Did you make it in the end Shafiq? Didn't see you at the start.
Nice to see Karl off of here, but not from Hull, at the start. How did you get on? Didn't see many other riders after the first few hours, and I suspect that wasn't because we were too fast
Not a massive field though.
Did anyone here do it? I saw a BB jersey on the event Facebook page.
It wasn't really what I expected. It seems I entered a gravel event by mistake. I wasn't surprised to see lots of gravel bikes at the start - that's par for the course these days - but even I have to admit my full-sus was overkill for that route.
Despite that, I found it a lot tougher than I expected. There's a LOT of hills on them Moors. Evidently others struggled less with these than me, or at least had the fortitude to push on anyway, so maybe I'm just not as fit as I thought.
The first couple of hours was pretty fast up to and along the Cleveland Way, delayed only by assisting a rider who'd collided with another rider coming the other way on a narrow road and ended up covered in blood and clearly concussed
The section round the north-western edge of the Moors was the most enjoyable for me, but tough going. We made the bakery at Eskdale, which was a great stop, and the only real option except Lordstones, thus far. The terrain was a bit easier from there to the coast. We got thoroughly soaked by a torrential shower, but were about dried out by the time the second one came through, which we neatly dodged by hiding in the chip shop in Robin Hood's Bay. We left about 7, leaving us plenty of time to get to that most prized of destinations, Scalby Londis, before 11 o'clock closing. We were flagging by that point so decided to find somewhere for a kip sooner rather than later - good job, because the coffee machine was out of order.
It also seems that the done thing these days is to ride as fast as you possibly can and sleep as little as possible. Which I get is the way you win races (which, of course, this is technically not), and I've ridden in this style before, or at least tried to, but I was surprised there weren't more "more casual" riders. (I'm not just sore at being the slowest, honest). Admittedly, stopping to usher a baby hedgehog out of the road is not hardened racer etiquette
It was interesting to contrast this with the recent Tor Divide, which had a pretty even spread across that spectrum. Another thing I noticed was (I think I'm right in saying) the field was 100% male, which is pretty shocking in 2024 isn't it?
Finding a dry-ish, flat, discrete place for a bivvy wasn't easy, but the little wood after Scalby provided a decent enough spot. The rain had brought out all the slugs - anyone got any tips for getting slug trail out of Pertex?
I woke up (well, OK, became slightly more concious) with one matted into my hair, and another on the nozzle of my bottle.
We were off by 5, and my starting-to-dry feet shoes were soon returned to full squelch by a quarter-mile of trail which had been surfaced to avoid the bog fest parallel, but was so overgrown it soaked me more effectively than any bog could. Doubts were creeping as we approached Rosedale and contemplated what was still to come, but we double espressos and attacked (and cleaned) the Chimney with much gnashing of teeth, raided Hutton-le-Hole for pastries and flapjack, and resolved to get the **** on with it.
In an almost exact replay of the previous day, we got hit by two torrential downpours around 5 o'clock, and this time there was no chip shop to hide in. The nice singletrack descent to Boltby provided a welcome distraction - by far the best bit of riding on the route - and we rolled back into Thirsk in the sunshine about 6.30 to find the car where we left it, the last in the car park
My fault for making assumptions really.