For a Few Hills More

The ride was programmed as hilly and so a large turnout was not expected. The mountain bike section had just completed a hard 30 miles or so off-road the previous day and it was now obvious who the masochists were amongst them. They limped into Richmond car park with numerous excuses for potentially being the slowest rider on today's ride even before it had started, not much change here then, only the fact that the sun was shining and the dream that they would surely be knackered by tomorrow accounted for their attendance.

Paul C, had turned up with jet lag, but sporting a road bike he was out to enjoy himself (Masochists and big gears and all that). Tim got off to a bad start; in fact he was left talking in the car park and needed to be rescued from Liz and Lillian who were going to do their own private ride. Dave, Judith and Peter found the first hill towards Marske a wee bit telling on the legs, might as well remind you that they had been on yesterday's mountain bike ride as they reminded us a lot of times themselves throughout the ride.

The second hill out of Marske toward Fremington was equally well appreciated and as we all gathered again to look over Swaledale towards the road over Greets Moss to Redmire I think everyone realised that would be our next little challenge. Roly had conserved his energy and was able to recall the part numbers and cost prices of many of the vintage car parts belonging to the numerous vintage cars that were now descending the hill we had just climbed.

Apparently it is still cost effective to maintain these cars (according to Roly) or else he has a relative that pays him good commission if he sells a few to unsuspecting friends who are out of breath and hallucinating at the fact that they appear to be in a time warp. We all decided that we needed food and more oxygen before we made any rash decisions about purchasing 1935ish best of British motors and so headed for Bolton Castle (another old British symbol) for a caf‚ stop. The two groups met again here for food as the hilly ride met the private ride and of course the amount of food eaten bared no resemblance to the amount of exercise required to reach this destination.

Having refuelled at Bolton castle the original idea of going into Askrigg before climbing back over into Swaledale was abandoned, not entirely because we took the short cut right just outside Askrigg to climb over Summer lodge back into Swaledale. We were getting fantastic views today and this made the effort all the more worthwhile. Val and Tony fresh from a couple of weeks training in Spain with our professional cyclist friend from Stoke-on-Trent began to show there stamina now and managed to talk all the way up the hill. Descending to Low Row my bike did manage to throw me over the handlebars at one point, but all in slow motion and nobody really noticed so an ice cream in Reeth was now a priority. We lingered quite a while in the sunshine and voted upon taking the low road back to Richmond, because after all the mountain bikers had had a hard day cycling 30 mile off-road yesterday and it wasn't easy (etc. etc.).

Thanks everyone for a great turnout.

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	Swaledale Outdoor Club