Nearly mown down by a quad bike...

Weekly stats

Reflections

I had a quiet week. I did less than I expected but I was feeling quite fatigued and I don’t think it is a bad thing.

The longest run of the week was just a 22k bimble around The Calf, Simon’s Seat and Fell Head today. The weather was notably warmer. This is, of course, relative but I felt clammy in the initial hour and it was a little more humid compared to recent weeks.

On the way up I stopped and had a good 10 minute natter with a fell runner after she descended from Calders. She is Kendal-based and we spent the time extolling the virtues of the Howgills. Quiet with lots of lovely training options, I can understand why she drives over from Kendal (about 20mins away) and I’m very fortunate to have it out my backdoor.

The Howgills are quite popular for mountain biking and I have done a little of it myself - the single track from the top of The Calf and down Bowderdale is quite sporting and is generally well known. I haven’t done any biking myself for a few years, as I’ve been quite happy running, but I am also struck by how inefficient it is in the Howgills. Of course, it is fast coming down but getting up with a bike is murderous. I quickly outdistanced two bikers as they pushed their steeds up the steep climb to Calders after I finished chatting. The track after that is largely downhill but they didn’t catch me again. I have to emphasise that I am not quick. But, despite the overall efficiency of cycling, it doesn’t pan out well for biking in these parts.

Hitting traffic. Or it nearly hit me anyway.

The most exciting part of the day was that I came within an ace of being run over. Not by mountain bikers but by a pair of quad bikes.

It was very cloudy with lousy visibility as I came up towards the top of Bush Howe when I heard the engines. I got my younger dog on the lead and Tallisker was, as usual, within a metre of me. I was just at the point where the path I was climbing from Simon’s Seat meets the Calf route around to Fell Head. Two quad bikes suddenly appeared out of the clag about 20 metres in front us and they were caning it. One went left of me but the other quad bike, some dozy-arsed muppet, didn’t seem to have seen me at all and, alarmingly, kept coming directly at me. I waved my arms over my head at him to get his attention as I think he must have been watching his mate and, clearly, wasn’t looking out for pedestrians. He veered off to my right and I could see him laughing raucously at it all with his pillion companion grinning inanely.¹ Dickhead.

They roared off and I tried to get my heart rate back down to something approaching normal. I don’t actually remember ever meeting another person, in all my trips, in that section of the Howgills, and I can’t believe I nearly got mown down.

A couple of hundred yards further on I found a large bag of M&S luxury crisps. They must have bounced off the quad bikes and their bloody picnic hamper. Certainly, they looked like people on a joyride - out for a jolly on the hills and they weren’t working farmers.² It was a shame to leave them 😀 so I picked them up and once I got down out of the cloud, cracked them open, and enjoyed a good handful. I tucked the rest in the sidepocket of my bag to enjoy later. I do love crisps and it was a pleasant surprise. I like to think it was some recompense.