TakeTwo

Well Skiddaw was so good and I had a fresh volunteer (Si) so went back on friday. We went straight up latrigg, was hard work on my (still) sore knees, didn't bother attempting to ride any of the path up skiddaw. Wind was pretty fierce as we made our way up the switchbacks, windproofs on. Managed to get riding again after the switchbacks, it was hard work getting blown by the crosswind but atleast we were riding again and we finally passed the walkers who we'd seen at the bottom. The top section was awful, pushing into a monster wind, worst I've ever experienced, hunched over the bars pushing up, backwheel getting blown sideways over the scree, I had every layer and thick gloves on and still I was getting chilled. Hunkered down at the top trying to get some feeling back into my hands, I'd be needing some fine tuned braking on the steep scree that followed. We set off and were soon thankfully out of the wind, didn't do quite aswell and had to stop on a tricky part, Si crashed right behind me, clouting his glasses on a rock, good job he had them on! Managed to get going again and did ok, hit th end section pretty quick just and launched over some rocks just as the wind picked up again and nearly blew me over. Ullock was a lot harder in the wind, going slow into tricky stuff then the wind would stop you dead or knock you off line. Didn't ride a couple of sections I managed last time or the cliff (obviously). Si was doing really well, there were only a couple of bits I rode that he didn't altho he did say there were sections when he just blindly followed me down, which if he had stopped and looked he may not have ridden :-)
Still an excellent bit of trail even with the wind. My knee's were proper aching on the road back up to latrigg but it's too good to miss out. On the way down I slowed approaching a blind corner, sure enough around it there was a group of elderly walkers. I slammed on and slowed right down to walking pace before I got to them but I'd already startled them, bloke at the front told me I was going too fast and a woman called me a silly boy(!) I told them there was one more rider behind me as we heard Simons approach, he too slowed and stopped but they ripped into him. "this is a footpath" no it's not. "You were on the wrong side of the road" it's not a road and you were on my left. "You were going too fast" I stopped safely. They weren't having it, we were naughty and they were going to tell us off. Si wished them a nice day and we carried on.
Next we went down to derwent and did the start of borrowdale bash, Birketts leap was fantastic as usual, Si had a minor off on the big rocks but otherwise he cleaned the rest including some proper sketchy loose stuff in Frith wood. We wanted to do the castle crag section too but it was getting on and I had to get back to pick up charlie so we took the road back to the car. Another sorted day out of proper technical riding, just 21miles but over 5000ft again (5350 actually).