Dawns crack

Out nice and early saturday to get a 3towers-lite ride polished off before lunch - well around lunchish anyway :-) So by 8:00am I was already up on winterhill and dropping down the kennel run to meet up with Johnny at pigeon tower. Gorgeous morning really nice, still, clear skies, I was already overheating tho. At the bottom I get a txt, Johnnie's running late so I do wildeswood aswell - Mistake. Ripped my rear ust tyre just as I came out of the wood (that spot has got several times before <250miles in that tyre, now ruined grr) and so the faff-a-thon started. Finally got to pigeon tower where johnnie had his back wheel out (sticky piston) and an empty camelbak - bladder had emptied all over his back/arse on the way up. So we sat and faffed trying to get our bikes working, Matt rode passed upto the pike, matt rode passed down from the pike, eventually we moved on, across belmont old rd to hoar stones, more faff, matt rode passed down to belmont probably on about mile 35 while we were struggling to break into double figures. Anyway more faff and climbing over walls fences and stuff resulted in quite a nice ride, 40miles, 5000ft, but 7hours(!) and about 60/40 ride/faff ratio is terrible. Had to burn back from peel tower on road to prevent me ending up in doghouse at home, still a meaty ride with some good hard climbs but will have to take Johnnie on the full leg burner version sometime.