Beamish Reliability Trial

Father's Day and the day of the 2011 Beamish Reliabilty Trial. We had an early (for us) start time of 8.38am. Factoring in getting ready, travelling to the start with time to sign in and the trip to the toilets which was a five minute walk, meant getting up at daft o clock. It was a cool but dry trip to The Beamish Museum for the start. There weren't many cars about, some had already set off and later numbers had still to arrive.

I'm sure I have some oil in here. Guess who forgot to check it on Saturday?

We set off on time and had a good run, with no rain until we reached the Stang. Then it got wet. It stayed wet until we were over the Buttertubs. We were running in low cloud there and visibility was much reduced.

Whilst Numbum was running well we had some technical problems with the video and found we didn't have any video of the morning climbs.

With the early start we arrived at the Bainbridge lunch stop well before noon and had plenty of time for lunch and conversation with other entrants.

We left Bainbridge just after 1pm and gave a cheery wave to friends, Don & Eileen Dalton who were observing at Askrigg Bank. Sorry we couldn't stop but you would have marked us down if we had seeing as it was an observed section.

The TA was running better and better as the day progressed. Pity our ability to answer questions didn't improve.

The run back to Beamish was uneventful, and mainly dry and we arrived at the finish, happy but rather weary.

After some good chat with fellow competitors, we set off for home and arrived safely some 12 hours after we set out.

Later that evening I received this super picture from David Bolton who caught us climbing away from the Bollihope Quarry checkpoint. Thanks David!

I also received some great video, shot by Oliver Bolton, David's son. The first video of Numbum from the outside.. Thanks Oliver!!

You can hear us setting off from the checkpoint, heck it's loud, and it's working hard in 3rd as we pass the camera.