Welcome to Trails & Trad
- Sean Clancy
- Jan 3
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 19
An Introduction
Do you ever find yourself sitting in your dull, soulless office, trying to concentrate on yet another inconsequential report, but your legs are still aching from your long run in the mountains at the weekend, your cheeks are still raw from the wind, and your mind keeps drifting off to the nervous excitement of the route you've got your eye on leading later in the week?
Me too. Every. Single. Day.
Then welcome to Trails & Trad, you'll be happy here! I can't tell you how excited I am to share my thoughts, experiences, and daydreams with you all as I go about my life as a mountaineer and a runner, all around my regular full-time job in the NHS. I've already got so much in store for 2025, and I can't wait to get started!
Before I go any further, the real value in this blog is going to come from you wonderful people who take the time to read these words and engage with me along the way. So make sure you follow my socials, subscribe to the newsletter and comment below to let me know what you're up to and what you're most interested in hearing about.
Who am I Anyway?
Let's start with the basics, my name is Sean and whilst I now live in Stockport, I grew up on the south coast, in Weymouth & Portland in Dorset. My love for the outdoors started at 13 years old when I was recruited by my geography teacher to take part in the following year's 10 Tors event, an annual 35 mile race across Dartmoor for teams of school kids. I was absolutely hooked! I loved the challenge of hiking all day, carrying all your gear and facing up to the wildness of the weather and terrain. It felt like such a departure from the town life I had experienced up until then. The experience felt like something I had earned through effort and determination, and could only truly be understood by those who had earned it too.
Following on from this I got involved with the Dorset Expeditionary Society (sadly no longer in existence), which eventually saw me travel to Ladakh, India for a month at the age of 16. Spending this time walking, cycling and exploring a wildly new culture, at high altitude (Leh, the expedition base, is at 3500m and as part of the trip we climbed a now closed summit called Stok Kangri, 6153m) was a truly formative experience for me. Not only did it initiate a lifelong love of both travel and the mountains, but possibly more critically, it also, for the first time, brought me into contact with a whole group of people who had not grown up in the same town as me.
The net result was that I came home, due to start my A-levels within a couple of weeks, and changed all 4 of my subject choices, completely changing the direction of the rest of my life. Fast-forward another 2 years and I rocked up at university in Nottingham, the keenest bean around, to build on the hillwalking and limited amount of sport climbing experience I had up until then, determined to become a fully fledged, independent mountaineer.
An Education in Climbing - The Munro Pineapple Society
When I arrived at the University of Nottingham in 2008, there were a huge number of outdoor clubs in the Students Union (after I graduated these were all streamlined into one club, which I am sure is great, however I can't help but feel saddened by the loss of each individual groups personalities). Naturally, I joined them all. There was...
RamSoc - the rambling society, who focused on hillwalking.
NUClimb - the rock climbing club, who were all about single pitch rock climbing, mostly in the Peak District.
Another general outdoor sports society, whose name evades me, who did a bit of everything including caving and kayaking.
NUSnow - the skiing club, whose main activity, as is only natural for a university ski club, was getting absolutely annihilated every week.
And then, there was The Munro Pineapple Society, aka MPS. It was here that I found my people.
Jointly named after the Scottish Mountains and an oddly shaped boulder field in the Peak District, MPS was a fantastic example of a traditional British mountaineering club. A wonderfully eclectic combination of odd personalities, some hugely talented yet modest mountaineers, plenty of keen and committed folk like myself, all bound together by one thing, a love of the mountains and the activities they facilitate.
This was not a club where people were relentlessly training indoors (indeed at that time I actively hated indoor climbing), competing to push their grade, cranking out super gnarly boulder problems. This was a group of people whose primary concern was getting out, which we did at every opportunity. Travelling to Wales, the Lake District and Scotland every couple of weeks throughout the academic year. The routes we wanted to climb where those hidden away in the high crags, that required eating your breakfast at 5am to give yourself enough day to walk in, climb and get out again without incident (it should be said, there were many incidents). Big days on modest routes, now that's my jam.
Over the ensuing 3 years then, I threw myself into everything I could, learning to trad climb, winter climb and eventually putting it all together a year after graduating by spending the summer of 2012 climbing in the Alps. Thereafter, I promptly moved to London and didn't go climbing again for a decade.
So What About Running Then?
I had tried running, on and off, ever since I was a teenager. I never really enjoyed it and I never stuck with it for more than a couple of months at a time. In 2011 I even entered the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon in Loch Fyne with a fellow MPS member, seeing it more as an extension of a hill walk than a running event. The first day of the race absolutely killed me, and I could barely move on the second morning. I felt so guilty for not being up to it and ruining my partner's race (still sorry Haydn!), I didn't attempt anything like that again for a long time.
My first 5 years or so in London I tried a few things. I got into scuba diving, played club level tennis at Surbiton and got strong for the first time in my life at CrossFit in Twickenham. Then, all of a sudden...
Running just clicked.
In 2018 I started to enjoy running. After an underwhelming experience doing a Tough Mudder 5k which bored us to death, I roped in a friend from work to enter the VOTwo Events Atlantic Coast Challenge, 3 back to back marathons along the north Devon and Cornwall coast. When I signed us up, I wasn't entirely confident we could do it, but by the end I had well and truly caught the long distance bug! I decided I would like to see if I could run a quick marathon on the road, so I signed up for Brighton Marathon in the following spring and surprised myself by running a 3:14, and followed up by joining a triathlon club (before it was cool I might add!).
So this was me, for the next few years, running, cycling and swimming about in SW London, completing several half Ironman events (my favourite distance) and many other shorter races. Then, on the back side of the COVID-19 pandemic, life did what life does and shuffled the deck again, and I found myself living in Manchester.
The Intersection: Mountaineering and Ultra Trail Running
When I arrived in Manchester I assumed I would carry on as I had been in London, joining a triathlon club and finding a community there, but this didn't quite work out to plan. I did join the triathlon club, had a pretty unwelcoming first experience with them and then a combination of injury and illness meant I never felt compelled to go back and give it another go (this did effectively mean I spent nearly £300 to go swimming once...).
I needed a way to connect with like minded people in a new city. I knew next to nobody, I didn't study here and working in a senior role doesn't lend itself to making friends at work like it does in more junior jobs. That's when I came across the Karabiner Mountaineering Club, KMC.
I felt quite emotional at the thought of being able to reconnect with my love of the mountains after a decade in London. From what I could tell, the KMC was everything that MPS was to me at university. And so I duly signed myself up and went along to my first meet, a run around the hills of Saddleworth. I could feel it straight away, here were my people!
So, fast-forward again, 2 years down the line. I have fully reacquainted myself with my former mountaineering skills, once again making regular trips to the mountains of the UK and the focus of my running has moved from the roads to the mountains and extended to ultra marathon distances. I am once again full of excitedly made plans to do what I never really did when I was younger, actually become a better climber.
Community
One thing that is probably clear from that long winded story is how important community is to me, but also how integral it is to my enjoyment of these wonderful sports. I hope this blog can achieve two things:
To encourage you to go and find your own community, to share adventures with and expand your own world.
To create an online community of likeminded people to share their stories, knowledge and ideas to keep that enthusiasm and inspiration growing in between the times when we can be in the mountains.
What You Can Expect from Trails & Trad
My ideas for Trails & Trad are varied, but they all tie in with the sports and activities I love to put my time and energy into. You can expect to see:
The Training Diaries: my weekly run down of my own training for both climbing and running, and how I am progressing (or not).
Trip and race reports.
Destination guides.
Stories from myself and friends about their adventures and mishaps in the mountains.
Gear reviews and advice.
Skills tips and guides.
In the diary already for this year are trips to Scotland, Iceland, Wales, France and the Lake District. There will be climbing, walking, running and all sorts of associated shenanigans.
Get Involved
As I mentioned at the top of this post, your involvement is what will really make this worthwhile, by transforming a blog into a community. Make sure to:
Follow Trails & Trad on social media.
Subscribe to the newsletter.
Comment with your questions, stories and suggestions below, I would love to hear from you!
Final Words
If you've made it this far then you are already my favourite. Thanks so much for your time and I hope you'll come on this adventure with me!
Until next time.
S
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