Many thanks to Tom Gibbs for providing us with the entertainment on Saturday. This part of the Lakes has not been used for some time and it is clear that there were a few rusty memories! The area is made up of many small hills and provides lots of steep climbs, technical riding, easy grassy paths, lanes…. and bracken!

All of this led to some interesting navigation.

It was very clear from the outset that the area was not clearable. Consequently the huge variation in potential route choices made for a very good challenge as can be seen in the results.

Broughton Community Hall made a great venue and it was good to see many of you hanging around at the end to chat. Or was the temptation of Astrid’s wonderful cakes that made you linger? All donations for the cakes will go to a Duddon & Furness Mountain Rescue at the end of the season.

Many thanks to Angela BB for help on registration. Also to Crispin Hoult for helping collect controls afterwards.

Planners report

A rare mainly dry day for this summer greeted riders on Saturday for the latest Lakes MBO event. This time from Broughton-in-Furness using areas that haven’t featured for a while in events.

Dunnerdale and the Duddon to the west offered more technical and hillier terrain but closer grouped controls.

Woodland and Blawith to the east was less technical and faster going but further distance between controls.

Both areas have a lot of nice trails with plenty of grassy single tracks and some proper fell riding.

Great to see a very tight competition across the top 10 with wide variety of routes. Martin Edwards top scored with over 400 points combining the eastern side with some of the west which was probably the best choice.

I wanted to use 1:25k to allow more information to help navigation against a 1:50k but recognise that some struggled seeing contour detail. I hope this didn’t spoil your day out.

I hope everyone enjoyed themselves and I’d recommend to anyone going back and exploring this lovely part of the Lake District.

Tom

The next event in the series will visit another area that has not seen MBO activity for a number of years. Andy & Rachel Slattery are taking you on a tour of the Kirkby Lonsdale and Sedbergh areas. Starts will be from the Barbon Village Hall on 18th August. This is also the first of LMBO’s Shield events this year. We need a good turnout of LMBO riders to score as we will have many riders from outside the region seeking points. We finished third in the Shield league last year. Let us see if we can go at least one place better this year.

As always full details and entries are on the BMBO website.

Tony BB