Napier and the Eskdale forrest

Was in Napier the last couple of days the place is the Art deco capital after it was destroyed by a massive earthquake in 1950 i think its a cool place on the east coast right next to the beach. I camped at the Top 10 Campsite again and met a guy called stephan from South Africa, he worked in the gold mines and was sound as!! we got bevveyed up and just talked shit like you do when your drunk.
The weather was sound i went up to the Eskdale forest mountain bike tracks and had a blast there.. The tracks are well good and its an easy ride up the road to get to the top.
The Dh tracks are steep and fast technical with some big jumps road gaps and drop offs it's a bit like Ae forest mixed with Hamsterley.

I had a couple off crashes and sliced my left fuck you finger cause i thought it would be alright if i never had my gloves on what a prick iam..Im leaving tomorrow for Wellington and that should be good as the MTB tracks there are supposed to be technical and tight.

Descend Hamsterley Winter Series Rnd 1

First i should apologise for the delay in this post as the event was last week but I've had one of those weeks when it feels like you have been busy as hell but when you actually look back on your week you haven't done that much at all.....so sorry for my laziness..

The Descend Hamsterley Winter Series Rnd 1 is the first part of 3rnds downhill mountain biking in witch you can gain points and use to enter the coming NPS (National Points Series) and also to keep you biking during the crappy weather.

I rocked up on the Friday night to a place called frosterley where i would be staying with Jammy a lad who i had met in France this year doing the Megaavalanche, I met his father then the two of us headed to the local pub for a pint and a game of pool to catch up on things, while we were in the pub we got asked if we wanted to enter into a raffle for a mixed grill! we were both up for it until we found out you only won the meat, so that meant cooking the grill yourself!! bollocks to that. We got ourselves loaded up on Noby's peanuts and headed home for an early night.

Saturday morning we headed to Hamsterley where I met Ed and Andy 2 other lads who i had met in France Andy would be staying with us at Jammy's so that was good also i met up again with Rob Young whom i had also met in France through ED , Callum,Bonga and Ross locals on the NPS And SDA scene who i had met through a mate .

 The weather was pretty bleak, it had been pouring don during the night there was grey cloud covering the sky but spirits were high and i was eager to get on the track and start riding. After a few runs i was soaked and covered in mud but was starting to get the hang of the lower section with it's rock garden, drop offs and off camber shoots. After about 3 runs i decided to really let go and see how i felt doing a full run at almost race speed, so off i went pedalling like a maniac on the first section which is like a big freeride section with lots of pedaling some berms, drops, rock sections and massive 28ft table finished off by no brainier road gap and onto the fun stuff (Well the kinda stuff i like) mud, rocks and roots. I came into the Woods fast and made it over the roots no problem then headed onto the rock sections which I was finding pretty grippy and made some good speed on this section i hit a couple of drops and felt good, i tried to take one corner to fast and made a mess of and tried to sort myself out for the next section of drops but came up short and ended up over the handle bars to everyones amusement watching Ha Ha Ha (not!!) I picked the bike up and realised i had bent the axle in my pedal and ended up doing he rest of the track on one pedal.

Although this is a short course due to the landscape  the guys down at Hamsterley need a massive pat on the back as the tracks are great fun and technically challenging, Well done lads.

 

By mid afternoon everyone had done about 4 runs and the weather was very poor it had started raining and people were heading home early as the track and the conditions were worsoning (pussy's) and people were making more mistakes or just sick of not being able to see out there goggles, i took mine off after as i found it was a lot easier to see what was going on although with the first section being fast and pedally and the weather being cold sometimes it made your eye's water and that's not a good thing!!!

I got going again about 13:30 and after damaging my pedal changed from flats to SPD's, my first run down my brakes were making an awful noise but i disregarded it as grit and grime in-between the pads and disc, I had a crap run crashing through a barrier on the track with my mate Callum standing watching, i felt like a wright mincer!! My next couple of runs went OK and i was starting to feel comfortable in my SPD's again.

My brakes were starting to sound even worse and the last run or two i was sure that they weren't stopping me as well as they were in the morning, however the end of the day was upon us as the dark sky's called and early stop to the day due to low light. 

So it was 3pm and time to head home.  While getting ready to leave the weather suddenly changed and turned bitterley cold, then, it started snowing everyone was rushing to get into there vans non  more so than Callum, Ross and bonga 3 mates who were camping the weekend and i had lent my Genny and heater too.

On Saturday night Andy,Jammy and myself  went to the local pub and met up with Bonga and the boys for some grub then us three were heading into Darlington to see the first showing of 3Focus which turned out to be OK but not what i had expected, still good though.

That night the snow lashed down and i was certain the race would be cancelled but Jammy was a bit more optimistic. 

Come the morning the Race was cancelled as the weather was as low as -3 and the roads were covered in snow which made it almost impossible to get someone out safely if they were injured.

Some people stayed and rode the top section which was OK, so a few of us stayed and watched for a bit along with Danny Hart (Team Lappiere) who Callum was winding up to get his bike out and style it on the big table top but his Dad wouldn't let him lol.We were just about to head off went this guy rode down and started puling massive whips no hander's and a superman everyone was buzzing so it was a good way to end a poor day due to the weather.

Cheviot tester

Learmonth and myself tackle a night on Lamb hill.

We decided to head up into the cheviots a couple of weeks ago just for 1 night to test our map reading, weather endurance and to overall, get back into the swing of things up on the hills. 

We decide that Saturday the 15th was the best time for the both of us so the date was set and i was buzzing to get out there for the night. We set off from Berwick at 13:30 and was at Byrness for about 15:00 this is where we would start from en-route to the refuge hut on lamb hill about 9miles away. We both had day sacks with enough gear just in-case something went wrong, if something is going to go wrong it's usually the short trips where you might just switch off a bit.

We set off at 15:15 and joined the Pennine way, the going was good and the route is well sign posted so there was nothing to worry about we just bimbled on buzzing to be out there. You get a good view of the reservoir to your let and immediately to your right is the military's otterburn training ground (a no go zone). As we went on the light started to fade away and the wind picked up dropping the temperature to around 6 above it started raining to so out came the jackets but it never lasted long. After 2 hours walking the light was gone and what was a comfortable walk with signposts marking the route became an altogether different occasion. We decided to give ourselves a challenge by not using torches to see where we were going and only having the use of the map with no compass or GPS allowed. After passing the roman ruins the going got tough the ground underfoot become riddled with marsh outcrops, also the map reading became hard as the place is so bleak and it was dark. We plodded on struggling to keep on course due to the wide marsh areas, we pulled the map out at a cairn and found the track again we were about 2km away from the refuge hut on lamb hill to north and feelings were good. We set off again and 20min in we lost the track in a huge marsh area, we presumed that where we were on the map we should be veering off to the righ slightlyt as the track did on the map so we spread out a bit to see if we could pick up the track, we found a well walked track and decided that it was the one we were looking for so again we walked on. After walking for about 20min we stopped at a fence line and looked at each other both thinking the same thing.....we are not in the right place...We decided to get the compass out and see whats what, when we saw that the compass was pointing south we never believed it so we got the spare out, again the compass showed we were heading south it was time to get a grid reference so we powered up the Garmin and once it had a fix it had accuracy to within 6meters of our location. Once we had the grid we checked it to the map and couldn't believe where it was putting us on the map and the place where it had put us we did not want to believe as there was no fence line showing on the map. The fence looked allot older than the map so again we were confused and disorientated, we decided to believe the gear (as you always should) and took a bearing to the refuge hut from where we were we decide that we should pace out 100m then check our Garmin again and it confirmed that we were heading towards the refuge hut we carried on and made the refuge hut about 30min later after crossing more marshy ground.

The refuge hut on Lamb is small approx 12ft x 8ft wide and placed in the centre of a saddle, 

In the hut we got the wet gear off and hung it up. After that we got the food on the go i had spicy meatballs and Craig had soup and something else i cant remember, once sorted we got into our Baggies chatted for a bit about what had went on then crashed out for the night.

In the morning the weather was great and the temperature was 4'C so it was nippy but OK. We packed up had a brew took a picture and left the hut around 8am. We walked along the pennine way to the cairn we had been at the night before and realised where we had gone wrong, we checked the map at this point and kicked ourselves for being to confident the night before and just assuming we were going in the wright direction. After a good walk and nice weather we got back to Byrness around about 11:30-12:00am and headed home.

If the weather had changed that night when we were lost things could of been allot worse for us, you should never try and feel your way around the hills especially in an area so bleak as the Cheviot's.

Lessons learned from a one nighter:

• When it gets dark get the map & compass and walk to a bearing and always check it.
• Always trust your equipment and always carry a back up compass.
• Never assume anything.
• No matter how short the walk a good route card would of made the difference.
• And always carry hot chocolate it makes all the difference.