Well that's this year's SR done, but by god it was hard work. Not many yACFers on this ride - I only recognised Megajoules (natch, as she was the organiser), NashD, AuDave, Cyclops & The Cormorant. Having done the Twilight with the latter two I reckoned on riding this one with them too. Alas it was not to be - Cyclops packed after about 10km with a mechanical failure. It seems that following the chain-stretching workout that was the Snow Roads he'd put a new chain on but neglected to change his cassette. The new chain and old cassette refused to co-operate and that was the end of his ride.
Anyway, the field quickly split in two with the fast boys all skipping the first cafe control, never to be seen again. This left all those named above in a loosely knitted peleton that also included Mr Megajoules and a couple of others. There were a few question marks on what was a control and what wasn't, so it seemed simplest and safest to just follow Megajoules. This also proved very handy on the tricky navigation out of Bellingham, where if it had been anyone else leading us on gated trails with ridiculous gradients I simply wouldn't have believed them.
Weather-wise, all was fine until after lunch (a very good one at the Tankerville Arms in Eglingham). Then the rain started. It got heavier. Then heavier. Then heavier again. At times it was like riding in a river and some of the descents were extremely treacherous. We were all completly soaked through but at Bellingham Mr Megajoules cut a dashing figure, re-inforcing his waterproofing with a very stylish black binbag.
On the plus side the mostly Easterly Wind made the normally brutal roman road next to Hadrian's Wall really quite a blast, with most of the climbs sprinted over in the big ring. The rain stopped sometime before Gretna and thereafter we had a mostly dry run with quite a pleasant night. Never ridden that Moffat to St Mary's Loch road before and I really enjoyed. Must go back in the daylight to find out what it looks like.
All the yACFers (bar Cyclops) got round comfortably, most notably NashD who did it on about 86" fixed. After some gentle ribbing from the rest of us for his luddite fixed-gear tendencies he admitted that he has a new bike on order, with gears. More than sixty gears in fact!
Not a man for doing things the conventional way, Mr Nash
My navigation fears posted earlier mostly proved un-founded. I soon realised that the reason why I couldn't follow the route on my map was that my map wasn't detailed enough to show the roads we were using. Cormorant did a find job of knowing where we were and only a missing instruction on the run in to Gretna caused some delay and back-tracking. Must remember next year that it's Gretna Green we're going to, not Gretna.
Big Thankyou to Megajoules for running this (and many other) events
