Runners from across the country descend on Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe this Saturday 16th May for the 11th edition of the Maverick Cotswolds Trail Run.
A multi-distance trail race through the heart of the Gloucestershire countryside that has quietly built one of the most loyal followings in the regional endurance calendar without ever attracting the mainstream attention it deserves.
Starting from the majestic Sudeley Castle and set within 1,200 acres of estate land, the event offers five distances from 7 kilometres to a 51 kilometre ultra, with all routes heading straight out onto the trails from the Tudor castle. The courses link multiple Long-Distance Paths including the Winchcombe Way, Gloucestershire Way and Cotswold Way, threading through ancient woodland, open hilltop pasture and a string of villages that look, particularly in May sunshine, as though they have barely changed in three centuries. This is not a flat city race. The 51 kilometre ultra carries 1,383 metres of elevation gain, and even the marathon distance accumulates over 1,000 metres of climbing across its 43 kilometres.
What separates the Maverick Cotswolds from the noisier end of the trail running calendar is precisely its refusal to overcomplicate itself. There is no fanfare, no expo, no finisher’s village shaped like something you would find at a theme park. There is an event village at Sudeley Castle where families, support crews and spectators can wander around the grounds while their runners are out on the trails, which is about as civilised a spectating experience as endurance sport offers. The race is organised by Maverick Race, a company that has built a series of trail events across the UK on the basis that good routes, good support and a straightforward experience are sufficient. They are not wrong.
Ultra runners set off at 9am with a cut-off of 17:30, giving competitors up to eight and a half hours to complete the course. The route passes through some of the more rewarding terrain the northern Cotswolds has to offer, with outposts at Snowshill at the 27.5 kilometre mark and Stanton Village Club at 41 kilometres, two locations that will be familiar to anyone who has spent time walking or running in this part of Gloucestershire and which represent the kind of mid-race check-in that turns a long day out into something shared rather than solitary. The shorter distances, including a 7 kilometre option that opens the event up to families and newer runners, use the same start and finish and the same castle backdrop, which gives the whole day a coherence that bigger, more fragmented events often lack.
Sudeley Castle itself is worth a moment of consideration as a sporting venue. Set in the heart of the Cotswold Hills and surrounded by 1,200 acres of estate land, it is one of the more dramatic starting points available to any race organiser in the south west of England. The castle has stood in various forms since the 12th century, and the sight of several hundred runners streaming out of its grounds and into the hills at nine o’clock on a May morning is, by all accounts, one of the more memorable images the Gloucestershire sporting calendar produces. There is something genuinely compelling about the contrast between the formality of the setting and the mud-spattered, hill-charging reality of what unfolds in the hours that follow.
The Cotswolds is Britain’s biggest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and while that designation exists for landscape and ecological reasons rather than sporting ones, it provides trail runners with a canvas that very few race series in the country can match. The rolling escarpment that defines this part of Gloucestershire is unrelenting and, on a good day, spectacular. Runners who reach the hilltops above Stanton or look back across the vale from the Cotswold Way on the long loop of the ultra will tell you it is worth every metre of climbing to get there. Those who are suffering at kilometre 38 on a warm May afternoon may have a different view, but they tend to agree afterwards.
The event closed its online entries yesterday, with on the day entires available at the venue on Saturday if places still remain. For those registered, the forecast, the mud levels and the relative strength of their recent training are now the only remaining variables. For the rest of Gloucestershire, it is a reminder that some of the best sport happening in the county this weekend will not be found in a stadium, or TV broadcast. It will be happening on a footpath somewhere above Winchcombe, between a runner and a hill, as it has been every May for the last eleven years.
