BG weekend

After a decent week of training and even a visit to Leeds climbing wall (if only to be reminded of what a wuss I am when it comes to coping with heights/ropes/belaying all at the same time) was time to head to the Lakes to support Julie Gardner's BG. Weather forecast was not good again, although we were all hoping that there would be no repeat of the snow that halted the first attempt two weeks ago.

The weather held for leg one and Julie got in to Threlkeld up on schedule. However, heading up Clough Head with me as one of her support (Dave being the other), my weather hex kicked in and the clag, wind and rain came in. So my dreams of a lovely star filled night on the Helvellyns were once again not fulfilled and instead we had nil vis making for very tough navigating conditions on those horrible dodds and not helped by the fact that I couldn't keep with Julie's descending off the pike's to be a beacon on Fairfield! After this leg we came in down on schedule and all Julie's grit and determination was going to be called on to get back on track.

This she did on leg 3 and 4 greatly assisted by easing weather conditions on leg 4 and local knowledge of the navigators on these legs. These legs saw her in touch with the Dark Peak crew a lot, which hopefully greatly aided morale when the clag was down. Julie came in to Wasdale only 20 mins down, taking even more time off on leg 4 to turn the deficit in to some contingency!

So on to leg 5 from Honistor and we could see the tops and views out the rest of the round were fantastic. We made good progress round the Newlands Horseshoe, but dropped a little bit of time coming off Robinsons despite the cheeky lines we took. Coming in to the road section Julie was very glad to be taking off her fell shoes for something with a bit of cushioning. Worried about time we didn't relax much on the road section as things were not quite in the bag. Portinscale couldn't come soon enough as I knew once we were there it was pretty much a case of a run across a couple of fields and in to town. As usual the pencil museum was my welcome marker, followed by the sight of Moot Hall.

Was great to run Julie in and get this done as she was always capable of doing it, and all things being equal would be a sub 23 hour round person (apart from the fact she attracts bad weather/supporters with a bad weather hex). We saw a lot of familiar faces at Moot Hall and really enjoyed seeing Kath and Greg of Macc Harriers as I'd not seen them in ages.

All in all we had a great weekend, finishing Saturday night in Gosforth thanks to the kind hospitality of Annette!