Water was generally okay with a stream & sterilising tab if necessary.
There were a handful of main “long” stints…
From Haltwhistle after CP2 until across the border to Biggar, there was a pub i had just missed the food deadline for… luckily i met the chef on his way home who made sure some chips were waiting for me when i arrived
From Contin overnight until about 30km from the finish, that took ALOT longer than expected due to terrain and darkness … yes i ran out of food… I was hanging on but realised it was still 20miles at a fairly slow pace to that shop. I added cold water to one of my emergency dehydrated meals and rode on for 15mins giving it a good squish and then over about 3 short stops had cold rehydrated chilli…a bit crunchy but not as bad as it sounds !
Other than that a couple of times I was unlucky with timing,
After one of the moorland sections the pub was too busy so I stocked up at a premier to push on, not great but i did have food. I then came through chester a bit too early for places to be open and had to roll on to manchester.
Similarly I got to horton on ribblesdale (?) a bit too early for anywhere to be open so had to breakfast on my remaining steak slice until finding a pub before Kirkby Stephen several hours later!
No bonus food places really, if my timing had been better i would have had a few more pub options through scotland. A short while after getting back on the road in Scotland I paused at a community hall to look for a tap and noticed the house next door had a sign outside saying “shop” … no idea what kind, i rang the bell and a short while later something like a slightly chubby prince andrew in tweeds appeared and sold me a bottle of water for 69p. Very bizarre.
For any curious… I’ve just had to assemble full gps data to validate that i followed the full route… but also makes an interesting index & summary of the actvities on strava if anyone is interested
To be fair that’s probably a better bet.
(Although the part where I say something understated like “so that was pretty bad” and take a slow sip on my coffee is cinematic genius)
Next question! What did you about laundering kit? Did you just wash everything at each CP, and have some spare dry kit for those stops? Obviously you want to keep everything to a minimum; but also have to consider hygiene.
…Laundering ?
I had two sets of shorts / jersey … merino base for overnight & arm/leg warmers when needed.
Nothing got washed.
I had expected to swap shorts / jersey at each CP which I did after CP1 no problem but there was no opportunity to dry/air the first stage kit at that campsite so they went back into the bag damp. So I ended up wearing the same kit for stages 2 & 3 (albeit with a good airing overnight) which was quite… fragrant.
I hung out both sets at CP3 and after a quick sniff test went back to the original set through to the end.
At CPs I had some lightweight trousers & a LS merino base (which would have doubled for riding if it had turned extremely cold).
I have a 13,000mAh tecknet cache battery (I have two + a smaller lipstick battery but only took one with the dynamo) which got charged at each CP and the odd top up through the dynamo.
Below about 5mph there wasn’t enough power to charge anything.
For general off road riding / pushing it would keep the wahoo at a steady charge level, a couple of hours of decent (i.e. 12mph+) road sections would usually top it up pretty well.
Phone never seemed to take well to the start/stop nature of the charging, typically I boosted this overnight from the cache (~50% of the cashe battery to fully charge the phone). I have a motorola g7 power which will last well anyway, biggest problem was when hunting for signal in Wales which sucks battery… even the highlands had surprisingly good signal for the most part.
Also ran a couple of fantastic decathlon usb lights which lasted for ages anyway but would charge fully through the day if plugged in.
I have heard that garmin don’t handle start/stop charging well, as i recall when they lose the usb power they give you a 15second shut down warning… which isn’t helpful !
I take it then the Technet bank isn’t pass through and the Wahoo was happy to be connected direct to the Klite USB (Yes Garmin isn’t as I found out) and just charging phone from the Technet at night or when not riding? Been looking for a good pass through bank for the Klite but not been able to find something around 10,000.
