Summary
| Season | 4 |
| Race | 9 |
| Distance | 11km |
| Elevation (total climb) | 170m |
| Dates run | 1st October 2021 – 23rd April 2022 |
| Race designer | Katelyn McKeown |
Introduction
Orgreave is a name synonymous with the events of 18th June 1984 when police violently attacked striking miners. The ensuing cover up is widely believed to be a precursor to the handling of the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster five years later. Since the coking plant closed it’s doors, Orgreave has been given over to housing developers who are keen to rebrand the area as Waverley. The Not the Cat Lane Canter series is no place to promote a sanitised version of history, or geography for that matter, so the name of this route is Orgreave: Not the Waverley Wander.
Starting and ending in Handsworth next to the Finchwell Road allotments this route is mostly trail with a very short section on the road at Woodhouse Mill. The trails are mostly hard packed with some tarmacked sections alongside the main roads and in the parks. There are a couple of muddy sections, the main one being Shirtcliffe Wood to Smelter Wood which can be avoided if you are willing to take quite a significant detour on the roads. It is a checkpoint based route but these are placed to keep you fairly faithful to the intended route rather than to provide you with a navigation challenge.
Like Bridging the Gap, which this route rubs shoulders with, the Orgreave NTWW showcases some of the beautiful forgotten spaces running alongside our arterial roads. You will find lakes, marshland and an impressive section of the River Rother on the route and these are a wildlife haven and feel a far cry from the traffic and fumes of the Parkway and A57.
Please make the most of the monument to the Orgreave miners in your wonderful recce photos. I was also pleased to discover that the hill leading up to the monument is a Strava segment named #Justice4Orgreave. No to the Waverley whitewash! Yes to the Orgreave: Not the Waverley Wander.
Maps
Checkpoints
| Name | What3Words | Google map co-ordinates |
| Start / Finish | stews.pushed.career | 53.37668, -1.38708 |
| CP1 Miner Monument | vines.when.powers | 53.37715, -1.36696 |
| CP2 Don’t Cross the Rother | marked.punch.libraries | 53.38122, -1.35763 |
| CP3 Gate to Woodhouse Rec | foster.lawn.degree | 53.37035, -1.35323 |
| CP4 Furnace Lane Convenience Store Corner | image.jazzy.fats | 53.36265, -1.35616 |
| CP5 Gate to Shirtcliff Wood | cracks.icon.chair | 53.36294, -1.37018 |
| CP6 Richmond Rd / A57 Bridge | type.glass.librarian | 53.36808, -1.39712 |
| CP7 Don’t Cross the Houndsteade / Parkway Bridge | appear.loyal.guilty | 53.37495, -1.4019 |
| CP8 Corner Before the Middlewood Rovers Ground | churn.remark.whips | 53.38032, -1.39253 |
Route Guides
Strava Links
Possible Strava Route
Strava Segments
- Away from Handsworth towards the bridge
- Justice4Orgreave
- Bridge To Pond Path
- Across Woodhouse Rec and on to the road
- Beaver Hill to Richmond Road
- Gateway bottom straight
Scoring
50 points for fastest time. Everyone else gets a percentage – if the winning time is 1 hour and you take 2 hours, you get 25 points.
The overall score for Season Four for each runner will be the sum of the points for their six highest-scoring runs, at the end of the Season
Results
The race is over but you can still run it for fun.
All Time Course Personal Bests (PBs)
You can still submit your time to this website if you’d like to see your time recorded alongside everyone else’s – use the link in the right-hand sidebar. If you’ve run this course as part of the NTCLCGP race series your time should already be there.