Stainforth Organiser’s Comments
Thanks to Alex Pilkington for another excellent course in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales including some very interesting controls. This was the first event in the Overground Underground Festival so check out their web page for the programme of outdoor activities for the rest of the summer on http://www.ogug.co.uk/
Thanks as ever to Jens for another excellent map, Geoff Moorhouse, Karen Blackburn and Michael Brough for helping on the day and Dave Lloyd, Andy & Corinne Parsons, Ray Morriss, Roger Pilkington and Tim Evans who helped Alex collect the controls after they had finished as well as Graeme Fielding and Martin who hadn’t even ridden in the event.. Thanks also to Chris & his staff at Knight Stainforth Caravan Park who welcomed us to their site and cafe so if you want to go back for a more leisurely visit check out http://www.knightstainforth.co.uk/
Congratulations to Graham Tibbott for visiting all but 4 controls as well as the other category winners – Mark Chryssanthou M40, Tim Evans M50, Ray Morriss M60, Geoff Moorhouse M70, Dorothy Pelly W50, Clive & Sarah George X40 (on a tandem), Steve & Ben Collins (Gen). You can follow their routes using the splits file and course map on the NYMBO site.
It was great to be riding on dry tracks in the sunshine for a change although it still felt cold when riding downhill. I thoroughly enjoyed my ride as usual and, being non-competitive, decided to ignore Penyghent and headed south to visit 2 of the interesting controls starting with 54 in the incredible limekiln, through Settle then the lovely network of singletrack bridleways near Austwick before finishing with 53 at the awesome quarry.
There were 3 controls that caused problems so I have sent 32 and 34 back for re-programming. Sadly, 38 was vandalised during the event so will need replacing at the cost of the event profit. A few riders got lost on Foxup Moor but I hope it didn’t spoil their rides. Some riders couldn’t find 57 but it was straightforward if you were on the right bridleway.
The next NYMBO event is at Kildale on Sunday 12th June where Conrad & Jill have planned an excellent 3 hour course on the Clevelend Hills. You can make it a full weekend as Andrew Windrum has planned 3 sprint MTBO events in Bishopwood, Wheldrake and Allerthorpe on Saturday 11th
Finally, a reminder that Matthew Streets & Pete Swanborough are fundraising for the local hospital unit. Matthew’s daughter, Grace, was born last year with a rare medical condition called Congenital Hyper Insulinism. She is still doing ok but needs ongoing care so they will be riding three long distance MTB events to raise funds.
Hope to see you at another event soon
Steve
Pen-y-ghent from Control 20
You can find the results with splits here
And here’s the map:
Stainforth map with controls – May 2016
nymbo : north yorkshire mountain bike orienteers 
What a great day to be riding in the Dales! In some places it was so dry it maybe made the climbing harder as everything was so loose. I’d sort of made up my mind before the start that i would go round Pen-Y-Ghent early on so i didn’t get stuck there later or have to make a decision to leave it out. Luckily when given the map there were enough points there to confirm it was the right decision but i didn’t fancy leaving the 30 pointer on the hill to the east til the end so i took a long route to get it early, but still ended with 2 real nasty climbs to finish the ride later. The views from number 59 and into the quarry were spectacular. Hopefully those new to it enjoyed themselves. Thanks to those organising the event, i imagine many hours must go into scouting out control sites on a map that size..
A great course, and good weather too!
Particularly enjoyed controls 54 in the lime kiln; 48 at Churn Milk Hole; and the quarry at 53. I hope the rider I met at 49 found her dibber – I just managed to leave mine in the cafe.
I got a bit lost on Foxup Moor so that took me longer than planned. And then after that was a bit more interesting.
My new Garmin GPS Bike computer has “incident detection” – in theory, if you come off your bike, it automatically sends your position to your nominated contacts. The sceptic in me was unconvinced about this feature, imagining that it would be so sensitive that it would send alerts for every speedbump in the road; or never send anything at all.
So as I hurtled down a dusty track towards control 47 I hadn’t given it much more thought. Overestimating the size of a ditch, the best course of action was a headfirst manoeuvre over the handlebars, simultaneously unclipping my pedals, leaving my bike where it was and landing on a grassy bank.
It took a few seconds to realise what had happened, and those seconds were punctuated by an
increasing alarm tone – which I realised was the incident alert. A little like Robocop, the computer was counting down my ’20 seconds to comply’ before send out alerts.
Well, except that I had only put my brothers contact details on the list, and quite what he was goingto do with my location coordinates from over 200 miles away would be anyone’s guess. Given that he can go days without picking up his mobile phone, probably not much.
Luckily, I was able to dust myself down and walk away.
So the incident alert does work after all, and I could tell you exactly where it happened as it puts a “man overboard” mark on the map. Which is also quite handy if you need to head back there later when you realise you dropped something when you crashed!