Etal U Can - 12th October 2019

I woke and was immediately relieved to discover I was still in my B&B bed in Galashiels and not as I had been dreaming sitting in the Focus center lamenting another DNF.

I woke again from the same dream, the soft mattress of my B&B bed troubling my dodgy back as much as the dreams now, I rolled over on my "wrong" side and found it more comfortable.

Finally I woke to Kraftwerk's Etape 3 blaring from my phone heralding the early wakeup needed for an 8am start.




My last post was rather abrupt, I'd travelled down to the lakes to start the new season on the rather hilly Tour of Rheged route that took me from the south lakes up to Sedbergh, over the dales to Middleton in Teesdale, then back over by Yad moss to Alston and then over Hartside past the burnt out café and down to Penrith, the problem was that I had during the week before tweaked a weakness in my back and having got up all of these I failed miserably on the climb of the Kirkstone pass.
This injury is partly why I suffer when a mattress is too soft, it's also not helping that I've put a few kilo on since PBP anyway the following weekend it was down to Gala for Etal U Can.

It was clear from the number of cards on the table there as a good number of entrants and by the rate they were being removed that there was a good field about to set off.
Surprisingly Michael wasn't ECE'ing the ride, but Craig was, having ridden down from Edinburgh and was going to ride back to Dundee.  Some of the pre-start discussion surrounded riders who wouldn't be there for a number of reasons but I was too tired to take much in so just sat and looked dumb.

As we were getting ready to start I spoke to Sarah who I'd nearly caught on the way past Penrith during the ToR to find out what time she'd finished on, turned out the walk and an extra food stop at Glenridding had resulted in that gap becoming an hour. I also discovered that despite the time difference she had also encountered the wind and rain only from the start of the Kirkstone, so the weather front must have been pretty static.

Gattonside into the low morning sun

Time to go came and as I rode out the centre I saw some of the local riders turning the wrong way!  Unlike most SBR rides where we head west this ride goes east and the main bunch rode through Gala town centre and up the Gattonside road, the wrong routers eventually caught me a bit later in the day.

The route starts off lumpy and I soon felt like I was well off the back as a mass of riders strung past me as we headed east through Gordon and Earlston towards Duns.  The road eased off and not knowing the layout of Duns well I started to wonder where the Jim Clark room is, it's just reopened after refurbishment to allow it to host exhibits rather than just being a trophy room, I was of course wondering this as I rode past.

Graham and his rather nice 90s style frame

The road lumped on and finally Grantshouse appeared on the other side of the A1, I dashed across a gap in traffic into the bypassed road and couldn't find the cyclepath and turned up a steep hill which another rider was already at the top of looking perplexed by the sudden end of it.
Rolling back down the hill I spotted some tyre impressions in the grass and on closer inspection spotted some tarmac under the bushes, typical NCN...

Etal U Can was the first Audax UK event I rode as a member, having ridden the Port Navigation and Rannoch 210 while only "curious", back then I was a bit faster on the road, but slower at controls giving me times for comparison.
I put together a video at the time, utilising a play on the Northumbric long E that makes the name.

After the grassy section I rode to the café for the first control, last time I was standing in the queue near the door, this time near the back of the ride I hardly had to wait, a good few riders I know were there but with my back a tad sore from the climbs and wanting to bounce I decided I'd just say hi and then sit on my own to scoff cake knowing I'd get a chance to apologise when they caught and passed me.

After scoffing a mint slice and can of coke I set off on what is one of the tougher climbs of the day, in the video the cows are watching and a handful of wind turbines spin on the hillside untroubled by any Don Quixote.
Now few cows watched but plenty more turbines spun as this Sancho Panza laboured up the hill with the strong tail wind blowing, at the top the view over the north sea opened up.  Esmond caught me here and I appologised for bouncing the control, we talked about PBP and went sailing past a turn, the same turn I went sailing past in 2017, we retraced and found Tracy standing at the junction checking the info question the ride was getting social!

The lumpy and nadgery nature of the next section put paid to that, with a tricky descent followed by a sharp climb heralding the end of the hard stuff until Ancrum.
In a village a car garage sat on a corner proclaiming to be the "first in Scotland for wheel alignment", the surname on the wall Inglis further highlighting our proximity to the border.

The Union Chain Bridge

The surname Inglis is the Scots word for English and refers to the "non-Celtic" Anglo-Saxon dwellers of the Lothians and Borders, or as Adam of Dryburgh put it "in the land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots".
Until the 14th Century the "English" language, which was an isolated version of Northumbric English that underwent different vowel shifts from both that and the Middle English of the south to form modern Scots, was mostly confined to these lands before overtaking the Gaelic in Strathclyde, Fife and the North East Riviera and further diversifying from Northumbric in the process.
However it can't have diverged significantly at that point as accounts from the Battle of Otterburn indicate that neither Douglas' nor Percy's men could tell their opponents apart in darkness by language.  This all leads to me being able to declare with a strong Dundonian, Ah Etal ah cud.

Sadly when I reached Etal the queue was long and I decided to use the facilities before eating, as I returned to the queue the wait for food was declared to be an hour, no item on the menu was without cheese either though I've never had a problem asking for a cheesless option before but the wait was too much.  I changed plan and took a bottle of juice and cookie with my dinner delayed until Wooler a short ride away.

Etal Castle

There is usually a queue in the Wooler Co-Op and it was no different today, it took a while to identify a wrap I could eat and a few other items before sitting outside catching the warmth of the sun.  A local wandered past and asked me the usual questions of where I'd started and was going, and then with the cue of the Galashiels start and the proximity to Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford, he started talking about all the Scottish literature he'd read, McDairmid, Scott, Burns, Grassic-Gibbons etc.  I've hardly scratched the surface.  We bade each other good day and I set off along the high street checking to see if there was still a 24hr cash machine in town for a ride in the near future... there wasn't hrmpf.

Before returning over the border

The road from here is well known but into a gusting wind it proved a bit more challenging than usual as it ducked in and out of the shelter of both the Cheviot and of the hedges and trees.  At Yetholm the cover was blown and it was a fight into the wind all the way to Morebattle where I'd been looking forward to a pint of coke.
When I stumbled in a full blown political argument was going on between riders thanks to the front page of the newspaper sat on the bar. I'd normally avoid politics on the bike after all it can get horribly divisive, but I got involved for some reason.

I contemplated the Eckford cut on the way to Lilliesleaf but decided to cross the suspension bridge for a change and then it was back into the shelter of the treelined roads. As I climbed through Ancrum I spotted a diversion sign advising of a bridge closure. Ahead I saw a road closed sign, and what looked like the scaffolding of an adjacent tamporary foot bridge.  Closer inspection revealled that it was just scaffolding on the outside of the bridge and that the concrete encasement of the arch had been dug out with two deep trenches at each end of the bridge.

I leaned the bike against the parapet and hopped down into the first trench, well when I say hopped, I have a dodgy right ankle so gingerly lowered myself left foot first into the trench is maybe more accurate.  Bike lifted over, clumsily, and climb out, wander across concrete and repeat, oh this trench is even deeper.  Even more ginger with the lowering into the trench and bike over, this time climbing out was a bit trickier but I was over the bridge, now just to finish the climb to Selkirk!

The descent from the top of the A7 down into Selkirk is long and fast, and it was perhaps a dissapointment to have to stop to get proof of passage at the petrol station where Sarah caught me as I was leaving. I missed the turn in Selkirk and took the A7 route, comparing the previous ride all I avoided was a country road and an excursion into a field at the junction.

Surprisingly I finished the ride in the same time as 2017 although I switched off my GPS 1 minute earlier I have two 11hr dead finishes on this ride. However my time on the bike this year was 40 minutes longer.