Grisdale, Gremlins and Northern Kindness

The plan was to tour the northern England and Scottish mountain bike trails, my mat n his Jeep and me in my VW Camper. Life never seems to work out the way we plan it, so we ended up going in June instead, and the week we planned was crimped to a few days due to my wedding anniversary and with a trip to France on the agenda for June, all the same it’s always great to spend time with my mate wherever it is and so a great time was guaranteed.

My mate is retired too and loves his Jeep so he turned it into a camper for the week , it is amazing what you can do with chipboard and some planks. He has created a 6 foot bed, made curtains out of cardboard and used some old pond lining as a front curtain, he can even fit his mountain bike inside if he has to, though it’s a bit tricky having a night time wee, so he locks it to the tow bar. His ingenuity to create this mobile bedroom is genuinely something to behold.

We planned to rendezvous in the Lake District at the campsite new Grisdale Forest, our first riding destination. My trip from Bristol was about 250 miles and I did it in my old van without a break and I pulled off the M6 at Kendall 4.5 hours later and pulled into a petrol station to fill up before camping. At this point the implications of hours at the wheel hit me, as I stood beside the van filling with fuel still in crouched in a sitting position as my body was kind of locked into a semi sat position.

Gremlin Strike and the lost keys

I went and paid for the fuel and hopped back into the van (it only took 5 mins to regain my posture!), went to put the ignition key and it wasn’t on the key ring. WTF, how can the key not be on the key ring, all the other keys are on it. Where the hell can it be.

Then I noticed that the ring itself was stretched and realised that the most important key in my life, the ignition key, must have found a way to rotate itself and escape from the ring, Then the hunt began, on the floor around the petrol filler cap, inside the cab, around the bin where I’d dumped the packets and then a walk about the shop.

No sign of the key anywhere, I organised the bin beside the van to be opened so I could check inside, nope, not in there either. The cashier then joined the hunt and roped in other customers to our task.

Northern people are renowned for their helpfulness and within 5 minutes there were at least 10 people, who had come in to buy petrol or snacks, walking around the shops staring at the floor, under shelves and into crevices without any success. Eventually a bloke walked in and asked, “Is anyone looking for this”, and held up the missing ignition key he found outside on the steps ……. Phew. 

Lots of thanks and hugs followed and I got back in the van, still disbelieving that a key could escape from the key ring in that way and headed off to the campsite for a lovely warm evening watching the sun set and drinking cold beer. Life was good again and we had a lot to look forward to.

My mate arrives along with the rain

Eventually my mate turned up and at that exact moment it started to rain, literally at the moment he pulled into the campsite. I duly admired his Camperjeep and we did our best to celebrate the start of our adventures but the rain was determined and 12 hours later, the drought of the north was over as we endured the worst thunder and lightning storm ever, it wasn’t just the drought that was over,  some of weekenders plans were over as well after tents had been flooded or been blown away.

Gremlin Strike 2 – power failure

We decided to keep breakfast simple, just toast in my little van, then off to the trail centre.  The bread was a bit big for the toaster, and I had to force it down into the slots. I hadn’t really considered that bread is an electricity conductor and suddenly everything in the van was dead.

We quickly identified the problem, the trip on the campsite supply so we reset it and tried again. Not surprisingly, another pop and the power was gone again, but this time the campsite supply was OK. So it was in the van, something that had never happened before. So, we did various checks of different sockets, the internal fuses were OK. What on each has happened, we concluded we had blown a site master fuse, but nope. It was all good, so it had to be the van.

I started to strip out cupboards thinking a cable must have come loose but luckily, My mate was a qualified electrical engineer (as well asmany other things) and said there must be another switch. He is smaller than me, he got his head into a cupboard and with the aid of an iPhone torch spotted a master switch that, even after 20 years of owning the van, I didn’t know existed.  Excellent, we had power back but yet another freaky inexplicable incident, so we packed up to get on our way.

Gremlin Strike 3 – my book has gone

When I packed up, I couldn’t find my book anywhere. How on earth can I have lost a book FFS, it was nowhere to be found. This was getting ridiculous.

It was then that I realised I might be the victim of some devilish spirit trying to ruin my weekend. Then Jeepy remembered the film Gremlins, not the little fluffy ones, but the evil critters that appear after they got wet, my van was clearly inhabited by an evil Gremlin who had got wet overnight.

Off we went to Grisdale Forest where the full extent of the nights rain became apparent. Roads were flooded hills had torrents of water pouring down them, the scenes were almost biblical, but we were not going to be put off. Bikes out, on with the gear and off we went into the floods on our bikes.

Gremlin Strike 4 – lost Go Pro camera

As we set off, I noticed that my Go Pro camera didn’t seem to lock properly, but I thought it must be my imagination and not to worry.  10 mins into the first climb I noticed the camera was gone. That goddam Gremlin has been at it again, now we will have no films of our rides let alone the cost of the camera. My hatred for that Gremlin just got more serious.

The rides around Grisdale were disappointing, largely due to the resemblance of trails to rivers, so we didn’t miss much without the camera. I have never seen so much water in all my life. Paths and trails were completely flooded, I was more like a paddle boat than a bike, but few made it around.

We paddled on through the water and made it to the top of the trail with an amazing look out over Windemere. At that point we had a very interesting conversation about the feasibility of the Loch Ness Monster having migrated to Windemere because is was sick of all the hunters, it’s fair to say we didn’t reach agreement on the feasibility but it was an interesting discussion all the same and my mate tried to get a photo of it, just in case.

When we returned to the trail centre there was more evidence of the wonderful kindness of the Northern folks, despite them being descendants from Vikings. I had left my mate in the café so I could just have a check on the first trail to see if the camera was on the ground but no such luck.

Northern kindness

As I walked through the car park looking dejected, a very tall stranger came the other way, he then said,

“Hey mate, have you lost a Go Pro”,  he had spotted my empty case on the handle bars and suddenly the camera was back in my hand. No words could express my thanks, so we did knuckles and he cycled off.

It was time to head off to our next destination and despite the efforts of the evil Gremlin, Northern Kindness had saved my day again. Northern folks had found the key, My mate found the trip switch and the tall stranger had returned my camera.

Still no sign of the book and now my Adidas trainer had disappeared in the van, but things could have been one hell of a lot worse without the Northern folks.

Time to set off for Kielder Forest and our next adventure.