Morning. A victory (hopefully) for the city’s namesake river this week, with news that two new trails may well be in place alongside the River Sheaf in the next year or so. We catch up with local long distance runner Hayley Wilson about chocolate biscuits, and there’s sad news of the lonely Bittern that surprised Nether Edge and Sharrow this month.
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One Foot In Front Of Another
How do you go about spending 39 hours of night and day running 162.5 miles around the grounds of Hardwick Hall?
“You just think about putting one foot in front of the other. Focus on your breath, don’t think too far ahead,” Hayley Wilson says. “You just keep getting up and running around in a circle every hour.”
As reported last week, former Sheffield Hallam University student Hayley, who now lives in Worksop, took the assist spot as part of the UK’s first all women winning trio in a Backyard Ultra event, where runners attempt to get up from base camp every hour and run another 4.167 mile loop, rest for a few minutes, and start again, as many times as they can.
Hayley ran 39 laps (or yards, as they’re called in a Backyard Ultra) while rival Becky Atkinson ran 40 (168.6 miles) with Hollie Jones clocking up 36 laps (150 miles).
I spoke to Hayley last week, along with run organiser Eric Keeler from Rasselbock Running, who said he hoped the success of the Hardwick Hall winners will inspire other women to try an event that’s designed to suit all levels of runner, from ultra runners like Hayley to those who can only complete a handful of laps.
“What a lot of people like is that it’s a relatively safe event for people who want to do their first ultra (a run of over marathon length). You know you’re going to be back at camp within four miles, and everything you need is there.”
In Hayley’s case that was a meticulously planned set of spare kit and food, along with her husband Paul, who she primed every lap with instructions as to what would be needed next time round. Chocolate digestive biscuits or Turkish delight in her case, for example.
Hayley ran her first 100 mile event at Sherwood Pines Forest only two years ago, then tried again in 2025. “I ran 30 yards, or 125 miles, and then I stopped because I was bored,” she laughs. “Then I woke up the next morning and went, oh no, what have I done? I should have carried on. And that’s what 2026 became about, really.”
She tried to get further in March this year, despite picking up Covid two weeks before, and says she “only got to the 27th lap.” (I’m using her words here: ‘only’ being a mere 112.5 miles).
“It had been a bit of a fight for 10 hours or so, I just didn’t have anything left to give. So I came back to Hardwick Hall this month with a burning determination that I was going to do better this year.” And she did, reaching over 160 miles for the first time. “Which was, you know, a really good outcome. But I wish I could have done more.”
Hayley Wilson told me a lot more about how you keep running for such crazy distances through 3am fields and woodlands watched by shiny badgers and curious sheep, and shares her own thoughts on how women can make it as winning ultra runners. I’ll be running the full interview with her in a special post in the next week or two.
The UK Backyard Ultra team will be competing at Sherwood Pines forest on October 17th, in a simultaneous event with other national teams of 15 running around the world. The team who log the most collective yards/ laps wins. Host Rasselbock Running encourage spectators, with free entry to watch, along with the chance to try out the course yourself before the main event starts at 1pm.
New River Trails On Their Way (Hopefully)
The next 18 months should see two sections of Sheffield’s namesake river opened up for you to visit, after years of shady obscurity. Following almost a decade of battling by the Sheaf and Porter Rivers Trust (SPRT) and local allies, the River Sheaf should finally see the arrival of a riverside trail along a spectacular wooded gully off Abbeydale Road South, between the Tesco car park and Troutbeck Road.
Despite the announcement by the government’s planning inspectorate this month to insist they get on with the job within the next 18 months, SPRT say the developers who’ve postponed building the path for ten years, despite it being a planning requirement, could technically choose to launch a third costly appeal against the decision.
It seems unlikely, however, as their previous appeals have already cost them, the council and river campaigners a huge amount of time and money, say SPRT, who now hope they’ll “do the right thing” and get the job done. “The inspector’s direction is very clear to get on with it,” said Simon Ogden of SPRT.
More than 90% of the residents of the Jacobs Gate sheltered housing, who live alongside the path site, supported the building of the trail, many saying it would allow them to enjoy walking along the riverside and get to nearby shops and bus stops more easily.
SPRT are now negotiating with Abbeydale Road Tesco to help them add a short 30 metre woodland section to link the new path with the existing section of the Sheaf Valley Trail built by Tesco in 2007. They’re confident this will now progress much more quickly than the work delayed for so long by STEPS Rehabilitation and Gladman Retirement Living a few minutes downriver.
Progressing the work quickly would mean the two developers could “put this unfortunate episode behind them, and start to restore their reputation,“ say SPRT, adding they’d find many local volunteers willing to thank them by doing cleanups, litter picks and citizen science along the reopened river.
Simon Ogden said the government’s decision raises hope of “extending public access and improvement to the River Sheaf,” which despite it being the city’s namesake, is still “Sheffield’s most inaccessible and invisible river.”
Meanwhile, closer to town, a similarly inaccessible section of the Porter Brook (a tributary of the Sheaf) should begin to see the light in a few months as development work begins off Sylvester Gardens, including a reopened and naturalised section of the Porter, linking the pocket park at Matilda Street with the Porter Brook Trail off Mary Street near Decathlon.
This work will include changes to the forbidding Cinder Hill Weir to help fish passage, and naturalising work to bring even more trout, wagtails and dragonflies to the inner city Porter Brook.
Meanwhile, SPRT members have already been hard at work in the Sheaf near Heeley, where a team of eight SPRT volunteers, local councillors Douglas Johnson and Marieanne Elliot and staff from the Riverlution organisation helped clear out a lorryload of rubbish in one of their regular river clean ups.
“There were 60 bags of cannabis waste and two tonnes of historical rubbish, including old metal work, a road sign, plastic pipes, a scooter and and old beer keg,” said Martin Lyon from Riverlution.
Little Bittern
The Bittern is renowned for being impossible to see. Filmmakers employ heat seeking cameras to find one of the UK’s shyest birds camouflaged in its natural reed bed environment, and the great nature writer Richard Mabey observed that birdwatchers regard any Bittern sighting with a sense of occasion, while for ordinary people, he wrote: “the Bittern’s invisibility means it exists more as an idea than as a living reality.”
On Monday, one turned up strolling up and down the Porter Brook. Sheffield Bird Study Group member Tom Hines was one of the first people to watch it exploring an unpromising walled gully off Stalker Walk, a mile from the city centre.
“It walked right up the river, under the General Cemetery gate house, then it walked out of the river in front of a guy who was drinking a couple of cans of lager, who must have had a bit of a shock. It walked about two foot in front of him, and then back around into the cemetery.”
And that’s where it stayed for three days, with hundred of visitors, said Tom.
Tom learned the Bittern had been on local social media since August, where an initial photo of a Bittern by a children’s swing in a Nether Edge garden was dismissed by some as a hopeful AI representation. It then turned up in more social media photos around Nether Edge gardens and rooftops, until it finally arrived at the River Porter.
Tom and fellow SBSG members recognised the bird was likely to be a juvenile, probably born this year, not too far away. (Despite being very rare in the UK, and South Yorkshire, until the 1980s, Eurasian Bittern numbers have increased dramatically over recent years, with regular sightings and family records in more suitable reedy habitats like Old Moor near Wath and Potteric Carr near Doncaster).
Bitterns usually eat sizeable fish, frogs and occasional rodents, like their close relative the Grey Heron, but it became clear that this youngster was struggling for food, settling for cemetery worms, and braving humans just a few feet away as it tried to find something to eat.
Hundreds came to watch, says Tom. “I think people went to have a look at it because they’re very uncommon birds, and usually they’re also very hard to see.”
Eventually, after it attempted to cross Cemetery Road towards the traffic of Ecclesall Road, the nearby Mansfield Wildlife Rescue charity were called in to take it away for its own safety.
At their sanctuary, they tried to rehydrate the unfortunate Bittern, and help it recover with warm blankets and special bird food concentrate. But sadly the bird died on Friday morning, as it had become too malnourished and ill, said the sanctuary’s Cheryl Martin.
“I’d just like to thank the public for the support that we’ve had while it was here, but sadly we couldn’t do any more for it,” she said. `She added that if readers see any wild bird distressed, or clearly struggling in the wrong kind of environment, to report it to a wildlife rescue organisation as soon as possible.
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More What’s On Out There (from Sunday 27th September)
A tiny selection from our (regularly updated) What’s On Out There news and listings post. Full version for full members, preview version for all at the link above.
Sun 27th - Friends of Whirlow Brook Park - Sounds of Summer concert
Mon 28th - SYBG talks at Lees Hall Golf Club - Much Ado About Mothing
Tues 29th - YHA Festival of Walking social walk from Hathersage
Weds 30th - Sheffield Ramblers Walks - Wombwell & Bolton on Dearne (12m)
October
Up to Sunday 25th Oct - Off The Shelf Festival
Thurs 1st - SRWT Volunteering - Moss Valley
Fri 2nd - CycleBoost cycle training - confidence & learn to ride, Hillsborough Park
Sat 3rd - Sorby Family Friendly Fungus Day at Shire Brook Valley Nature Reserve