20°C, brisk SW, sunny.
Steady ride over the beach grasses and a chat with a Spanish traveller.
Green machines.
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Author Archives: essiep
Valhalla
19°C, wet start but brighter now.
Intermittent faults are tricky to diagnose. On the off-chance, I tried my record deck today and it works perfectly. I’ve not switched it on all summer because it would not run up to speed. It’s as though the motor is running on one channel only. Chris Brookes thought the Valhalla board may be at fault, but perhaps it’s a connection that is intermittent.
Warm wind.
21°C, strong S, strong sun
Another short ride.
9 mile warmup.
22°C, S breeze, full sun.
Fixed gear ride and some moderate hills via Dalton. Excellent coffee at Twin Lakes Velo., But it didn’t return all of the energy I wanted.
12 mile warmup.
22°C, bright warm sunshine.
This photo is looking back towards Rivington where I have spent the last 5 days working on NCS
I’ve not ridden any bike for nearly a week now. This ride totalled approximately 32 miles, but it took me 12 miles to warm up. For most of my adult life, I’ve reckoned on 8 miles to warm up (or 1/2 an hour, whichever comes first). Perhaps the long warmup results from the long interval off cycling.
NCS, Wave 2: Bibby’s Farm
Warm and storms are promised.
Less walking this week but we’re assigned to work with a single group each. Fortunately, my group are very likable.
Day 2: a Tuesday: walking with the delightful Team 4. They are strong and set a good pace so I took them up Rivington Pike. The pace! They motored along but our timing was unfortunate. The Pike is quite exposed to the thunderstorm that hit the summit. Within a few minutes I got them off the hill.
Tuesday night: I go home – it’s my turn to cook supper. The cohort (Wave 6) had a rough night with heavy downpours associated with passing thunder clouds.
Wednesday (d3) was spent mostly making the camp good after the deluge. Water ran like a stream through the catering marquee (photo). We moved and cleaned tents and dried the kids’ kit. My Group 4 went out climbing.
Thursday (day 4): warm morning with some reduction in the field’s waterlogging. That was all undone in the afternoon. Several thundery showers returned the ground to it’s appalling squelchy state. At least my lovely group said they had a good day out in watersports. I wished I could be with them but useful work needed doing at camp.
The evening saw a few more showers which put me in a dilemma, should I drive home for the night? My own tent was reasonably dry, so I stayed.
Friday: packing up. Overnight, the kiddiewonks (Wipies) were moved to the barn to sleep. They were, however, cold. Many have awfully thin sleeping bags, some marked as one-season. Pretty much, no insulation then.
The coaches arrived early to take them home, and started boarding at 11am. My lovely group were on the 3rd coach and each came over for a parting hug (and handshakes from the lads)! That made my day.
Heavy washout.
18°C, heavy rain.
All day. There are met office warnings of possible flooding. We’ve been spoilt by fine days this summer, I really fancy a bike ride today. Off to the garage to skulk around mending and servicing.
Later … A respite:
The tracks were dotted with puddles, often overlapping leaving the bike splattered with mud.
NCS week 1, the hot one.
29°C, hot humid sun and some thunder.
A week with 4 coach loads of kids from Northamptonshire doing NCS. They are divided up into teams of about a dozen, most of whom have never met before. Each team is coordinated by team leaders who are usually ex NCS ‘Young People’.
They do various outdoorsy activities like climbing, water sports and I do hiking with a team each day. We, as leaders get to see them develop confidence over the week. That’s something some kids need a break from their usual social circle in order to do.
For myself, I get to walk 8+ miles each day and the working environment is comfortable. We’ve had a hot and very humid week so I chose to sleep in my tent. For me, this is the way to get a good night’s sleep, it’s cooler than the huts..
40 fixed miles.
22°C, grey cloud with occasional sun.
I could ride this bike all day, unless it’s windy. Though my legs are getting sore, that turgid feeling has gone. Rides like this remind me of a the way we can take several days to warm up to exercise.
The last three days adds up to 100 miles. Result.
DofE 19: Milton Keynes.
22°C bright sunny after an early shower.
A long drive for one day’s work. On paper, not a good return for my time. The time was made worse by many traffic jams, a lorry blocking the M42 roundabout, soon followed by a 3 car pile-up and finally another broken down lorry. The average speed was 11mph. I set off allowing 1 hour extra but lost that before I even reached the motorway. My arrival was 1/2 late. The team was sympathetic.
Anyway, we spent the day with groups on a rota learning basic skills 1, mapping; 2, Tents; 3, cooking; 4, first aid. I did the mapping. The groups varied in their concentration which led to a slightly different approach with each group. The latter ones were set a chellenge where they listed grid references, direction and distances on 3+ legs and the other team had to identify place names they had listed. In other words, make a simple route card. Then the maps lists were swapped to the next table on the right to be solved by the next group.
That done right at the end of summer term; they were obviously in need to a summer holiday. Some were due to fly abroad tomorrow and others simply looked worn out.
The company I was working for seemed really good so I intend to sign up with them because they do lots of DofE expeditions nearer to home. I’d like to cut down on the number of very long drives that I do currently. Let’s see if I can be more canny with these trips in future.
Micycle 