Getting back into it

This week was drier than the last. Most of it was spent riding along the roads and paths around here, learning the routes that the mountain biking activity will follow. It’s not much of a ride really, five miles according to someone’s odometer. It’s quite flat too, there’s a bit of a slow grind up the road from the Centre, but then it’s down and around before climbing once more.

Mountain Biking seems quite straight forward to run. You follow the routes, check everyone else is keeping up and stop at the shop in Braithwaite if they’ve brought some money.

Seeing how we were doing a lot of mountain biking this week, I thought it’d be good to take my bike out for a run. I’d not used it for at least two years, then taken it apart and stored it over Winter. When I arrived here, I put it back together best as I could remember. The gears even worked mostly. So in full confidence I’d have no problem, I set off with everyone else and CRUNCH! my bike’s rear derailleur neatly popped the chain off the top cog and jammed itself in one of the spokes. I’m not sure why my bike does this, but it did it once before while pedalling up a hill. I had to roll my bike down the hill back to the Centre and get one of their bikes to continue. I must have come off my bike at some time since my back wheel is buckled too. Later that evening I spent several hours in the bike shed cleaning the oil and goo off my bike in the hope of seeing if I could fix the mangled gears. Not being able to see anything obvious, but still having the rear derailleur banging against every spoke, I applied the brute-force-and-ignorance method of mechanics and pulled on various bits. It’s far from precision engineering, but at least when I go into first gear I don’t end up with the whole back end of my bike jamming up. One day I might buy a new rear mech for it.

My bike has rather nasty gripshift gear changers on it. Gripshift being that great invention that causes you to change gears by accident if you grab the shifter instead of your handlebar grips. Seeing how I’d just been paid, I thought going and getting some replacements would be a good idea. Keswick isn’t that large, but there are three bike shops in it. Today is one of my days off, so I woke up at a decent time, got ready and cycled off to town. It doesn’t take as long as I thought it might. There are some very inaccurate signs on the way that claim it is only 3 miles down the road, except that one and a half of those miles seems a lot shorter than the other one and a half. Whatever the distance, it took me 20 minutes and doesn’t involve any nasty hills in either direction.

I rattled through town and randomly picked the first bike shop I came across and found a handy lamp post to chain by bike to. No good having your bike nicked while you’re in a bike shop trying to buy new bits for it! A few minutes later I came out with a new set of gear shifters and brake levers and 60 less in my bank account. They were quite easy to fit, and came with the added bonus of new cables. The indexing is off, but I can change into my bike’s highest and lowest gears, so that’s all that matters - the middle ones being chosen depending on how hard the pedalling is going and are random anyway.

Earlier this week I had a chance to drive the Centre minibus. Having never driven one before, it felt quite odd piloting something so wide around the small roads of Borrowdale. The mirrors are important, they tell you how close to hitting things you are. You can see quite far ahead though, being higher than all the hedgerows, but it’s still a surprise when you meet someone coming the opposite way on the wrong side of the road. Nobody hit anything, but we had some near misses. Especially sliding between the two trees at the entrance to the Bowderstone carpark. The right-hand tree looks like it’s had many wing-mirrors bash against it.

Last night we had a real, live group to do activities with. They were some rugby club from Bury - once again proving that no matter where you go, you’ll always meet people who live near to where you do. They did an afternoon of short Centre-based activities, then some more in the evening. The kids were hyper and just wanted to run around and shout a lot, something they demonstrated in the evening. I made the mistake of going upstairs in the main building and quickly made my escape, the place looked like a warzone. Children, the contents of their rooms and other kiddie junk strewn around the corridors.

Tags: Cycling, Lake District, Work