RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

1974

“I’ve never been particularly aware of my age. It’s like being on a bicycle – I just put my foot down and keep going.” - Angela Lansbury

 

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In response to your query about the spelling of these Lake District names, I have checked them again on both the lin. Barts and lin. O.S. maps. Barts quite clearly prints the name as WASTDALE, but on the O.S. it is WASDALE, the same as Wasdalc Hall and Wasdale Head, but on both maps the lake is WASTWATER. Now that I use the O.S. maps, 1 have adopted their spelling of Wasdale, though it is also interesting to note that the people who live there always refer to the valley as WASDALE.
How ironic to learn of Government plans to make more use of the railways, when we have good cause to know with what thoroughness the railways have been run down over the past decade—stations closed and many demolished, tracks torn up and even bridges destroyed. Very little of this destruction can ever be replaced, and I for one feel that we are all the poorer for it.
When Bob’s name appears on our fixtures list, local members know we’re in for rough-stuff and mud in plenty, but that’s the very reason for myself definitely not missing runs under his leadership. So when he suggested that the S. Wales section should have a run of a more ambitious nature than usual and that he would select a route in the Builth Wells area and lead it himself, it was marked down in the diary as one not to be missed.
The point selected for the crossing was daunting to the bravest of men. Bob, bless him, went first; I followed hard on his heels, then came John and Tom. My bike was soon off its wheels, being swept downstream at a tangent from my restraining grip. Holding on, grimly striving to keep my saddlebag above water, and only too well aware of what could happen if I slipped. How Bob and the others were faring I was unmindful.....
Having sat down with compass and two maps and my pipe going, to make sure I was not jumping hastily at a wrong conclusion, I turned sharp left or westwards along the edge of the drop on my right and pushed up another slope, with neither stakes nor track to guide me, to the summit point marked 3014 feet on both maps. Here I saw two ptarmigan (the first I had ever seen) and pushed on north-west by compass to the watershed. It was now 4.30 p.m. and at last I saw Loch Callater some two or three miles away
I thought I was due to a rest-day next day, so, after getting a broken mudguard rivetted at the garage, I stocked up with food in the Braemar shops, had lunch at a cafe, dropped my heavy baggage at the Youth Hostel and set off for an amble up to the Linn of Dee, which was very pleasant. But, of course, the locked gate and “No road for Motors” was not to be resisted. To cut a long story short, I soon found myself at the Geldie Burn

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