Started at Newbiggin on Lune to do the Howgills loop that we haven’t done for about 6 years, everything going great until Steve’s rear mech grabs a small branch/large twig/lump of wood which didn’t do his ‘back end’ any good. At 1st it looked like he’d bent a spoke & rear mech a bit but with a bit of adjustment on the mech range things didn’t seem too bad. About a mile later along some nice singletrack me & Johnny boy arrive at a gate but Steve & my son are missing, Johnny say’s ‘I heard someone say ‘bollix!’ a while back’. Transpires that Steve’s mech has committed suicide & taken out 2 spokes with it!
Took the busted (XTR Shadow) mech off & tried to singlespeed it but it wasn’t having it (plus Steve’s a bit stubborn & wouldn’t let me, ‘the font of all knowledge’ fix it) so he ended up walking about 6 miles up the road while I went & got the car!
& to top it off we took a shortcut to the road from the BW on a FP to be greeted with some old codger who says, ‘thats a footpath, you shouldn’t be on it’. Get a life ****!
The weather was lovely as well.