RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

1999

“The best rides are the ones where you bite off much more than you can chew, and live through it.” — Doug Bradbury, MTB pioneer BikeRadar / Immediate Media

 

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CLANG ! 10 Roughstuffers, forlorn and outside our Safeways Cafe rendezvous. Without prior consultation, or permission from the RSF, opening time had, arbitrarily, been changed to 11 A.M., such effrontery, such disregard of human rights. I tell you - shar e prices will fall. Well, we did get an earlier start to our ride and not become part of the Sunday morning caffeine consuming cafe society of all such warm, seductive places. Mind you, two of our more senior members did miss their flirting, a la fenetre, with the four mature, prosperous ladies of our last visit. Hope beats eternal.
Vagabonds came from a’ the airts: Alan and John rode north from Carlisle, Peter came across country from the Minchmoor, Meg and Eddie - an hour apart - rode the high lonely roads eastwards from Lockerbie, and George came south up from Hawick as the tailpiece to his 150 mile Audax. Only one of us arrived in daylight, the rest stumbling along unfamiliar forest lanes and disused rail lines in an inky blackness, guided for the final yards by the candle in the window.  
My mother and I always know when the boys" (my father and brother John) have an attack of 'roughstuffitis’ coming on. It begins some time in May with some semi-delirious murmuring of strange names — Cape Wrath, Kinlochmoidart, Stornaway, Stack Polly, Blair Atholl, Kyle of Lochalsh — and if the name "MacBrayne" is mentioned, then we know that the attack is going to be a serious one. Then comes a rash of maps. The living room floor is covered with a carpet of different shades of brown and a few patches of green with some little blue lines running across them
The scramble that followed remained painfully vivid for a long time afterwards. The heather was a dense, tough growth, almost waist deep; underneath, the ground was all rocks, loose stones, little channels, small hummocks. The general angle was at least 45 degrees. I stumbled over ground I could only feel; the roots constantly caught at my feet, the whip-like branches held me, catapulted me forward, tore at my clothing, my knees, the dipped front wheel, which was plucked down with further disasters to my aching shoulders. Sometimes I flopped down involuntarily
The Hill Inn was open as I passed, so I didn’t! There is no point in a holiday if you are going to retain the habit of clocking-on and clocking-off. After clocking-off from the Hill Inn I rode a few miles and settled down by Gale Beck for sandwiches and a siesta (nothing to do with the beer, of course, just healthy exercise), and woke feeling like the proverbial polar bear, only too glad of the hard grind over Newbyhead Moss to restore the circulation. Then a lovely ride down Widdale and down the road to Apperset, with the Widdale Beck far below on the left.
Went down to Howgill, but the only water is at the cattle trough, so camped at 5.45 in a nice dry field on left of road near cattle trough, but it is awkward to wash, better at the one in the field on the other side of the road as it is continuously running, so water in trough is nice and clean. Fried bacon and egg, finished off with rice pudding brought from home. Wind seems to have dropped now, of course it was blowing when I had the stove on! Have now blown up lilo and got things ready for the night so will have my first look at the Telegraph crosword!

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