Fail!
It didn't quite work out how I had hoped. A catalogue of school boy errors, and some minor misfortune...
I ended up leaving Middleton Top at 13:22 on Wednesday, due to working until late the night before, and packing in the morning. Ended up leaving tired after not much sleep, hungry and wearing damp cycling kit due it going in the wash accidentally! felt rushed and a bit stressed all morning. I'd changed some bits on the bike as I'm halfway through building up a 29er. Stupidly I'd not really ridden my existing bike in its new guise, urrgh. who'd have thought stem length and bar width would make so much difference
like I say. school. boy. errors.
as we drove up the hill to MT it started to rain. As it turns out it didn't stop until early afternoon the next day.
I made good time, but not pushing too hard through out the rest of the afternoon. Encountered some really very sticky mud which jammed both wheels solid - I had to drag the bike! It was reminiscent of Mountain Mayhem, second lap this year if anyone remembers that. eeek.
i kept going until a detour in glossop to visit a Chinese takeaway under the big railway bridge. Rode on for a few more KMs, still in the rain but as I gained height it became claggy (that's misty if any southerners are reading!) and visibility was very poor, it was 9pm by now so I though an earlier than planned overnight stop would be sensible. stopped at a large flat spot at GR 004996 about 1 mile before Brushes Country Park. you could fit a lot of tarps in this spot.
Unfortunately it was very still all night and was UNBELIEVABLY midgy. :( All night.
:( I have rarely encountered so many. And yes I have been to Scotland, many times. :D In the morning it took me a loooong time to pack up the tarp and other kit as I had to run around to avoid the worst of them lest I loose my mind!
it was still raining and claggy and I trundled on. Feeling pretty tired I kept shoving down the food I had with me, but really fancying something warm. I seemed to be passing places at the wrong time, either too late the night before or too early that day. One problem with the constant rain was that my Iphone (which I run memorymap on) wouldn't work properly. Not because the phone was wet but because the amount of water on the outer case seemed to stop the touch screen from working properly, the first time I had encountered this issue. anyway, I can summarise the rest of the long morning as Rain, more rain, Mud, more mud - the really gritty stuff that seemed to get everywhere. this all led to increasing levels of type 2 fun (maybe even 2.5 at times) and I was thinking there was no way i could handle another two days of this...
I was doing it as last minute training for the BB200 and figured that as I was no longer enjoying it, plus the fact the 'training' ride was about 50% longer/harder the what I was training for. Led me to feel that an abandonment was the sensible course of action.
So in the end I bottled it, bailing out and backtracking to get to Roachdale station (which it tuns out is very conveniently located for the mary townley loop!)
The good news is that as I've got the rest of the weekend off I can work on the new build, and should have it done to ride at the BB200 (and before a few times....
) in the 24 hours I was out for I rode 145km and 4000 odd metres of ascent, having been stopped for 10 of those, so it ended up being quite a good training ride after all.
