Top Ten will push you to the limit, yet are doable by dedicated amateurs. Many also showcase the wildest, most beautiful corners of the country. The grey-green Lake District, Torridon’s Highlands romance or the peaks of Snowdonia, an Arthurian myth made real, are all places which can elevate a physical challenge into something more epic; even touching at times the spiritual.

What unites all these challenges is that they’re true adventures: sometimes daunting, often gruelling, occasionally terrifying, and always life-affirming.    

1. Toughest distance swim

The English Channel is the Mount Everest of outdoor swimming: longer than its 21 miles as the cod swims, because of tidal flows; cold; and beset by ships, jellyfish and occasional planks of wood. It’s also expensive: you won’t see much change from £4,000 after registration with the Channel Swimming Association, hire of an official escort boat, accommodation, food and travel. So, for a more manageable endurance swim, go to Windermere.

England’s longest lake is around half the length of the Channel, at 11 miles, but that doesn’t make it the lightweight’s option. Swimmers can expect choppy waves, pleasure boats and water that can be colder than the Channel (it’s deeper). Nor, given the temptation to bail out on to the banks in a narrow lake, is the psychological challenge of going the distance much less demanding. There are also the surroundings to consider. A swim among wooded hills and rounded peaks, or in Channel water that stretches to infinity? Your choice. I know which I’d prefer.

● Next event: the organised Windermere One Way on Sunday September 3; from £150 (01257 251217; windermereoneway.co.uk); or the Great North Swim in June 2018 (0191 272 7033; greatrun.org/great-swim).

2. Hardest fell run

“On the first day I was lost in the mist. Then I was trapped on a rock face… my desire for competition changed to a basic will to survive.” So said three-times Spartathlon winner Rune Larsson of the inaugural 1992 Dragon’s Back, a race so gruelling they didn’t hold another for 10 years. There are checkpoints now, yet the essence of this ultra challenge remains unchanged from that first race: five days, 200 miles, alone, down the mountainous spine of Wales.

It’s not the running times that wreck you – nine to 14 hours a day is doable by modern ultra standards – it’s the terrain. Try this for the first morning: rock climbing without ropes up Tryfan, then along the knife-ridge arête of Crib Goch to Snowdon. I walked it once and got the jitters.

Still, the scenery is astonishing; raw mountains giving way to wild moorland, then softer greener hills. Who knows, you may even glance up and get a glimpse.

● Next event: May 20-24 2019, from £800 (berghausdragonsbackrace.com). If you can’t wait, try the monster Spine Race (from £350; thespinerace.com) down the Pennine Way in January or July 2018.

3. Most gruelling canoe

Friendly competition, West Country scenery and the perfect photo-op finish opposite Big Ben – the Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race has the lot. Most classes race over four days each Easter. Join the non-competitive Endeavour doubles group and you can even dawdle through the loveliest stretch, downriver of Reading through meadows alongside the Thames and, at Sonning village, take a peek into George Clooney’s garden. Enter the Senior Doubles, however, and you’ll race non-stop: 125 miles, 77 locks to portage, paddling at night, with the logistics of a tide window at Teddington and support team to negotiate – 15 hours, 34 minutes is the record. Just completing the course requires superhuman stamina – in 2012 Sir Stephen Redgrave became one of four Olympians who dropped out. You’ve got until January to sign up for the next event. Best start training now.

● Next event: Easter 2018, £150-220 (0118 966 5912; dwrace.org.uk).

4. Most gnarly surf break

4 Thurso East attracts world-class surfers and the Cribber surf-break off Newquay’s Fistral beach does passable imitations of Hawaii. Yet Porthleven, south Cornwall, is the wave to really test your mettle. It jacks suddenly outside the harbour wall. Make the steep take-off and you’re in for a fast, intense ride with the chance of a barrel (where surfers ride within the curl of a breaking wave). Get it wrong at low tide and you’ll end up picking barnacles from your forehead. Do it at high tide and the Atlantic will slam you into the coastline’s gullies.

The most dangerous wave in Britain, agrees Roger Sharp, editor of UK surf magazine Carve: “There are way more injuries and broken boards here than elsewhere.” Study the wave from the harbour wall when it’s big and ask watching surfers for tips – there are always some when Porthleven is pumping. Godrevy beach is a tough, but a safer option on the North Cornish coast.

As challenging as the surf is catching a wave before the whipsharp pack of locals and pros descend. They may be doing you a favour.

● To find out more, see visitcornwall.com/places/porthleven.

5. Hardest climbing route

When the British climber Steve McClure completed Rainman in Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales this June, he upped the ante of UK climbing. Put our first 9b-grade route (British climbers rank routes from four to nine, a to c – the higher the number and letter, the greater the difficulty) on the “do later” list. McClure, one of the best pro sport climbers in the world, made 100 attempts over 10 years before he triumphed.

Warm up instead on Rainshadow, an early stage of Rainman. On a magnificent polished ledge known as The Catwalk, this is a 9a-graded route that only the best weekend heroes can aspire to climb. It’s not just a question of hauling yourself up the rock face with brute force; completing its technical overhang challenges your mind as much as your muscles.

A grade too far? First stage Raindogs should be on every 8a climber’s wish list; a classic endurance route, with a panicky, power-sapping grab at the summit. Either way, this is sport climbing at its best: sensationally beautiful – an amphitheatre of rock arcing before a pretty valley like a stage set for a swords-and-sandals epic – always friendly.

● Visit the UK Climbing website (ukclimbing.com) for information on routes and local guides.

6. Most brutal road bike ascent

They’ve erected three signs before the Hardknott Pass east of Eskdale in the Lake District. One warns of severe bends; another of 30 per cent gradients; the last is a danger triangle with an exclamation mark. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

“A heart-stopping series of sharp and narrow hairpin bends,” Alfred Wainwright called Britain’s most outrageous road, and he was writing for drivers. On two wheels, this two-mile, 1,034ft climb is 15 muscle-burning minutes of abuse: brutal switchbacks, teasing levels, then punishing hairpins to the summit. But what scenery: green hills rippling into the heart of our first World Heritage national park, the crags of the pass ahead. Beyond it is a horizon-busting spread of hills and a frankly terrifying descent to Wrynose Pass.

Too easy? Go back up – it’s shorter, but steeper, from the east.

● Next event: May 13 2018, the 101-mile Fred Whitton Challenge (01229 716582; fredwhittonchallenge.co.uk). Tough, but well worth it.

7. Most strenuous weekend hike

Fancy a walk in the Welsh hills? No, not far – about 30 miles. We’ll ascend Snowdon before first light, then traverse the Glyder range, four ice-clawed fins of rock. Then navigate the rounded summits of the Carnedd range. Then walk back to the car. OK?

The Welsh 3000s challenges hikers to tick off 14 mountain summits over 3,000ft in Snowdonia in under 24 hours. By the time you reach the final triangulation point on Foel-Fras, you will have climbed a height nearly half that of Everest. See it as training – before Wilfrid Noyce became part of the 1953 Everest expedition he walked the “Fourteen Threes” every Easter.

While some walkers have stomped it in under 12 hours, our tip is to slow down. The scenery up here on the roof of Wales is magnificent. You scramble up mountain spines as sharp as dragon backs, traverse scree-shattered slopes and pass tarns that beg for Excalibur. Grey-green peaks peel on every side. Add cloud and you can touch the sky. Give yourself a very long day to do it – better still, take two and overnight beneath Tryfan at Gwern Gôf Uchaf campsite (14peaks.com and tryfanwales.co.uk).

● The Welsh 3000s (welsh3000s.co.uk). Most people do this walk as close to June 22 as possible, when there is the maximum amount of light, but before the temperature is too high. It is not an organised event, but is undertaken by individuals or groups who decide to do it by themselves.

8. Craziest caving adventure

Opinion on the caving blogosphere divides about the most demanding system. North Yorkshire’s Langcliffe Pot to the bottom, say some. Surely the Three Counties System, the UK’s longest network, burrowing for 53 miles beneath Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire? Forget both – they’re for experts only – and opt for the phobia-twanging Ultimate Xtreme trip. Its journey through the Cwmorthin mine near Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia lasts all day – if that means anything when you are 1,300ft underground.

That’s as deep as the public can go in Britain. Other superlatives stack up during its three-mile assault course: the deepest and longest underground zip lines in the world (1,230ft and 427ft, respectively); the world’s first underground freefall simulator, a leap of faith 70ft into the abyss that’s an apotheosis of phobia – vertigo, darkness, claustrophobia.

Just as exhilarating are the dizzyingly high cavern traverses on old miners’ ladders – rusty rungs that vanish into huge Tolkien-esque spaces lit only by the gloom of your head torch.

That’s when you get it. This isn’t just a subterranean adventure. It’s mining history unpolished for tourism – just what caving is all about.

● The Ultimate Xtreme trip by Go Below, £89 (01690 710108, go-below.co.uk).

9. Most extreme wild camp

Welcome to the Cairngorms, sir and madam. We have your reservation right here. Just dig your room from this snowdrift and you’ll be set to bed down for the night in Arctic conditions.

Scotland’s easterly Munros are Britain’s answer to polar tundra in winter – they’ve experienced our lowest-ever temperature (minus 27C in 1987) and highest mountain wind speed (173mph the year before). The obvious choice for the ultimate wild night out, then, so long as you go with an expert.

Applecross-based Mountain and Sea Guides condenses its winter survival course into a weekend snowhole experience. There’s a heck of a lot of digging. You’re unlikely to sleep. Yet this is an extraordinary journey.

A night snowbound at altitude not only tests your stamina, it also dazzles and disorientates. Emerge in the morning and you’ll sense the timeless, epic quality of these mountains – and how fragile we are by comparison.

Just one tip: bring whisky.

● Next event: The Cairngorm Plateau Snowhole Weekend, December 2/3 2017; then December 9/10 and 16/17; then from January-March 2018, £150 (01520 722734; applecross.uk.com/msg).

10. Most daunting triathlon

The distances alone should make you hesitate – a cold-water swim of just over two miles, 126 miles of cycling on drovers’ roads and a 26-mile run via two Munro summits as a back straight. Yet the statistic that best explains the fearsome reputation of Celtman!, an extreme triathlon in the Torridon mountains of Wester Ross, is the number of finishers. Of the 1,089 entrants to date, only 552 have worn the blue shirt awarded to those who complete the course.

In a point-to-point test of endurance where simply finishing is a victory, the raw adventure of it all becomes the focus: the wild beauty of the Highlands scenery; the elements (yes, even the cold); more than anything, the camaraderie among those prepared to push themselves to the maximum.

● Next event: June 16 2018, £325 (cxtri.com). Start training now.