Fanylion Mountain Bike Team
Official site of the Fanylion Mountain Bike Team. Includes mountain bike ride guides, gear reviews, bike maintenance, team reports and rider profiles of the Fanylion Racing Team.
The Lake District
October 13, 2007, England
FanyFaff™. It’s a word you hear banded around before most rides, sometimes with good reason but all too often it is used to describe 15 minutes of getting ready to ride, with Hodgson darting around impatiently like a sugar-fuelled hyper-active 7-year-old. However, Saturday morning brought with it perhaps the worst case of FanyFaff™ ever encountered…
After getting up early, keen to make good time and arrive promptly, Myself and Team Shack (who had stayed at my house after being evicted from his own by his fiancée and her family, in town to choose a wedding dress in readiness for Love Shack – The Wedding next spring) found ourselves at the church in Torver at 9.08am – some 22 minutes ahead of schedule. Shack was soon reminiscing about a previous Team meet here, when Team Hodgson found a quiet corner in which to take a dump. We pottered around, slowly getting our stuff together with myself waiting for Team Starkey to turn up as I had previously asked him to look at my rear mech as I had recently fitted a new one and I had encountered trouble shifting into a couple of gears on my previous ride.
Team Shortbread was the next to arrive – bang on 20 minutes late. Apparently Team Cove, who was in convoy with him, had stopped in Coniston because he had forgotten to bring a jacket with him. Never mind – we were still waiting on Hodgson, Techno and Starkey.
Eventually Hodgson appeared and the first thing he said was ‘this is where I took a dump in the corner’ and produced a roll of bog paper. These things amuse Team Fanylion.
When the four wheeled mini-Ibiza that was Starkey’s car pumping out hardcore techno (as opposed to Starkey pumping hard into Techno, who was in the passenger seat) finally rocked up, it was already 10.15am. And I still had to ask Starkey to look at my mech. When we got my bike out, things did not look good. What had previously been dodgy shifting turned out to be more complicated – the cable inner had seized up (yes, I know NOW that I should have changed the cable at the same time as the mech). Cue FanyFaff™. A combination of Teams Cove, Starkey and myself tried in vain to remove the old cable and fit the new one. However, Shimano don’t like to make things easy with complex XTR Dual Control levers. Especially when we started dismantling the wrong one.
Oops.
By this time, Team Hodgson was almost apoplectic with rage, pointing out that the first rule of mech replacement is to replace cables at the same time. Okay, I’ll remember that next time I ask Starkey to fix my bike.
After an hour of cursing, we finally convinced the cable to fit and got my bike approximately working (although I still didn’t have first/second gears – and didn’t have them for the rest of the weekend – which wasn’t good news with some of the toughest riding in the UK ahead of us).
Unbeknown to me, Hodgson had been ‘road-testing’ Shack’s bike and at the same time we got my bike working, he announced that Shack’s front forks had blown a seal. Probably because you were jumping up and down on it like, well like a sugar-fuelled hyper-active 7-year-old. Big ooops.
It was about 11am when we finally spun out of the car park on a short road section before swinging right onto a bridleway. As we rode, Shack asked whether I thought Hodgson’s treatment of his bike had caused the seal to blow. Of course it did Shack, but if he could blow it in a church car park, it was going to go the first time you hit a rock anyway, wasn’t it?
Unfortunately Hodgson and Techno had already hit the front, missed the turn and disappeared into the distance. When we met back up with them, we were greeted with the sight of Hodgson looking like a jey bike-riding gimp in his tight-fitting black kit chasing around a field after an unsuspecting sheep. These things also amuse Team Fanylion.
Eventually we were onto the ride proper – we rounded the north end of Coniston Water and took a steepish bridleway up to Lawson Park and into Grizedale Forest. I must have been working hard at pushing myself to keep up with the front runners of Techno, Shortbread, Hodgson and Starkey as my recollection of this part of the ride is very fuzzy.
And yes I did say Starkey was with the front runners – my memory isn’t THAT fuzzy.
Soon we were descending on a fantastic rocky, rooty, damp track down into High Nibthwaite. It was on this descent that Hodgson, in an attempt to break free of his wingmen Techno and Shortbread, pushed that bit too hard in the challenging conditions and stacked big time. I can only take his word for it as I was some way behind. We were soon riding up and over Woodland Fell – a part of the Lakes that more closely resembled my ‘home’ rides of the Yorkshire Dales and Moors. Clearly Shack, being another ‘Yorkshire Lad’ felt equally at home, as by this point he was leading from the front, with Hogson screaming encouragement/abuse from close behind, Cove (who rode like Team Downhill Maniac all weekend) behind him and me immediately behind Cove. Shack seemed to have forgotten that his fork had lost all compression damping as he hurled it along the descent. At this point of the ride I was honestly thinking that these were probably the best natural trails I had ever ridden in the UK.
We soon found ourselves on a road section which, to be honest, I was quite happy with, giving me time to recover a bit and to get a few miles under our belts. We dived on and off the road for a few miles before finally coming to a rocktastic climb and subsequent descent over Sethwaite. The climb was tough, but nothing compared to what was to follow at Walna Scar. As I passed the summit I hung on to the bars and tried to resist the all-to-easy temptation to grab at the brakes. Although too much speed could prove painful, too much on the brakes over these loose and wet rocks could prove equally so. I soon passed Cove (he isn’t as quick when he gets a puncture) and Shack (he isn’t as quick when he finds out that forks without compression damping should be ridden with more respect). In fact, as I rounded the corner I came across Shack doing an impression of a dead man, sprawled across the trail with bike on top of him. My immediate concern was not for him, but for what could happen to our business if he was stuck in Keswick General Hospital in traction. Fortunately he wasn’t badly injured and was soon asking whether his pretty face had been disfigured as it gently smashed against a rock.
When we reached the bottom we waited for Cove. Again. He had another puncture. It seems that Kenda tyres do not work well in the Lakes (Techno, who was running them also had several punctures). As we waited for him, another group of riders came over the ridge and down the rocky final descent. It took a good 5 minutes for the group of around 20 riders to pass and as the final rider came up to us, he stopped and said ‘another puncture ehh guys’?
Hodgson, in the manner only he knows how, quipped ‘You aren’t with us, go and talk to your own mates’. He’s subtle isn’t he?
Soon we reached the base of the Walna Scar climb and I rode ahead to take a few pictures of the Team riding the first section. I quickly became very concerned as within 50 metres of the gate most of the team were off their bikes and pushing. Fortunately, because of the heavy mist, we couldn’t see the summit (goddamnit, we couldn’t see more than about 100 metres) so we didn’t really know just how BIG it was.
As I pushed and pushed and pushed, I could see Sam and Dan riding hard at the front, with Steve pushing his stead some way behind until they all disappeared into the mist and I was alone, but for my hard-beating heart and swelling lungs. Occasionally I caught glimpses of Shack and Sheldon in front and the odd glance behind confirmed Cove was a few metres behind.
After around an hour of pushing I finally reached the summit only to find that Steve had pressed on, eager to get back home. The rest of the Team set off together down in insane rock-strewn descent. I was not at all confident of letting it go so I slowly picked my way down – and why shouldn’t I? It had taken me long enough to get to the top, I wasn’t going to rush coming back down!
As I descended I saw the familiar sight of Cove repairing a yet another puncture. I wanted to stop to see if he needed help, but a mixture of gravity, brake fade and pumped-up cramping hands conspired to stop me. Or not stop me as the case was.
By this point I was physically drained – the efforts of the day’s hard riding had well and truly caught up with me and I actually greeted the sight of the bottom of the descent with joy. To put that into perspective, the last time I had that feeling on a descent was 57 Switchbacks (actually 68) in Spain. It was that tough. In fact coming down was nearly as tough as going up. Possibly. Soon we were back on the road for a relatively quick spin back to Torver.
So that was that – amongst the toughest day’s riding I had ever done in England, but with some of the most rewarding trails – 32 miles with over 5,000ft of climbing with over 6 hours of riding.
When we got back to the cars, we had another Fany to replace Steve – White Sox (who had car trouble meaning he had to miss Saturday’s ride), had managed to make it. RsKpT.
We were soon changed and in our cars to drive over to Ambleside where we were staying in the Ambleside Back-packers. In a dorm. Are you sure? Us, with our reputation? Are you mad?. A couple of the guys tried the showers – one Beelzebub Scalding, the other Arctic Ice-flow Freezing, so most of us just had a quick wash and headed straight out into Ambleside. Within a matter of minutes we were stood in a bar drinking a few well earned beers before quickly convening in The Queen’s Head Hotel for obligatory cow and chips and onion rings and beer and peppercorn sauce and beer and garlic bread. And beer.
As it was England versus France in the Rugby World Cup Semi-final, I guided the Team over to The Sportsman’s Arms – a renowned drinking pub – where we watched gleefully as Jonny Wilkinson kicked us into the finals.
A few more beers later and we were soon in our beds, terrorizing the rest of the poor souls who had the misfortune to be sharing the same room as several sweaty, drunk, loud Fanys.
And then it was the Sunday morning dawn chorus – synchronized wind-breaking from all corners of the dorm. Of course these things REALLY amuse Team Fanylion.
After a quick breakfast in the local café and a relatively FanyFaff™-free set-up - apart from Sam fixing a puncture only to claim his valve was faulty because the tyre wouldn’t pump up when it was actually the thorn still in the tyre that had immediately punctured the new tube he had fitted.
On a beautiful morning – clearing skies, unbroken views and warm conditions, we rode straight from the Back-packers along the road briefly before quickly diving to the left and up a steep tarmac climb on a bridleway. The tarmac soon gave way to singletrack at Jenkin Crag, which soon gave way to wet and slippery rock garden.
After Sheldon’s fantastic efforts yesterday, he was very soon quickly falling some way behind and up to his old trick of blaming beer for his poor performance. Fortunately he soon found his riding legs again and was spinning along at as an impressive a pace as Saturday’s ride.
We had soon headed over to High Skelgyll and down to Troutbeck, gaining miles at a reasonable pace, given the exertions of the day before and the beers of the night.
The riding was much like the day before’s, some fast singletrack punctuated by technical climbs and wet rocks until we found ourselves on the biggest climb of the day – up a rocky wall-lined lane up to Garburn Pass. After a relatively tough climb (I say ‘relatively’ because after yesterday’s climb to Walna Scar, anything would seem easy by comparison), we reached the top – and another of the damn loose rocky descents that had been putting the fear into me all weekend.
When we reached the bottom (Sam at the back after another puncture on his gossamer-thin Kendas) we got to discussing the merits of correct tyre pressure. Pressures of 35psi and 42psi were being banded about.
I quietly and discretely went over to my bike to relieve the tubes of some of their 50psi. Perhaps that was why I had struggled with pumped-up hands and the rocky descents. (In my defence, I was running such a relatively high pressure to try to avoid the snakebite punctures others had been getting).
Soon we were skirting the beautiful lake of Kentmere to take a rising bridleway through some lovely flowy singletrack towards High Borrans. Here we had the most inexplicable crash of the day. I rode through a gate (being held open by Shortbread) to see Starkey seemingly taking a wiz in the bushes. It turned out that Shortbread had pushed the gate open for him, but as he approached it swung back shut again – straight onto his upper thigh – and he was examining the damage. It was one of those injuries that probably hurt way more than we gave him credit for, but it certainly slowed him down at last as he started to struggle at the back with his dead-leg, even after he was dosed up on Ibuprofen to reduce the swelling!
Soon we were heading back towards home, albeit via a circuitous route along the bottom of the Garburn Pass to eventually join back onto the outward route at High Skelgyll and the wet and slippery Jenkin Crag where we happened upon some anal walkers – deliberately blocking the path and stopping us from taking the best lines. It isn’t often you come across that and thankfully it was the only occasion all weekend too.
So that was that – another 19 miles with over 3,400ft of climbing over 4 hours of riding - all in much more enjoyable conditions that Saturday. We soon packing up our kit and headed into Ambleside to grab some food before heading home, tired but satisfied.
Team Mastiles.
Riders present
Shortbread
Starkey
Shack
Mastiles
Cove
Techno
Saturday only
Hodgson
Sunday only
White Sox
Enjoyment level
Scarred for life