8am.. and off we trot to the lakes this morning for a bit of a play on the bikes. Myself, gex, viv (the one who owns the smart car that fell over), gex's dad and peter (whom none of you will know!). Stuck in traffic for a while on the M6 due to an overturned lorry just off the motorway - eventually got to Patterdale which is just near Ullswater. It was raining, pretty hard too!
Set off up the hill, and the route was a bit too steep and rocky at first - so we could ride bits of it, but had to walk a fair bit of it. The downhill bits were just as technical, but were just about rideable. Most of it was just loose, wet, rocks on very thin twisty paths with huge drops off down into the lake to the left. It was awesome
I think i was the first to fall off, having been on uphills for ages i was glad to get onto a decent downhill stretch. I got a lot of speed up (was trying to catch viv, this guy is mental downhill), then i hit a big slab of slippy rock.. bike slipped, i fell sideways, landed on my head, did a backwards roll and then planted my face in the mud just before being hit by the bike that had followed me a good few meters down the slope. I lay there for a while, at one with my bike whilst i caught my breath and checked to see if i were broken. I wasn't so carried on.
Carried on with the technical downhill rocky bits, and i fell off a good few more times - got various bruises and cuts all over, its going to be hard getting up for work tomorrow!
Unfortuneatly, gexs bike wasn't having a good day. Coming down one of the rocky bits, he put his back brake on hard and it blew a hole in one of the hyrdaulic pipes. No more rear braking! So he had to take it easy the rest of the way. Bit further down the line, his rear tire blew a hole in the sidewall... not good, not good at all. Emergency repair with some bits of spare tyre - but now his bike wasnt really safe to do the whole ride. So gex and peter turned off the main route and took the easy road back to the car park. Somewhere along there, peters pedal fell off - oops.
Myself, viv and gex's dad carried on up another bloody big hill. Had to walk some more bits of it, rode some bits - but decided agaisnt it when gexs dad fell off the path and fell quite a away down the slope. No injuries though.
We finally made it to the top, and started the massive final descent. That was fantastic fun, i had a few drama moments coming down - but again no serious injuries resulted. Viv must've flown down, literally - like i said, mental - just before he took off well into the distance, he was complaining his front brake wasn't right (we'd done a temp fix with some string earlier when he damaged the lever, luckily it wasn't leaking!)
Back in the car park, met up with peter and gex - had some food and then went off to the pub
Around about 5ish, we headed back home - all rather tired!
Theres no pictures, no camera would've survived if i had taken it - gonna try and get a map of the route though - it was around 12miles and gexs dad had a funky mappnig program that also shows the elevation against distance too - you can see how steep it is on that
Erm, yeah - thats it, thats what i've done today. awesome fun.
Set off up the hill, and the route was a bit too steep and rocky at first - so we could ride bits of it, but had to walk a fair bit of it. The downhill bits were just as technical, but were just about rideable. Most of it was just loose, wet, rocks on very thin twisty paths with huge drops off down into the lake to the left. It was awesome
I think i was the first to fall off, having been on uphills for ages i was glad to get onto a decent downhill stretch. I got a lot of speed up (was trying to catch viv, this guy is mental downhill), then i hit a big slab of slippy rock.. bike slipped, i fell sideways, landed on my head, did a backwards roll and then planted my face in the mud just before being hit by the bike that had followed me a good few meters down the slope. I lay there for a while, at one with my bike whilst i caught my breath and checked to see if i were broken. I wasn't so carried on.
Carried on with the technical downhill rocky bits, and i fell off a good few more times - got various bruises and cuts all over, its going to be hard getting up for work tomorrow!
Unfortuneatly, gexs bike wasn't having a good day. Coming down one of the rocky bits, he put his back brake on hard and it blew a hole in one of the hyrdaulic pipes. No more rear braking! So he had to take it easy the rest of the way. Bit further down the line, his rear tire blew a hole in the sidewall... not good, not good at all. Emergency repair with some bits of spare tyre - but now his bike wasnt really safe to do the whole ride. So gex and peter turned off the main route and took the easy road back to the car park. Somewhere along there, peters pedal fell off - oops.
Myself, viv and gex's dad carried on up another bloody big hill. Had to walk some more bits of it, rode some bits - but decided agaisnt it when gexs dad fell off the path and fell quite a away down the slope. No injuries though.
We finally made it to the top, and started the massive final descent. That was fantastic fun, i had a few drama moments coming down - but again no serious injuries resulted. Viv must've flown down, literally - like i said, mental - just before he took off well into the distance, he was complaining his front brake wasn't right (we'd done a temp fix with some string earlier when he damaged the lever, luckily it wasn't leaking!)
Back in the car park, met up with peter and gex - had some food and then went off to the pub
Around about 5ish, we headed back home - all rather tired!
Theres no pictures, no camera would've survived if i had taken it - gonna try and get a map of the route though - it was around 12miles and gexs dad had a funky mappnig program that also shows the elevation against distance too - you can see how steep it is on that
Erm, yeah - thats it, thats what i've done today. awesome fun.
