Yorkshire Dales forum ride from Settle, Sun 26th June

[Speicher]

Who is the good-looking one?

 

[Steve H]

The tall fat one doing a lot of walking is Steve H.

Hope that helps

I know potsy was talking in jest here, but this is a very truthful remark. I walked so much that I wore out my cleats on my shoes!! Although I've ridden more this year than I have in my entire life previously, I've not really done very much in June other than eat, drink and be merry. Boy did I suffer. Huge amount of walking done yesterday - more than on any other ride I've been on. Even found myself having to take breathers from the walking I was that knackered especially towards the end.

Definitely need to use this ride as a kick up the arse for riding more often and losing some weight! Glad I came though. Great to see such a massive turnout of varied characters.

 

[colly]

Who is the good-looking one?

tsk tsk........as if you need to ask. That would be me.

 

[potsy]

tsk tsk........as if you need to ask. That would be me.

I thought she must be looking at a different set of photos to me

Big Steve- You know I was only joking pal, well done on getting out there

 

[colly]

Next time Potsy, next time!!! You will have to suffer like the rest.

Edited to include:

I thought it was just me that had caught the sun. Odd then that we didn't see much of it. Last night my face looked like I had been on a beach soaking up the rays.

 

[ColinJ]

Pennine-Paul - I hope your wife gets well soon. That illness sounds really nasty.

Colly, they always say that UV rays can penetrate a lot of cloud and I think yesterday was one of those days. I was plastered in Factor 30 yet I still caught the sun. Also, we did have quite a few sunny spells over the course of the day.

 

[ColinJ]

Definitely need to use this ride as a kick up the arse for riding more often and losing some weight! Glad I came though. Great to see such a massive turnout of varied characters.

I feel the same way. I don't mind suffering a bit, but that was getting a bit too hard!

 

[zacklaws]

whoever designed the hydraulic braking system on the tandem, knows his stuff.

You mean that "Thing" had brakes, I thought it was just out of control.

There does seem to be an awful lot of pics of Colin walking though, did you ride up any of the hills?

The reason being, I'm not one of the fittest, so most people beat me to the top so I could not get no "Sweat and Blood" shots of them labouring up the hills, and Colin was always at the back, rounding us up so that no one was able to dodge the hills on his masochistic route.

One scary moment was after we left Hawes, and the Heavens opened up on us, Colin mentioned that we would have to come back down again till it stopped, I took one look at the hill and thought, if I climb that, there's no way I'm coming back down again to do it again, even though I might get struck by lightening at least it would be quick and swift and not the 32 minutes of suffering to travel 3.4 miles from turning off the main road at Hawes to the top of the climb of Fleet Moss.

If you look carefully though at the shots of us all at the top of Fleet Moss, that's not rain running down the road but sweat.

Most of the shots are slightly blurred, that's because I could not hold the camera still from shaking so much from the exertations of those hillsl.

The Dent Station climb took 36 and a 1/2 minutes to just travel 3.55 miles

My Maximum speed was 41.9mph, I was a bit reluctant to let loose with being unknown roads, and thanks to the Garmin, I could see them hair pins coming up, two of them would have caught me out near Settle towards the end as they was hidden till you was on top of them, plus my brake pads were a bit too worn out or so I thought, I changed them this afternoon and they was not as bad as they looked with still plenty of life in them, maybe I just had a build up of Silicone polish on my rims as I do spray it every where when I polish the bike.

I cannot even believe the only pic I'm in, Will aimed high, I think to get the rain clouds and missed my new £219 shoes, I'm gutted

Temperature wise, my Garmin recorded a maximum of 30C and that was just on that " Little Gentle Slope" as I almost got to Dent Station, an Avg of 21.5 and the minimum recorded was on Fleet Moss in the rain shower at 15C.

The local weather stations had a maximum of 23.6 and an Avg of 21.8

Anyway I'm out for this weekend as I have to work nights so it will be just a short club run for me

 

[ColinJ]

Colin was always at the back, rounding us up so that no one was able to dodge the hills on his masochistic route.

You are being too kind. If I'd been capable of leading from the front on those climbs, I would have done!

One scary moment was after we left Hawes, and the Heavens opened up on us, Colin mentioned that we would have to come back down again till it stopped, I took one look at the hill and thought, if I climb that, there's no way I'm coming back down again to do it again, even though I might get struck by lightening at least it would be quick and swift and not the 32 minutes of suffering to travel 3.4 miles from turning off the main road at Hawes to the top of the climb of Fleet Moss.

You definitely wouldn't want to be up there in a thunderstorm; there is aboslutely no shelter and you'd be one the highest things for miles around and therefore a lightning magnet! Fortunately, the conditions didn't turn thundery.

Thankfully, the rain that fell on us wasn't that cold. I got caught in a heavy summer rain shower once where the water temperature was almost at freezing point. I went from sweating in the sun to shaking so violently with cold that I could no longer ride my bike. That was pretty scary!

The Dent Station climb took 36 and a 1/2 minutes to just travel 3.55 miles

My Maximum speed was 41.9mph, I was a bit reluctant to let loose with being unknown roads.

You've got me curious now. I'll upload my GPS tracklog and see just how slow I was ...

Okay ... I took 51 minutes on the Dent station climb (including back-stretching and photo breaks), 47 minutes on Fleet Moss (including a stop to take my rain-sodden glasses off, another to take a call from Shaun, and then walking the top bit) and my top speed was the same as yours - 68 kph/42 mph.

 

[zacklaws]

You are being too kind. If I'd been capable of leading from the front on those climbs, I would have done!

That's an excellent idea Colin for the "encore" next year, you go ahead and when you get to the top of the hill at Dent Station and find no ones behind you, its because we will all have turned off route again and be carbo loading in that pub beer garden again.

 

[evilclive]

Maybe we should do the route in reverse one day, just to see if there was more uphill than downhill

I know it's obviously a cop-out, but if doing it in reverse Stainforth-Halton Gill means you get to descend Littondale, which is gorgeous. Cop-out because it's basically up then down, max 16% at the beginning, rather than up then down then up then down then up then down, two of the ups being 25%. And the descent is nicer.

(Kingsdale is better the other way than the way we did. Less sure about Fleet Moss now - at least it gets it over with from Hawes, rather than up all the way from Littondale, even though the descent is slower)

 

[IG88]

BTW thanks to whoever it was noted that my back wheel was out of true. I knew that for some reason the back wheel wasn't quite in the middle of the forks although the axle was fully in the dropouts but on the way back the rear brake began to bind and I realised that the back wheel was getting worse. So a gingerly descent of the rather rough road back to Kendal and the bike will be going in for some TLC from Hewitts.

You're welcome, I hope it's a quick and cheap fix.

 

[zacklaws]

You've got me confused Clive, so if we go the other way, its up down up down up as opposed to down up down up down the way we went or was it the other way?. But there again it would help if I knew where I'd been to start with. I've still got to check the ridden route to see where I have been on the day.

 

[Bokonon]

ps. I have a spare glove in the van so it's either Will's or Calum's.

If it is a faded blue Altura right hand glove then it is mine! Can I come and collect it at some time?

 

[ColinJ]

I probably won't be doing a ride as hard as that again this year. I don't want to do it again (either way round) until I'm fit enough to do enjoy the suffering more, if you get what I mean!

Even if I work hard, that would take months and then the weather might be getting pretty bad, and the days will be much shorter.

If some of you do go and tackle the route in reverse, let us know how you get on!

I will be doing a ride from Hebden Bridge on Sunday though. It will be nearer 60 miles and the hills will be smaller, though still numerous. I'll start a thread soon, but I thought I'd just let you know now. I haven't decided on the exact route yet. If you are free on Sunday, come and join me. It will be a 10:00 start, and we will probably get back around 17:30.