XRV National Meet, Dent, Cumbria |
Right, the Honda Trail Bikes national meet in Dent, Cumbria, middle of the Yorkshire Dales.
Where to start - probably with the first attempt at packing the bike at 8pm the night before catching the 7.30am ferry from the island to Liverpool. That wasn't my best idea ever, especially as I was carrying clothes for a week with family after the weekend too!
I loaded the top box with clothes and put it on the bike, then my waterproof roll bag with tent, sleeping mat, sleeping bag, chair etc strapped down in front of the top box. I then attempted to sit on the bike - no way was that going to work, as I was squashed half-way up the tank.
I re-arranged the camping stuff partly into the top box in the vain hope that clothes in the roll bag would squash up more, already ditching the chair to lose some bulk. That was still no good!
Panic stations! It's now gone 10pm, and still nowhere near being ready!
Back to square one - out goes the hoodie, fleece, jeans, shorts, first aid kit, pillow bag, rubber mallet for tent pegs, spare light bulbs and probably a few other things I can't remember! Top box dropped, try to get everything into the roll top bag - that went in OK, having replaced the jeans and shorts with some convertible trousers.
Back out to the bike and tried strapping the bag onto the bike lengthways - it works and I have room to fit on too - yippee!!!! Everything back off as I don't have a garage ready to tie it all on again at oh-dark hundred Thursday morning.
Sleep - or attempt to anyway. I never sleep well before an early start travelling as I'm afraid I'll sleep through the alarm, so I only doze the 5 hours before the alarm goes off at 05:15. Stumble around the apartment getting ready - first big mug of tea of the day is a lifesaver!
Get into my gear and strap the roll bag on, attach the bar bag and set the magnetic tank bag in the general position. Check-in for the ferry is at 06:30, I still leave after that though, even though I've been up for an hour - just couldn't get going properly. Luckily I live about 3 minutes ride from the ferry terminal so all is not lost.
Pass through check-in and am pointed straight down onto the Super Seacat to get tied down in the bow.
It's a 2.5 hour crossing to Liverpool, so we dock at around 10am, having left Douglas on time at 07:30. Now I was intending to stop at the Liverpool Hein Gericke store to get some spare gloves and look at non-waterproof textile clothing, although I don't know how I'd carry it if I wanted to
No sat-nav and no real ability to know where I am at any particular point in time means that I'm frantically scanning the road signs looking for the A59, while coping with Liverpool traffic - luckily rush hour is over so it's not too bad. Eventually find the Hein Gericke store, but surprise, surprise, they no longer do the stuff I want - I must've seen it on the German website
Ah well, onwards and upwards - I rejoin the A59 and head off towards Preston in Lancashire. I'm trying to avoid the slab on the way to the Yorkshire Dales, as I know I'll have plenty of it afterwards on the way south. I follow the A59 through the middle of Preston at lunchtime, getting very warm as the traffic wasn't moving fast enough for the vents in my gear to work - phew 
I got to Gisburn in Lancashire around lunchtime and called Hudders from the XRV.org.uk website as I'd arranged to meet him there - he lives a couple miles away and was going to lead me in to the camp site, using the local roads.
He turned up and we set off towards the Ribblehead Viaduct for a cuppa, via Long Preston and Settle, and then up the B6479 towards Hawes, turning off onto the B6255 towards Cowgill and into Dent.
There were a few people already set up at the campsite when we arrived mid-afternoon
More people drifted in during the evening, and a few of us set up the marquee that the Thumper Club had kindly left behind for us to use from their annual rally a few weeks previously. This should've been taped - 5 people trying to put up a 9m x 3m (27' x 10') marquee with multiple lengths of tubing and connectors for the frame and no instructions to be found at first - it took three attempts, even after finding the instructions, as we'd put half of the connectors in the wrong place, and had to take the marquee down again to sort it all out.
There was a mad rush down to the one village shop when we suddenly realised that it shut at 5pm, and we needed beverages and stuff to eat. The beer fridge was soon cleared out, and the rest of us had to make do with the un-cooled beer!
Some went back to the campsite to eat, some of us ate in one of the two pubs in the village, the George & Dragon Hotel - very nice steak and ale pie I had too
We wandered back to the campsite and much alcohol was drunk by certain of the attendees in the marquee - this was shown the following morning with some very bleary heads and at least one person failing to show their face from their tent until well into the morning.
Those of us that were able (omitting the overly-hungover and the broken bikes) decided to do a ride-out towards the Lake District and two passes - the Wrynose (Pass of the Stallion - because it took a well-muscled horse to pull a cart up the 1 in 3 slopes) and the Hardknott (once again, up to a 1 in 3 slope in places).
After the Hardknott - and a very expensive ploughman's mean in the pub there (£6 or $12 for a wedge of cheese, bit of celery, quarter of an apple, a small raw carrot, couple of grapes, cherry tomato and a bread roll!), we took the small road over Ulpha Fell down to Ulpha itself, and then back to the campsite.
By the time we got back, most of the crew had arrived, and we were up to around 60 attendees, with a few more due on the Saturday - another meal in the pub (the Sun Inn, this time) and another night in the marquee followed.
Saturday dawned bright and clear, with just a light dew on the ground to confuse some of the Londoners lol. Three rides were planned for today - one with some offroad work, one towards the Lake District and passes again and the third one over Buttertub and Hartside passes to the north and east of Dent. I chose the latter - the Lakes ride-out was first off:
Then it was our turn:
We left Dent on the same road that I had come in on Thursday, through Cowgill and turned left at the junction towards Hawes where we fuelled up. We then headed over the Buttertubs pass from Hawes towards Thwaite
From Thwaite, we stayed on the minor roads through Kirkby Stephen and Warcop (Warcop has an infantry training area - it'd be so much better if it had been a Military Police training area with a name like that lol), then on through Langwathby and Melmerby to the bottom of the Hartside Pass.
The Hartside is a well-known local biking road, with lots of hairpins on the Southern end, and fast sweeping bends on the northern side. The southern side reminded me slightly of Mt Ventoux in France, climbing up through the trees into clear land - it was on this section that Hudders somehow ground a chunk out of the edge of his bashplate - not bad going on an Africa Twin on the road!
Very enjoyable road to ride, with some lovely sweepers coming down the hill
After a bite to eat at the Hartside Cafe at the summit, and riding those great bends down the northern side we headed for Alston, and then continued on south-west towards Barnard Castle and Scotch Corner, before turning back towards Dent, passing over the Buttertubs Pass again.
After returning to the campsite, had something to eat and then shot the breeze with a few other people around a charcoal burner, that with the addition of a purloined pallet, became a contained fire
Sunday dawned and I packed up ready to hit the motorway heading south to my parent's for a week - got the bike packed and the urge to move hit me, so off I went
Took me 5 hours to get the 300+ miles down to Somerset from Cumbria, over 250 miles of it on motorway - and boy did I have a sore arse by the time I reached Yeovil. But hey, there was the benefit of a proper shower and a real bed to sleep in - what more can a man want?
Spent the week doing as little as possible, lazing around. I went out to a nearby church at a village called Trent, where my mum was born and her parent's spent their last months and years. We wandered around the church, and I took a few photos that I won't bore people with here, but you can find them on my smugmug here.
I met a few old friends on one evening, and then it was time to pack the bike again to come home - minus the sleeping mat and tent that I'll pick up when I go down for Christmas this year
Left Yeovil at about 12.45pm, and straight up the motorway to Liverpool, fighting the wind for most of the journey and getting rained on for about 5 miles at the end of the journey. I arrived at the ferry terminal at 4.30, for a 6pm check-in, only to find that the boat was delayed due to the wind - turned out that the boat was over 2 hours late getting into Liverpool as it had waited in the island for the weather to change. Luckily, by the time we sailed, the wind had died down so it was a fairly calm crossing, docking in Douglas just after midnight (instead of 9.30pm as scheduled!) Home for about 12.15-12.30am, unload the bike and off to the land of nod, ready for work some 8 hours later.
Well, that's my only trip of this year on the bike - it did take the odometer to 2800 miles for the year so far, Only 1,000 miles on this trip, but I did get an average of 53mpg Imp. (44mpg US) and a high of 59 Imp (49 US) so not bad at all.
Now all I need is a better seat (ouch!)
All the pics I took (plus a couple from other people with me in them) can be found on my Smugmug