The Great Ayton Key Search

From Great Ayton & Guisborough May 09

So, we've all done it. We've all set off for a one way trip, leave a car at the end and we'll just drive back to pick it up from the start when we've finished. We've all been there and found some dork forgets the key to the car waiting at the finish. Yep, we all had to cycle back to the start of the very long hill on Saturday to get home. Cheers Matt!

Matt and Chibu were both in demo bike territory again, this time is was the Scott Genius and Spark, both very highly specced demo versions too (no wonder Matt wasn't concentrating on where his keys were!). I think that the Genuis (Matt) was better than the Trek Ex-8 by the way we were talking about it, however it was the carbon fibre version on test and way too much money. The Spark was also good (Chibu) and decisions about buying them now loom...

We started at the car-park for Captain Cook's Monument and, heading up towards Roseberry Topping, we peeled off into the woods (which many trees have been felled since I was there last). The roots and trails were really dry so it was easier to keep good speed through these sections and, a lot of fun. We managed to get to the top of the world, well, it felt like it at least, on the top of High Cliff (an craggy part of the hill which makes the tallest point). There were a lot of people out walking for the day we noticed, although my eyes were watering most of the time as we went whizzing past them, so I'm presuming they were walkers.

It was pretty windy most of the day and somehow George conjured up a route that had the wind at our back 90% of the day. We're still not quite sure how the luck of the Irish was working in his favour and how he managed this, particularly bcse we did a loop! Maybe it was bcse we were joined by older brother Richard, and the power two Irish have is so much greater...We'll never know :-)

Once again Trail Guru failed to work properly on the iPhone, having researched the Garmin Edge 705, this really does look like a better option for reliability on GPS coverage and record GPS tracks. The downside of this being the £240 that needs to be shelled out to pick one up. I'll keep checking eBay to see if there's one going second hand.

It was only after our downhill finale, which saw Matt horizontal and a bike pretty much doing the same (always worrying when it's still owned by the bike shop) that we realized the our finale was to be followed by the real finale, the long uphill slog to the car which any of us had keys for. No injury to the demo bike, so that was good news and slightly scuffed elbows all part of the fun!

We picked up some good photos of the day, maybe a video too after some editing. Keep your eye on the Vimeo links for further video updates.

We finished in true style, visiting a very quiet and quaint coffee shop in Kildale, for hot sandwiches and cake. Chocolate cake and lots of it! I'm looking forward to doing this particular trip again. And that's just for the cake!

With the cancellation of the Wild Boar event, next week will still lead us to the Lakes, with the couple of trail centres there to be tried out.