On what has to be the warmest day of the year so far, myself, John Bennie and Luke made it across to the Pentlands orienteering. For anyone who hasn’t done one of these, it’s pretty simple. You get given a map with lots of points on it and you have to go collect as many points as you can in 3hr and try to avoid getting stuck on the other side of a big hill with only 10min to go! Luke and I did it as a pair while John went out on his own – both of us with different route choices but similar points in the end.
It’s been ages since I’ve ridden at the pentlands and I’d forgotten how much fun it is. There’s loads there, especially with the nicer weather drying off the mud to make it all just a bit more rideable.
I’m sure the proper orienteers will be analysisng their route choice for the next week but all I can say is that ours worked for us. We managed to get in some great descents, including a few scary steep ones I hadn’t done before. We used the high scoring checkpoints at the tops as a good excuse for these and still managed to take in the stunning views out over Edinburgh from Allermuir. Luke had a puncture near the beginning and John timed his arrival nicely to bring us a CO2 canister, after Luke finished duck-taping his tyre shut again.
Towards the end we realised that we were maybe cutting it just a little bit fine for the 3hr mark so it was a fast ride to the finish line, with me narrowly missing running down a small dog. Didn’t it hear us politely ringing our mandatory bike bells? Luckily dog and owners were unscathed and we rushed to the finish line, only 4 mins late to find out we’d won the mixed pair category. Beer, chocolate and alpine vouchers, awesome!
There’s still loads more riding to be done out there and it’s not really far to go at all. I don’t think we’ve had a club trip out there for a while but maybe sometime soon, I think it’s well worth it.
