Some people just don’t get it!

If you want to know how long a route is in distance, have a guide time and know the distance to the nearest cake shop, then go to a Trail Centre. If you want more of an adventure then go and ride more remote stuff.

I’m only talking the Lakes here, but after a couple of hours riding, (well, pushing and carrying might be a more honest description) it had become clear that at least one of our group (of 6) was more a Trail Centre rider than an ‘adventurer’!

We were staying near Patterdale in a cottage that had been recommended (and didn’t disappoint!) which happened to be within a mile or two of a route in the March MBR mag. It did involve a bit of a slog from the house up an un-rideable trail to get on to the MBR loop. The blurb that went with the map said it took some “top X Country racers 6 hours to cover the 23 miles” now if that’s not a challenge I don’t know what is!!

I love the physical challenge of the riding you get in areas like the Lakes, our route was to take us up to 840m but we had to miss off the last peak due to the time constraints of the hours of daylight at this time of year, sure, most of us had lights with us, but I’m not that comfortable with being out in the wilderness after dark. It was great to have good long climbs without having to “do a Sparky” and session Cardiac Hill!!

We did seem to do a lot of climbing, there were lots of false summits and my motivational speech to my disgruntled companion went along the lines of “well, you never know, we might get over the top of this peak and find the best bit of downhill ever” did I believe it myself? Of course not, but it’s all part of the team work, and besides, he’s not that stupid! – We were both in for a surprise!!!

We hit what for 98% of the year is a probably a very boring grassy field (with at least one stream running through it as I will mention shortly!) in absolutely perfect snow field conditions! I honestly can’t think of a better time I’ve had on a bike, you had to learn to ride it while picking up some serious speed, gentle movements gave slight changes in direction, more severe movements left you going straight ahead with the bars crossed up, either way with a big smile on your face!

This levelled the playfield a little, Sos, who’d accidentally(?) left his virtual slick London to Brighton tyres on his bike, was now hooning along next to the others! What a laugh, I was about to trudge back up for another go, despite having spent a large part of the day doing just that! Unfortunately time was against us.

Having stopped to take some pics I was playing catch up, going a little faster than was safe/comfortable I noticed, slightly too late, a telltale hole in the snow and as my front wheel plummeted through the ice in to the stream below and I was overtaking my handlebars I also noticed the set of tyre tracks going around the aforementioned hole in the snow!! Oops.

Undeterred I had to go even faster to catch up and did exactly the same thing again, Doh!! This time with the bike on top of me trapping my leg between the frame and bars and getting a nice dose of cramp in my thigh!!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Trail Centres, but I love a good Journey too. I’ve ridden from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn over 8 days, done the Coast to Coast in 5 and they aren’t guaranteed good fun, there are miserable times in harsh conditions but you get a hell of a sense of achievement at the end of them!

From my 30 quid Cateye computer we covered 21 miles in 3hrs 53 mins at an Ave of 5.3mph. Obviously this wasn’t recording much when my bike was off the ground being carried or at times going too slowly to register!!

Stats from one of the guys GPS’s
Length 32.4km
4 hrs 36mins travelling
Av 7.1kph
Total ascent 1224m
Max height 802m
Max rate of descent 76m per minute (Don’t ask me why you’d want to know that!)