Check-out the Skedaddle staff & biking guides on holiday during the 2009 Skedaddle Guides weekend in the UK’s Lake District. As usual it was an international affair, with around 40 people arriving from Spain, Sardinia, Norway, Newcastle, Rotherham (most exotic), London, Bristol and everywhere in-between. We even had Paul arriving like the proverbial Paddington Bear from Peru armed with a superb some superb photos and videos of our mountain bike holidays in Peru. 

We’re please say that we all passed our First Aid qualification and so are now all ready to bandage you up in the ‘unlikely’ occurance of someone falling off their bike, whilst on holiday.

We’ve also been kept up to date with all things bike wise by Dave of TSW Cycles / Giant Bikes and as all now familar with Spanish Tapas (Cumbrian Style) after a night in Costas Tapas Bar……a little bit of Spain in Penrith and high kitsch in the extreme!!

 Check out the below photos and see if you can see anyone you recognise?

Skedaddle Guides make it out on the hills around Ulswater

Dave finds it amusing that Straws calls the bike on the stand a ‘Racer’.

Five hours on and hundreds of kicks up the ass, Simone still hasn’t realised !!

Sadly, David would never play the piano again!

Skedaddle Sardinia in the Snow

What’s wrong with you!! It’s only a bit of ice!!
 

The weather was fantastic in the Mendips earlier this month, which was just as well as I spent the hours between midnight and 3am Sunday morning waving a torch at riders in various stages of fatigue and mountain biking insanity at charity cycling CLIC24 event. All off this on my weekend off from guiding in Exmoor and the Quantocks for Skedaddle…do i get a medal??

Running from midday Saturday to midday Sunday, CLIC24 is held over a fast, 10 mile course over the Mendip Hills. At least, it’s fast when it’s dry, which it was this year and wasn’t in 2007, when it rained heavily for more or less the entire 24 hours. That didn’t seem to have deterred entrants, with 420 of them starting the race, either in teams of four or, for the insane, solo.

In the team stakes, it became clear that it was a local derby, with Wells-based Bike City and Cheddar Cycle Store running neck and neck: early laps were running at 38 minutes or so. In the event, Bike City completed 35 laps, and Cheddar 33. Bike City timed their finish to perfection, sending their last rider out at 11:20, returning precisely as the clock stood at 12:00.

This guy and his passenger got in a bit earlier !

Similarly, two of the soloists stood out: David Powell and Aidan Harding. Seemingly not needing to eat much or sleep much, these two piled on the laps, eventually completing 22 and 21 respectively. Yup, 220 miles of mostly off-road biking in 24 hours. How they can do this is beyond me: I rode one lap on Sunday to check the course out, and it knackered me.

A great event, admirably organized by Neil Wilkins and his team as usual, from the party on the Friday night to the speeches on the Sunday, by way of the bar, the food, the on-site massage therapists and the all-night tea and coffee, all of which were excellent. CLIC24 raised £56,000 for CLIC Sargent last year, with high hopes for this year, and they’d like to make it more. So, if you fancy a nice, laid-back 24 hours of cycling pain for a really good cause, bear it in mind for next year ! Go to www.clic24.org.uk for the details.

Following a wet and soggy Friday, we awoke on Saturday to find the sun returned and barring a few minor showers we managed to keep our waterproofs in the trusty Skedaddle Landy, for this mountain bike weekend!!

As usual Alasdair and Andy were at the helm, with new Skedaddle guide Annie enjoying her baptism of dreadful puns, sacrasm and white lies about the ‘cheeky climbs’ and how long there was to go. Straws, following his ‘tea-cup washing disaster’, was one handed driver / picnic maestro for the weekend - bless !!!

As you can see from the photos, it was a busy ole weekend, with many riders using it as a ‘build-up’ ride before heading out on their mountain bike holidays / cycling holidays with us, and here’s hoping that everyones bums aren’t too sore from the riding and the red-hot Thai curries on the Saturday night!!

Check out more photos of this particular Mountain Bike Weekend on flickr

This superb desert biking adventure focuses on the deep south of Morocco, a land of big skies and stark mountain ranges where mud-brick kasbahs appear to rise up out of the desert, sitting in tranquil palm oases and framed by dramatic backdrops of snowcapped mountains. We ride along Morocco’s dirt roads, taking us from Marrakech to the Tichka Pass, the highest in the High Atlas, and then southward, descending along the Draa Valley to the fringes of the Sahara Desert.