Not for the first time John and Terry went looking for Jason at his place but couldn't raise him by phone or text, so they left there late (strangely!) and headed out west to join the Reivers for a nice short 15 miler, "seven and a half out and back" starting at Cow Green Reservoir at 10.00am. We arrived on two wheels (in the car) at 10.15 and the Reivers kindly waited for us to offload the bikes and get ready.  Smashin' set of lads. A cool morning, six degrees with prospects for a bright spring day.

One of the Reivers who shall be nameless (Ok, it was Derek) had been in touch with the Gollum (that's Terry, don't forget, see explanation here) earlier in the week and told him about this nice, short ride, so the MidAirCrisis committee (Golly) decided it would be OK. We'd missed their ride the previous week as we thought it would be crap, and did Glentress Black instead (see ride list). We don't go on their crappy rides if we can help it. You might get a definition of "crappy" if you read on. Tom was Ride Leader for this trek into the wilderness, so off we went, fairly briskly, down to the dam with the strong wind and steep slope assisting nicely.

The terrain was a mixture of tarmac to start with, stony and grassy bridleway later as we hauled ourselves down to Birkdale on the Pennine Way *.

Here's a Red Flag flying -  - could be trouble ahead! Ignore shells and rockets overhead And here are the stepping stones over the moor, with John dropping gently and Willie taking some air while climbing 400 feet to the highest point of the ride at Rasp Hill, about half way to High Cup Nick, the end of the ride and our turning point. Five and a half miles out we crossed Maize Beck at the bridge shown, where Golly took the potentially harmful and slightly silly risk of riding down the steps on the south side rather than carrying as his colleagues had done, his naturally bulging eyes almost shooting into orbit after he'd let the Coiler's front wheel drop over the lip and suddenly realised just how steep they were. Luckily he survived it, disappointing the onlookers who were baying for blood and expecting some being let.

*Just a footnote to this - I've an inkling that the Pennine Way as it is does NOT permit cycling, that's why Sustrans and others are busy putting together the Pennine Cycleway, so I'm not sure we were legal all day, just to throw another spanner in.

Anyone seen the Style Police? The drag across the final stretch of moorland to High Cup Nick was a bit of a chew because of the soft, wet ground and it stretched the group out a little. At least that gave me an opportunity to grab a few extra snaps of the whole crew from further back. We stopped here and sought shelter in the rocks beneath the edge of this dramatic ice age leftover, like squatting eagles as we devoured the contents of our backpacks.  This is the sort of scene you can't get enough of, so the cameras were hard at it. Great ride so far, the usual laugh and chat along the way, fantastic scenery and time to recover for the hard part.

Then it all went PHART!

Part way through the lunch break the conversation turned to "what's next?" as Gavin produced that infamous map and began perusing it's contents with Tom and Ray. This seemed a little puzzling to me as we'd reached End Point of an out-and-back ride and we all knew the way back. Well, so much for theory. And so much for ride planning. Suddenly, Tom's great ride had been hijacked by Gavin, not for the first time while I've been out with them, and the conversation turned to how far and which direction we should go from here. Admittedly, it was still early, and the tailwind had pushed us to pseudo-journey's-end quicker than Tom had expected. Saying that, however, a few of us at least knew how hard it was going to be against a very strong wind on the return leg. Seemingly, not everyone grasped this, or even thought about it. For me, it was really bad news to go any further as I had a daughter's birthday meal to get back for and this was about to be screwed. I appreciate that the question was asked, "does anyone need to get back for a particular time...?", and I said nowt directly, or loudly enough, but as a guest of the Reivers I was prepared just to stick with it and hope I could make up time in the car. Of course I could have just turned back, although that hardly shows any commitment, but it's very annoying when the goalposts are moved like this unexpectedly. Breach of Contract, crap organisational skills, or simply a lack of professionalism? Don't laugh at the last point, the Reivers charge a fee for their rides. That should imply some sort of well-ordered format which should include telling guest riders where they're going BEFORE THEY START OUT. If you advertise something and then proceed to charge for it, that's a CONTRACT.

Anyway the new, pirate ride leader decided we'd traverse the edge of the Nick to a point just beyond where we could see on the northern side, then drop straight to the valley floor and make our way back to where we were by hook, crook or sheep's back. So off we went again, and we hadn't covered fifty metres before the Gollum fell off the back of the Coiler into what was left of the old river, landing hard on small, rounded rocks which at least had no sharp edges, but once again hurt the little bummy quite badly, and soaked it. Good job you can't see a limp on a bike, though today Gollum wasn't to be the only limp rider as it wasn't long before Bluebeard had us lost and way, way off beam.

Here's a 3.5MB .mpg vid of the final descent described below

Only bright spot in Part Deux was that there were a couple of very enjoyable downhill sections along the way, particularly the bit down to the gate in this photo, which Jeff described as being as close to Alpine conditions as he's come across on our Great British island. I was hot on his heels on this bit and I must say it was a very invigorating, high speed blast over randomly scattered chunks of rock up to about 8 inches in diameter with tricky trail edges and vehicle track cuts. He'd certainly put his GT iDrive's cracked frame out of his mind for the duration of this short pleasure trip. Just as well we had this bout of light relief, as it wasn't going to be plain sailing all day. Ray wasn't far behind us and after a few minutes we'd collected everyone else at the gate for a short discussion on where we should turn left and dip into the valley, as agreed up on the Nick. However, the old treasure map was out again. At least I think it was a map. maybe I've misconstrued this constant stopping and "map reading" ritual Gavin goes through. Perhaps it's just a big flat book he enjoys reading on ride days? Today I reckon it was War and Peace. And ominously, we'd done the "peace" bit way back.

Here we all are at what was supposed to be turn-back point, this being a logical place to do it from without losing any more height. Behind the group you can see the sleepy town of Appleby on the left, but note the big green lump on the right We were soon to see the opposite side of it, somehow!

Following the waved hook, we hit a very fast section of steep bridleway, unfortunately blocked half way by a gate where Ray got the short straw as first to arrive. The rest of us managed to pile through and continue at crazy speeds to the next junction where we stopped for another reading. It was here that Singlespeed Steve got the only puncture of the day. While we waited for the repair there was another great deal of discussion as to where we were and where we were going next. All I could do now was keep asking John what time it was and wonder just how much of my guts would become suspenders when I eventually got home.  At least the sun was shining and we hadn't turned against the wind yet.

Derek gets his tool out 7MB .mpg vid

The next chunk of bridleway eventually led us to tarmac at Keisley just south of Dufton, and we rode south east through Murton to Hilton where we left the road again for the horrendous trudge up Dead Man's Gulch, or Scordale, where the double track finally turned into nothing but a rock face, a right of way, yes, but never in a million years designed to be traversed by bicycle. Here's a vision of disgruntlement at the very start of the track which took a long time to ride/push/walk/carry to it's crazy conclusion. And then, once at the top, we faced an impossible trek  across the ranges which were very wet and soft for the first three or four inches.

here is the other side of that green hump I mentioned some miles back as proof of how stupid we are.

We start off as a team then they're all gone as we slog up the hill.

John and I made a break as the forward party stopped to rest. I knew if I stopped I'd never get outta here, so the two of us carried and pushed the bikes up the valley, following the marker posts. The others caught us near the summit and we dragged the bikes towards the ever narrowing vee of the valley sides at Murton Fell.

Over the top of this point the group split into two, either side of the meandering Swarth Beck, each of us trying to search out firm ground over the Army's shell testing grounds but there was none. By the time we'd got through the dodgy bit scattered with targets and rangefinders I had absolutely no energy left at all, and could have nicely just laid down and expired. When John and I, as the stragglers, finally caught up with the others (at Birkdale again, I think), the "War" part of the book was being read, out loud, and how! Main reason for this was that Gavin had disappeared off the back of the troupe and gone north to rejoin the Pennine Way, leaving the others to find their own way back. Hardly a hanging offence on it's own, but he was also the only one carrying a map! And he was supposed to have taken over the ride leadership. Now, about that hanging...

Well, no prizes if you guessed that today was April Fool's Day, and of course this little ditty is a complete fabrication. Nothing could be as bad as this in real life.

Wrong. This is the Reiver's Way, true as I lie here on this tomato.