Riding up Hartside, eating sausages and not setting children on fire

I've been to church camp before, and I've ridden up Hartside before.  The last time I did both was 4 years ago in the summer of 2008.  The ascent of Hartside went pretty well that year, but a mixture of arthritis, thin sleeping mats and hurricane strength winds left me crying in the night on the camping weekend (although the day trip to Brimham Rocks was very nice I remember).

The 2012 edition of the camping weekend turned out to be much better.  I'm on stronger drugs now, and this time it was Woody the dog who was in a bad way with his joints, so lucky me, but not so lucky for him.

Mains Farm Kirkoswald - with bikes

Ruth and I arrived at the campsite (Mains Farm at Kirkoswald) at 5 pm on Friday, and pretty much as soon as we did, it started raining.  Thankfully the Holdsworths had a gazebo, and so we sat under that for the evening, and after I'd eaten some chilli and crisps that Ruth made earlier (not the crisps), I somehow managed to find myself seated next to Rebecca Walters as she was dishing out burgers and sausages to some small people with quite small appetites, and as some of the kids couldn't eat some of the sausages because they had chillis in, I got some of the leftovers, although I didn't want to appear totally greedy, so I shared the last few with Woody the dog.  He was so knackered from walking round all day, he was lying in the rain and refusing to move, and that's exactly the sort of situation that sausages can help you out of.  Having been in a state approximating his 4 years previously, I thought it only right to send some food his way.

By Saturday morning, it had thankfully stopped raining.  Ruth and I had planned to ride up Hartside and down into Alston, and despite some tempting invitations to go walking instead, that's what we decided to do.  We did however seem to have chosen to do it the same weekend as about a quarter of a million people had decided to ride their bikes coast to coast.  There were even groups of children in hi-vis waistcoasts doing it with the help of men with walkie talkies and luggage transfers and everything.

Hartside Cafe - Full of coast to coasters

Arriving at the Hartside cafe made me realise what nice bikes Ruth and I have got.  Some of the bikes parked up there when we arrived looked like they'd been fished out of a skip, or failing that, the local canal.  I haven't seen anything like it, since I saw John Munro riding a bike with perished tyres and an orange chain on our own Coast to Coast in 2010.

But things are not always as they appear, and the bike does not make the man (or the woman or the boy or the girl).  On the way up Hartside we were overtaken by a man going hell for leather on a bike that looked worse than the one I gave to the rag and bone man a couple of years ago.  Ruth shouted to him as he powered past us with his veins nearly bulging out of his head that he was in his big ring, but on closer inspection he only had a big ring.  The bike only seemed to have about 6 gears in total and he was in his lowest already, which may have explained why he was giving it everything he had, whereas we were just sauntering up in our granny gears.

So there was him, and then at the Hartside cafe at the top of the climb there was his polar opposite, a guy on some carbon thing in replica gear with about a million gears, who looked every inch the cyclist.  Until he started speaking that was.  First of all, he didn't so much as throw his bike down, but let it fall over against a brick wall, I shielded my eyes, just in case some shattered carbon came my way.  He was talking to his mate, and he was absolutely incredulous, at the fact that it was uphill all the way to the top of what is a massive hill.  What was he expecting? To freewheel to the top of the Pennines?  I didn't have the heart to mention that Ruth and I had found the whole thing rather easy.

It's oh so easy, if you have a bike with gears

The original plan had been to go into the cafe for something to eat, but the queue was massive, and so we decided to postpone our crumble eating till we got to Alston.  As we came out, team replica carbon guy was still there, and his carbon thing was on the floor again.  We left quietly before he started jumping up and down on it.

The climb for us had been lovely.  Ruth was on good form, and we rode up together chatting, and looking at the view, and it was lovely.  The only downside was that I kind of wished that one of the many Coast to Coasters who overtook us on the climb had asked me if I was doing the Coast to Coast as well, because I wanted to say 'Yeah, I'm doing it there and back over 2 days next week, I'm just doing this for fun'  That's the kind of demoralising statement more at home on the lips of my friend Graeme, that I don't get to make very often, and I didn't get to make it this time either.

After deciding that we didn't want either to queue up behind the million people buying chips and cake at the Hartside Cafe, or to get bits of shattered carbon in our eyes when that guy finally smashed his bike in, we rolled down the hill into Alston, and I got some crumble there.  Not apple, as advertised, but rhubarb, and strawberry.  Ruth had soup.

The cafe stop in Alston was nice, but pretty much as soon as we left, we were soaked from head to foot by a very heavy shower.  I'd been pretty critical prior to the trip of Ruth's purchase of some waterproof walking boots with SPDs that she had bought before we left, with the intention of being able to combine cycling and hill walking, but these soon came into their own as my shoes completely filled with water in about 5 minutes.  It's also a sign to me that the rain is fairly heavy, when my bike computer stops working because it's full of water, which also happened.

The view from our tent - I'm already up see

The man at the campsite had estimated a Kirkoswald-Hartside-Alston-Brampton-Kirkoswald circular route to be around 32 miles whereas it turned out to be nearer 50.  As he runs a business ferrying C2Cers areound as well as running a campsite, maybe he's used to lying to cyclists to make what they're about to do seem not so bad.

After taking nearly 2 hours to do the 15 miles to Alston I was a bit worried about the time, but from there it was actually quite easy.  The nearly 20 miles we had to do on the A689 between Alston and Brampton were not only pleasantly downhill for the most part, but also pretty much traffic free.  We had intended to get a hot drink in Brampton but by the time we got there the cafes were all closed so we sat on a newly installed bench next to a skip and ate two boiled eggs each and a banana.  A passing resident of Brampton was good enough to advise us that the bench was brand new 'But it won't last 5 minutes round here, it'll soon be vandalised, you can't have anything these days' or words to that effect.  Nice and optimistic I thought, she made me look positively chirpy, and my feet were soaked.

After the boiled egg stop we followed a nice B road through Castle Carrock and Croglin back to the campsite at Kirkoswald, and arrived there about 7 pm.

Can we stop riding yet, and eat some sausages?

Because I'd spent the morning bringing Ruth cups of tea and porridge in the tent, and as my feet were still soaked, she agreed to cook the sausages we'd brought with us from home, and I was glad we'd hired a brazier for the evening, as I needed to pretty much insert my feet directly into it for the next 4 hours to avoid them freezing off.

Do you remember those old cartoon postcards  you could buy that had a little cartoon boy and girl on them and they said 'Love is....'?.  Well as I sat freezing in my camping chair waiting for my sausages, I looked across at Ruth with her rain soaked hair, and it occurred to me that although this is too big to fit on a postcard

'Love is....Watching your wife (who is looking a bit bedraggled) cook sausages on a Trangia, when there are children running everywhere trying to toast marshmallows on a brazier, and there's an arthritiic dog running round with a massive lead trailing behind him trying to entangle himself in not only the burning brazier, but the Trangia.  And the Trangia keeps setting on fire because the fat coming off the sausages is too hot, and as your wife is gamely battling on, doing her best not to set fire to children and a hungry dog, the really amazing star finder thing she's got on her phone, which I've just found, isn't half as interesting as watching toddlers with burning marshmallows on the end of sticks and a dog swerving and running haphazardly in all directions near a flaming Trangia and brazier.  And it's even more surprising they're not on fire, because there's fat shooting out in all directions out of the sausages and the burning Trangia, and there's probably some on their clothes, and I'm sitting there with an empty bowl and having had some crisps as a starter, and she's enduring all this to make sausages for me, and I think that's what love is......'  Like I said, too long for a postcard.

Some Royals who were also camping there

Just before the evening ended, and it was all dusky, and you couldn't see much anymore, Woody the dog with his arthritis and emboldened by leftovers, decided it was an opportune time to go and imitate the action of a wolf and stand on his back legs and go and bark loudly at the man who'd been dressed all weekend as a giant lizard..  It brought memories flooding back of the embarrassment that can come from owning a big stupid dog, as Rebecca had to go and retrieve her own big stupid dog, from trying to attack a grown man in lizard pyjamas.

Woody the dog - who hates lizards

'He doesn't like your costume', she explained before she realised what she was saying, and to be honest none of us did, we all thought it was weird, but the dog was only one of us stupid and honest enough to tackle the man head on.  We'd just been walking in wide arcs around his tent for two days, but Woody took a more Trinny and Susannah approach to the matter in hand.  The next morning Lizardman packed up his tent good and early and was seen to come back from the toilets in normal clothes with his costume in a bag, and I think that makes it 1-0 to Woody.

So, after a few hours of eating sausages and nearly setting my legs on fire in the brazier, and watching Woody chase a big lizard I went to bed, and for a brief few seconds I was the last one up, which I never am, and then the next morning I was the first one up, which I never am, and it was my turn with the Trangia again, and I made tea and porridge on it, and I think that's what love is too.

Team Photo - sausages have all been eaten

And as we were all gathering together for the traditional team photo at the end, I thought back on how great the whole weekend had been, and I remembered why I love going on these communal trips.  It's because of all the brilliant families who go on them too, who are not only great company, but who speak nicely to each other and to their children, and who more often than not, give me free sausages....