discovery tour, day 4

[kirkcudbright]

May 4 - Newcastle to York

The day started with a visitation to an Otto Bock-run prosthetic facility at a hospital in Middlesborough. The whole point of this trip is PR for Otto Bock, with television and newspaper interviews, and visitations like this, where the riders can talk to prosthetists, fellow amputees, and the like. Mind you, this is day 4, and there's been none of that since the day before the ride started.

Because of the distance from Newcastle, we had to drive down to Middlesborough. (Actually, they were expecting us at 8:30 in the morning, and had a spread set out for us, with things like black pudding (blood sausage).)

One of their technicians rode with us about 20 miles out of town. Just after he left us, it began to hail great pea-size hailstones. Mostly, they bounced off, and I didn't get too wet, but they filled up the vents in my helmet, and melted on my head.

Around the point we entered the North Yorkshire Moorlands National Park, Brad dropped out, to sag around it. There's a stiff climb at the start, and some lesser climbs in the middle, and he's just not a great climber with only one leg.

The National Cycle Network has a main route going around the edge of the moors, and an alternate route, going through the moors. We missed a sign at the fork, and ended up going through the moors. It was really pretty, and I was glad I did it, but the point where we realized it was in Hawnby, where the only way out was Up. You've probably never seen a 25% grade. I couldn't bike it, even with two good legs. (Even if I'd had my triple-chainring, go-anywhere touring bike instead of my crufty old double-chainring 12-speed.) And of course, there was a 25% grade going down about 10 miles later, on the other side.

Dan was barely talking to Mitch today. He tried to hash things out over breakfast, to no avail - Mitch just doesn't seem to have much respect for Dan as a person or as a tour organizer. So Dan rode in the back most of the day, and let Mitch navigate and make the decisions. But Mitch doesn't want to be the leader either. At Hawnby, I had to play the leader, and decide that we were going to go over this hill, rather than backtracking over that hill to where we'd left our intended route.

Blurry picture of the McSink-in-the-wall. The buttons are for soap, warm air, and water.	Staff at the Middlesborough clinic.
"A Lime Kiln. Kilns like this were found on many farms and were used to reduce stone to a pure form for use as fertilizer. This one is believed to date from c. 1800."	Flood-water gauge (in feet).
Playing with the landscape mode on my camera. This is Dan's butt, out on the moors. At the very far right is one of 3 saplings incongruously placed at the side of the road in the middle of the moor.
Halfway up the hill out of Hawnby.