It is only 2 weeks and pedalling will start. 8 days which will take me through the west highlands, the lakes, the dales and the moors ... yee haa
I went for a practice weekend with my friends and Chris at the last weekend. Friday was lovely warm sunshine which followed us from Hull to Hayburn Wyke. http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/1003284/.
Whitby to Jugger Howe
The second day was a bit trickier. The coastal path was absolutely stunningly beautiful from Hayburn Wyke to Whitby, then we ventured into Sleights, which was a bit of a hard push, and then it all went haywire. The rain was setting in fast and furious in a couple of miles into open moorland, which looked fine and reasonably bikeable on Google Earth (we really should know better) the thunder and lightning started. Chris was lying through his teeth about urban myths about lightning to keep me calm (something about the rubber wheels and contact and how lightning never going to hit us....), not as though I believed a word he said, but pretended to, which worked anyway. Then he had a puncture. We tried the foam and it did not work; we tried the patches but the foam was too slippery and the rain was too rainy so it did not work ...so we all pushed... after that things turned to hilarity and we could not stop laughing. So we pushed and occasionally attempted to cycle with Lisa ( who looked like a Harry Potter witch in her giant black poncho, just about to take off) but most of the time ended up falling into the mud and laughing unstoppably; until we realized we got a bit lost and were doing one of the most gruesome parts of the Lyke Wake walk (which we had done a year earlier... if you know this , it is the up and downy step bit) and midges were out for our blood. Then we called for help which we got, silly buggers.
The pint felt brilliant
Raven scar to Pickering http://www.moortoseacycle.net/routemap.html
The 3rd day was just Lis and me what a fantastic treat journey we had. The route was well signed, very exciting and rideable. We went through 3 forests on mostly single country lanes and dirt roads crossed over with woodland paths. It seemed like we had a lots of really good rolling downs and some ups which we pushed up, as they looked impossibly vertical. The route was a real find, bursting with rarely seen landscapes, fantastic earth smells and loads of smiles. Then at Dalby our grins turned wolfish and we ate up the whole canteen. At the final push to Pickering we stopped at Thornton le Dale where a young boy from Scarborough was playing rather well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyke6nxKdf4&feature=related.
How great wonderful it was, all 3 days in very different ways, loads of great memories of fantastic landscapes, hard pushing, smell of the rain and the earth and occasionally mud but most of all hilarious laughter.
Thank you all.
No comments:
Post a Comment