On Saturday the 26th of June I found myself at the start line of the challenging #JENNRIDE two day Bike Packing event starting in Staveley in the Lake District, England. The #Jennride is a 100 mile off road bike packing charity event in memory of Jenn Hill organised by a well-known Lake District mountain biker Rich Munro.
The route is approximately 100 miles but our group of 6 riders had planned to make it a more social weekend with less mileage. Fat-bike.com’s long term friend John Climber came up with a route which had big climbs, long sweeping descents and perfect scenery!
In our group of 6, I had ridden with John plenty of times before and had rode with one of the other guys once previously. The two ladies in the group joined us as a last-minute make up. The bikes were varied too, with 3 of us on fat bikes and the other 3 on MTBs.
There was plenty of stopping along the way to soak in the views as we followed the line from John’s GPS. I must admit I did not look at the route once beforehand or during the ride. This kept it fun for me as I had no idea if there was a big climb or singletrack descent coming up next. A couple of the others had the GPX of the route and also a paper map too which was useful for some minor adjustments along the way.
Our first village we passed through was a lovely little place called Hawkshead and it was so picturesque with its narrow cobbled streets. After a quick lunch stop we headed back out on the trail.
The afternoon passed fairly quickly and after a visit to the old slate mine in Little Langdale we soon got fed and watered in a lovely little village pub. They even let us have a take out too!
Instead of our planned wild camp somewhere out on the hill, we decided to pedal a few miles from the pub to a basic campsite with toilet facilities! After setting up on the edge of the campsite a few riders passed on the trail alongside my tarp.
The next morning was a stunner, clear blue skies and no wind at all. It was one of them mornings were you just wanted to sit and soak in the views.
We soon got pedaling and made up some mileage on fine trails. We rode past many lakes as the area is littered with lakes that are filled from the rainfall that drops on the mountains here. Luckily for us, we were blessed with perfect cycling weather for the two days.
It was a fantastic weekend thank you