NYMBO Update – Yorkshire Wolds weekend

Thanks to Dave Evans who has spent months planning this event as well as hours in his car visiting farmers and hours on his bike and on foot checking out all of the bridleways in a huge competition area. We reaped the rewards of all of his efforts with 2 superb events last weekend. The Yorkshire Wolds are different to most of the areas that we regularly ride which is why we have an event here every year. The event might have had to be cancelled if it had been anywhere else because there are no major rivers and the underlying chalk meant that the rain quickly soaked into the ground. The tracks were excellent on Saturday but slightly muddier on Sunday as we all discovered when we tried to clean our bikes afterwards – or on Monday morning!!

Thanks to Dave, Bob, Gary and Alex for putting out all 60 controls in the right places.

Thanks to these 4 plus Steve Langron, John Dixon, John Butler, Nick Harmer, Danny Chan and Andy Stanforth for helping to collect them all in afterwards.

Thanks to all of the helpers who volunteered to make this event run smoothly.

Thanks to Sledmere House for providing an excellent event centre.

As this was our second weekend event this month our numbers were lower than usual. However, I think that holding our event as part of the Polaris Challenge weekend worked well. It was brilliant to be involved with a major event and take advantage of the facilities that a busy event centre can offer.

Unfortunately there were 4 problems near Raisthorpe Manor in Thixendale on Saturday. A gate was left open so 6 horses got out of the field onto the road. Some riders missed the singletrack to the west and headed up a pathless valley. Other riders ignored the ‘Private Road’ sign and went up through the farm. Yet more riders ignored the ‘Private Road – no public right of way signs’ as well as the bridleway fingerposts and came down through the farm. On Sunday, some riders ignored the fingerpost and nicely cut grass on the bridleway to #58. When they realised they had gone wrong they just cut across the field damaging the crop instead of going back to the road. There is no excuse for this and the farmers were rightly annoyed. We have apologised but these riders have not done our reputation any good and may affect permission for access in future.

Back to the positive comments. The best results of the weekend came from Andy Stanforth and John Dixon who won the Veteran and SuperVet classes on both days ahead of Mike Naylor and Mike Barnard respectively. Steve Turland recorded the highest score on Saturday but it was back to the old routine on Sunday with Andrew and Wayne just nudging Nick Harmer off the top spot. Route choice was crucial with such a large competition area – and I got it wrong both days!! There were some very low scores from experienced riders –especially on Sunday – so 180 points in the Junior class from Jessica Appleton was very impressive

A number of our riders chose the longer option with Rik Thompson finishing second in the Senior Men while Dennis Jacques and Sheila Pearce came third in the Veteran Mixed category. Hopefully more of you will enter one of the Polaris Challenges in future – and not just the next time it is held in North Yorkshire.

In the league, Nick Harmer has a clear lead but Steve Turland is improving every month. Mandy Faint still leads the women ahead of Karen Blackburn but newcomer Amy Stanforth may be following her Dad’s example as he leads the Veteran class by just one point from Mike Naylor with John Rawdon just a further 4 points behind. Dave Evans records an average score for planning this weekend so retains the lead in the Supervets but John Dixon has closed the gap to 2 points. John & Amanda Meeks stretched their lead in the mixed category with 2 steady rides while Mike and Beth Pickwell narrowed the gap behind Dean & Zac Field in the Generation class. However,with 4 events still to go there are plenty of opportunities for change.

Future events

Wednesday July 11 th Malt Shovel at Hovingham in the Howardian Hills 2 hour Lanequest

Please email me if you want to reserve a map nymboevents@btinternet.com

Saturday August 25 th Malham Trailquest 4 hour Trailquest in the Yorkshire Dales

Full details at http://www.malhamdale.com/showtrailquest.htm

Monday August 27 th Newtondale Forest & Levisham Moor MBO near Pickering 2 hour MBO

Part of the Eborienteers White Rose weekend. Event centre at Seavy Slack Farm, Stape.

Entries to Sue Relton as usual

Saturday 15 th September Boltby & Silton Forests 2 hour MBO

Saturday 13 th October Dalby Forest 2 hour MBO

Camping available at High Rigg Farm

Check out the new singletrack Blue route on Saturday morning

50 mile fixed route Mountain Bike Marathon on Sunday

The split times and details of all our MBO events are already on the Ebor web page

www.trailquest.co.uk

www.nymbo.org.uk

www.eborienteers.org.uk

Please let me know if there are any errors in the results or if you want your details removing from this mailing list.

Hopefully see you all at another NYMBO event soon.

Cheers

Steve