Well, I feel a bit more alive after having two night's sleep in one go!
I'd had a bit of a rough week and wasn't particularly well, so our planned camping trip to Whitby didn't quite happen, although the Cub and I did get to go for the last night of camping at a relative's place up in Ingleby Arncliffe. So my ride prep consisted of spending Wednesday night baking and getting camping kit together, Thursday was catching a train and riding (carting camping kit) to IA, setting up camp, getting fed enormous amounts of delicious food and a couple of glasses of wine, then attempting to sleep in a howling gale in a small tent with the cub and his cousin, who appear to have a not-insignificant quantity of octupus DNA, be made of 90% wriggle and to have more than the usual quota of knees and elbows each. Then, after cooking up scrambled eggs on a camping stove, drinking enough strong coffee to float a ship, packing everything up and riding back to Northallerton station into a howling headwind whilst considering whether I felt in any way up to riding through the night later that day. After a few hours sleep I emerged from my pit, feeling fuzzy, still somewhat hungover and ever so slightly dubious about the whole idea, and was feeling a bit
already when Kim posted that the Knee really wasn't going to be up for this one - which was indeed a ride of many dodgy knees, what with Tigerbiten, Tiermat, MrCharly and Deano all suffering a bit too!
Then the first vistor arrived - it was lovely to meet (and feed builder's tea to) Tigerbiten for the first time. A couple of hours later TimO appeared, somewhat later than he had hoped. Kettles were boiled, much tea and coffee made. Over the course of the evening I discovered that our house can squeeze in an extra 9 cyclists (so long as they don't all want to sit down at the same time) and that you can just about squeeze 3 bikes into the yard and get an extra couple of bikes and a 'bent in the front room and still get through the door - I wonder what that could mean for n+1? More coffee and tea, much cake. Shortly after the arrival of Deano, Tiermat and Slowcoach I decided that I probably ought to change out of my jeans if I was actually going to go, which I think probably counted as a decision to not bail before the start. Mr Bunbury turned up to join us for the trip to the station and wave us off, and collect the camping stuff that I'd borrowed. At one point a slightly sleep-befuddled smallest cub wandered downstairs, took one look at the assembled mob, and burst into tears. I made a silly mistake, trying to reassure him by introducing him to various people - obviously what I should have done was introduce him to tom_e's 'bent. Silly mummy. He didn't fancy joining us for a night ride, so I shovelled him back into his bed, said night night to Dearly_Beloved and joined in the general untangling of bike and funnelling them out of our front door. Slightly shockingly, although I managed to distribute 3 sorts of cake among the assembled personages, I had to deploy the secret storage capacities of the amazing expandable Topeak rack pack and carry some of my own cake!
At the station we found the remaining Yorkies, Arch and MrCharly, together with the 'best costume of the night' winner, McShroom, who I possibly met before on the Cleethorpes ride and Uncle Phil, who I definitely met on the that one. A pleasant meander out of York, along the river path, where Mr Bunbury waved goodbye, and through Heslington took us to Hull Road (look out for the Daleks!), Grimston Bar roundabout and the A166 towards Stamford Bridge. One of the lovely things about starting a night ride from York is that it's only a matter of minutes to get out of the street lights and traffic. Surprisingly soon we were at the Buttercrambe turning, and off into the lanes - no howling wolves this time though. The night was surprisingly warm and the wind pushed us along through the flatlands at a nice easy pace that even I could keep up with. At a roadside stop to gather the masses together I decided it was just too warm for my Scarborough-level of clothing (a vest top and a fleece) so I joined Tigerbiten in the 'wear a t-shirt for night-riding in October' gang, which I was glad of as (by my standards) there were some not-flat bits on the way to Malton - nothing scary, but not exactly flat and it was quite warm work.
Soon enough the bright lights of Malton were visible below us. Down into town, where we gathered up again (and I took advantage of the stop to root around in the rackpack for paracetemol to contend with the slightly irritating nagging headached that I've had for about a week, and which wasn't helped by the tailend of the hangover)before crossing the railway line, over the bridge and along Castlegate, slightly surprising a solitary late-night drunk. Being very law-abiding we got split up slightly when the last few stopped at the red light, and fortunately someone waited round the corner and called down a warning about the ambulance with flashing blues and no siren coming towards the junction and so we avoided an emergency vehicle/trike incident when the green light came on and the ambulance jumped its red.
Out of Malton onto the A169, crossing the junction with the A64 where the unaccustomed sight of a few headlights in the distance made me realise quite how little traffic we'd encountered. The tootle along to Pickering was indeed flat and straightforward, and perfect for night riding - I guess it gets a fair bit busier in the day. Through Pickering, which always seems like such a terribly nice town to me, I was reminded of Wowbagger's comment that there's something very appealing about riding through the night past all those houses full of sleeping sensible people. The empty lanes and dark countryside are lovely, but I quite like the occasional contrast of silent towns where you are reminded that most normal people are tucked up in bed - it makes the night-riding feel slightly subversive and just a bit naughty. Then it was steady away towards a nice cuppa. As I may have stated once or twice, there are no hills. However, some of the optical illusions went on for quite a long time. I realised that one of my front lights had stopped working leaving me with just the one which was fine on the ups, but when I saw many red lights disappearing in a "brow of the hill" manner rather than just a "you're so slow" way I decided not to wait until the brew up stop and stopped to swap batteries, only managing to drop one bit in so doing and I found it again quickly enough.
I was very impressed with the quality of the service for 3am-ses - Deano even took my hot beverage order whilst cycling along before heading off to stick the kettle on! Tiermat was waiting on one of the climbs with an encouraging call of "mile and a half to a brew" - the dragon he speaks with forked tongue, as I'm sure it was further than that, but soon enough we spotted the collection of red lights, and Mcshroom (if memory serves) waving a light to point to the entrance to the car park. Uncle Phil was indulging in an Audaxer's nap on the verge, Tiermat was soon doing battle with a wonky mudguard, and many people were boiling water for a brew - the advantage of being slow up the hills is that all this was well under way before I put in an appearance. It was slightly breezy - I put my scarf and fleece back on, and even zipped it up, but even more shockingly Tigerbiten was witnessed ADDING a LAYER! More cake, including an exceptionally nice bananananananana and ginger loaf made by Mrs T, and a very welcome cup of coffee was consumed. I think we had a choice of 7 sorts of cake among us. I too was offered a little tot of something, but the idea of boozahol was not a welcome one since I was only just starting to feel the cotton wool head clearing.... With relatively little faffing we were out on the road again, possibly because the best way to avoid the wind was to travel with it. There were a number of entertaingly bendy and stabby downhills, but I think Arch is right in that the upwards bits of the optical illusions were generally of the slow but steady variety - although, in a somewhat shocking inversion of normal reality Tiermat (who was suffering from an injury due to an accidental leg/windowsill interface earlier in the week and from having got far too cold at the tea stop) actually decided to cross train for a bit of one, so for the first time ever I got to do the gentlemanly thing and hopped off to keep him company. I'm sure normal service, with everyone waiting for me, will be restored by the next time. We started to encounter the odd bit of early traffic, most of it somewhat perplexed by encountering random cyclists complete with glowing skulls, pumpkins and disembodied hands adorning their steeds.
Then there was the grand gathering up, in preparation for Blue Bank. I might have been slightly nervous about this one, were it not for the fact that, obviously, there being no hills on this ride it clearly must have been a figment of my imagination. I think I might have quite an active imagination.... I let everyone head off, as I suspect it must be quite annoying to ride down a good descent behind me but Deano hung back, despite me warning him that I might well stop unpredicatably - and reassured me that it really wasn't a problem if I felt it was too bonkers and wanted to walk it. Partway down, with the disk brakes singing and pinging in the slighty alarming way that they do on downhills, I stopped to make sure that I could just before a particularly precipitous corner and made the schoolgirl error of checking how hot the rotors were - I am now Valencia-branded. But I did stay on the bike and didn't squeal like a girl, and apparently they weren't actually waiting very long at the bottom for me - and I was greeted with a round of applause when I got there. The climb up the other side was the other one that defeated me, but compared with the KTTR ride (where I suspect I may have walked more than I rode!) I don't think I did too badly overall on the dealing_with_
hillsfigments_of_my_imagination front. The swoop down into Whitby combined the joys of downhills, junctions, a bit of traffic and a lot of parked cars which was mildly unnerving after so many hours of having the roads more-or-less to ourselves but I'd got to the 'been up all night and a bit too tired to be scared' stage so quite enjoyed it. We pulled up at the station, and Deano used my (tried and tested at Scarborough) technique for finding a cafe = ask a convenient cabby. He recommended "Arbut's" - the same one suggested by my local-knowledge friend - just round the corner from the Magpie and along from the tattoo parlour. The assorted bikes and trikes were locked into a fairly impressive bike tangle with and we invaded the cafe. And a very fine fry-up it was too, accompanied by a vat of tea and taken in the company of a number of Whitby early-risers (presumably fishermen, although sadly for Arch with a fairly marked absence of Arran sweaters and sea shanties) and a couple of goths.
We headed back to the station, where I was dreadfully confused by trying to work out how many of us were steaming and consistently failed to account for everybody and make the numbers add up to 13 people getting home one way or another, possibly because I failed to count myself on more than one occasion. The power of the interwebs on my phone provided us with travel information, and I think we got everbody sorted with timetable information to meet their needs. The ticket office opened, and all those requiring tickets made successful purchases although the lady in the office looked slightly worried when I said I wanted 7 tickets and 7 bike tickets - until she realised it was for the steam train. "Oh, that's no problem - I thought you were all going to try t oget on the 'boro train, that would have been a squeeze!". We waved goodbye to tom_e who had decided that, having ridden from Danby to York then York to Whitby, he needed to complete the triangle and MrCharly who wanted to tackle Blue Bank in the other direction too. The 'boro-bound gang, made up of Deano, Tiermat, Slowcoach and Luke departed on the 8:52 (which was a briefly tempting prospect, as 20 quids worth of ordinary rail tickets could have got me back to York by noon) and I went into the ticket office to check that we could lock bikes to the railings on the platform The answer was a very cheerful yes (hah - stick that in your pipe and smoke it,
Manningtree 'Mr Happy' station manger!) and came with a recommendation for the now-open Whistlestop cafe next door. So myself and the remaining 6 nutters locked up the bikes and adjourned to the adjoining cafe to top up the tea levels. I tried to persuade everyone that we should go for a paddle, but nobody was biting although they did agree to wander down to the harbour wall to admire the "salt and pepper pot collection" as depicted on Arch's OS map.
I would have built a sandcastle, but the tide was right in and there wasn't really a sandcastle's worth of beach available. We wandered back to the station to unlock the bike tangle once more, just about early enought to prevent Arch from developing a nervous tic at the thought of missing the train, which duly arrived in all its noisy steamy goodness.
There was a brief wait whilst it left the station for the engine to change ends, and a member of staff wandered over to look slightly concerned about the number of bikes and the size of the trikes. However, once the train returned, the guards van swallowed them all up quite confortably with plenty of room left for people to still walk through and we found ourselves a load of seats and settled down to admire the scenery and, in the case of a few, catch a few zzzzzzzs. The train stops at one point on a bridge where we had a rather perfect view of the river underneath.
Unfortunately the absence of the reigning YACF pooh sticks champion (or indeed any sticks) meant that a quick game, throwing sticks out of the train window, wasn't on the cards. We ambled along through the valley, looking out at the rather inmpressively lumpy landscape to either side and (in my case at least) feeling rather glad that the train was taking the strain for this section of the journey.
We duly arrived in Pickering, and managed to unload the bikes.
A brief trip to the bakers provided emergency lunch rations for those who wanted, then a quick nip through the traffic to the very empty lane past the swimming pool and out of town. There was one moment when a grumpy 4x4 really didn't want to hold back before turning the corner towards us but, confronted with Tigerbiten on the trike, sulkily conceded that he was just going to have to wait. Shortly afterwards we also experienced the first mechanical of the trip - a flat back tyre on the Trice. Since Tigerbiten was the TEC at this point he shouted ahead, and I shouted forward but unfortunately only Arch heard as the head of the ride was just out of earshot. Not to worry, we stopped at a point where the road was slightly wider and TB set to fixing - I offered to help if he thought it would be in any way useful but unsurprisingly his fettling skills far exceed mine, so I just watched and sent a text to a couple of the others in case they were wondering where we'd got to. Fairly shortly afterwards TimO appeared, just in time to deploy the CO2, followed by the others coming back to check that all was well. Back on the road, which became smaller and smaller. At one point I looked to my right and thought 'ye godz, that looks just like a rollercoaster, I must be imagining things!' before realising that I wasn't actually hallucinating, we were just passing flamingo land. Then off onto a track that went through a muddy farmyard - I slighlty feared for the trikes, but they both survived and didn't look too splattered when we got out the other side, although I did see some mirror-cleaning - a NSTN-rating of 'Eek!', I reckon. Past Kirby Misperton, and onwards to Amotherby where we stopped to refuel on coffee cake prior to tackling a somewhat significant optical illusion up Amotherby Lane, up which I plodded steadily and shocked myself by not being the last to the top - although in fairness, I was the first to set off. Some fairly pleasant rolling terrain got us to the lumps around Castle Howard where I surprised myself again by not needing to use the 24" gear and was reminded of
Deano's comment about the very landscape telling of the landowner's arrogance.
After Castle Howard there's a couple of rather glorious descents, marred only by the presence of some fairly humungous potholes, and since we were by now around 70 miles up and I was rather sleep deprived, I rather enjoyed them - being somewhat knackered apparently makes me rather braver. Thornton-le-Clay was particularly notable for a completely splendid family of carved pumpkins on display. Soon after, with 10 miles to go, we said goodbye to Uncle Phil to whom many thanks go for the navigation back to the flatlands. Funnily enough, although it's very close to home, it's a bit of the countryside that I've never explored but Arch knew the way (and where to watch out for cattle grids) so all was well, and I can now say that I've been to Strensall. We were starting to head into idiot York driver territory - at one point the shout of 'car up' came forward, shortly followed by much revving and an overtake. "My mistake," I said, "should have said 'wanker in a scooby' up."
Through Earswick, over the ring road, and on through Huntington - funnily enough, I haven't been there for years until last week when I went to a post-funeral piss-up in the pub. Down Huntington road where we split off, with Arch leading Mcshroom and andrewc Minster-wards and TimO and Tigerbiten following me back (through nasty gnarly traffic outside York's new Waitrose - the lentil-left middle classes are clearly out in force to support the venture) to the CrinklyDen where tea, chips and places to snooze were procured according to need.
I think I was in bed and asleep by 8, got 8 hours, woke up, drank some more milk and went back to bed and slept for another 8 hours and as a result although still not brilliant I actually feel slightly more human than I have for several days. Huge thank you to Deano for organising the whole silly malarkey and MrCharly/Uncle Phil and Arch for navigational assistance, everyone else for the splendid company and conversation, and whoever booked the weather gets a gold star. Delightful adventure - we must do it again sometime. With Kim next time!
