A little cold and miserable on Saturday as the three 'winterised' Carawagons searched for a wild camping spot on the moor, but we ended up in a Grewelthorpe pub car park - roaring coal fires in the bar, very nice grub, beer and a few games of doms (where blind luck won just as often as counting the dots
) and a few rounds of rummy passed the evening quite nicely before switching the night heaters on and retiring.We had a couple of inches of snow in the evening, which started to thaw later on, only to freeze again during the night
We emerged on the day of the run under a clear blue sky, with plenty of snow and black ice on the roads!
The bacon sandwiches from the cafe in Masham market square went down well
(Pic by Pete Reas)
(Pic by Pete Reas)
We were the first group off into the wild unknown!
(Pic by Pete Reas)
Steve took the 'Christmas' theme a little far
(Pic by Pete Reas)
There was plenty of snow over the moors, with hard packed snow and ice on the lanes themselves, and on some of the 'public' roads after the moors causing one or two scares!
No-one in our group got stuck, even those with road tyres though we later found out that some in the other groups had to be helped up the steepest hill on the moor.
We arrived in good time at Ripley Castle car park to meet the rest of the Reas contingents who had arrived by road, and sandwiches, mince pies, chocolate biscuits, cakes and treats were passed around until even I had to refuse any more, while we 'warmed' ourselves around Pete's giant Chimera
I think the only caualty (apart from my poor diet!) was my exhaust when a section of the spiral wrapped flexi decided it didn't like being spiral wrapped any more!
This happened up on the moors, but rather than lay in the snow to fix it, I just carried on and repaired it at Ripley, with a tin can (luckily we'd had soup for lunch on Saturday) to match the one at the rear of the flexi - really must sort it out with a proper braided flexi
Cheers,
Robin.
