Crew: EL Pres, Butty, Troll, Dunc, Stunt, 3 Sheds<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Route: MC, zig zags, charity, extension, tea rooms, cat, axe edge moor, back entry to 2 shires, cut thorne, cumberland clough, cumberland brook, standing stone, LHS, Sutton Hall<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conditions: Cool, cloudy, dry<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stunt’s been away for a while but is back with a bang to take ops leadership and get the team to start early and go big to take advantage of the dry trails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weather is ideal from the no wind and no precipitation, but is reminding us that it’s still only April by having cloudy skies and single digit temperatures! Dark mutterings from those with big building projects about to kick off that the long dry spell will end and rain and winds will reappear just as the roof work is started…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rour of six make the 5:30 start with a cheeky ride by from PTD to wish us well, with Dunc playing catch up while we do the zig zags, and 3 Sheds starting an hour later with a view to a classic route that should RV with us on chumby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pace is sensible, and Dunc joins us neatly at the end of the Zag, getting extra man points for riding after being up till 5am with a “failed deployment”, and fell running the previous 2 nights!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
View from the start of Charity so poor you can’t even see Manchester! cloud plenty high enough, just very murky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ideal conditions for the RHS of chazza, Butty heads off the front as chief eC*~@t having joked about doing stakeside as well. Somewhat weird to see our regular rocky trail so dry and very pale, no sign of Butty at Forest Chapel, so we head straight on down the extension – super sketchy! and then the long climb up from Bottom of the Oven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Stanley Arms attitude is firmly on display with two large hand written signs saying SORRY NO DOGS, hmmm not sorry at all methinks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still no sign of Butty as we pull into the tea rooms for a breather, as we wait for a waft of 4G to decipher his live location from 15 minutes prior, he pops up behind us. He has tales to tell of flying insects getting inside his shirt and onto his back – necessitating a rapid dismount at the side of the trail, removal of backpack and clothing and wild flapping. To add insult to injury once back on the bike he overcooked part of the lower section of Chazza and ended up in a spiky bush!! Which would explain the copius scratches, including a nasty looking one on his throat. As he complete’s his tale he then discovers his water bottle has fallen off to boot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extra layers on, and rear blinkies deployed for the road section from the Cat to the Axe Edge turn – Dunc’s telemetry indicating a chilly 4 degrees! Warmed a little by the climb up the minor road to the bridleway we have reached our outward objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Internal route map memories are searched for waypoint triggers, and the low walled compound on the top of Cheeks Hill does the job, soon we are on the fast slight downhill to the double track, the wiggly road and the jump next to the stream onto the offroad. WAIT!!! Butty just manages to stop in time as the little jump has become a 3 foot monster since we last came this way, He does however impress with the slightly less severe right hand side of it…and we follow in his dusty wake all the way down to 3 Shires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stunt has brought us some authentic cuban Chachanchara to toast his upcoming birthday, the mix of white rum, honey and lime juice is rather fine (albeit deceptively strong!) it’s followed with some cuban peanut brittle (about the only sugary snack you can buy there!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No time to hang about though, and Cutthorne ascent proved quite sapping with the extra dry sand and loose rocks (and nothing at all to do with having already done lots of riding and had rum!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are pleased to see the Tarmac at the top, have a slightly bizarre encounter with an american tying to shoo lambs back into a field by reversing his old audi extremely slowly back uphill away from them whilst asking us to wait. We then advance as instructed and the little blighters go in the opposite field under the wire!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon Chumby hoves into view and as we turn into the gate, perfectly on schedule is 3 Sheds! spooky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More loose and gritty descending all the way to the bottom, Chumby Brook a mere damp patch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tired legs on the climb to standing stone (I seem to write this very regularly)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fracturing of the team at the top – Butty heads back to lower Chazza to retrieve his bottle, Dunc and Stunt freewheel down to the pub, and the rest do the RHS tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sutton hall rather quiet, serious debate about which was the best pint – the Siren looked very dodgy but got a lot of votes, Millenium looked dark and smooth, and of course Lucan was light and lovely as ever. El Pres causes controversy with a request to swap the Mash with his sausage for chips, BUT KEEPING THE GRAVY, and then asking for VINEGAR TOO!!! well each to their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A large group of other MTB’ers arrive a bit later on, and it’s clear that we need to up our banter level tonight as we have serious competition. With most of them being eC’s they have more left in the tank than we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Butty’s “throatcut” scratch is treated to an antiseptic wipe, which shows up how infrequently we use our first aid kits (a good thing) he politely declines the disney princess bandage from Dunc \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ride stats suggest it’s a munro night from Poynton, but not quite from Tythy with 914m being the magic number, and 850ish not quite enough. Still it’s been good to get further afield, and the ops plan for a 9pm table worked out well, and no lights needed pre pub (a couple were put on for traffic visibility at standing stone)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Serious restraint is shown as no puddings are taken, three do do a Whisky before a chilly ride home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The season of long light rides is properly underway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crew: EL Pres, Butty, Troll, Dunc, Stunt, 3 Sheds Route: MC, zig zags, charity, extension, tea rooms, cat, axe edge moor, back entry to 2 shires, cut thorne, cumberland clough, cumberland brook, standing stone, LHS, Sutton Hall Conditions: Cool, cloudy, dry Notes: Stunt’s been away for a while but is back with a bang to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tnrs-2022"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4720,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions\/4720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}