This weekend we finally set off for John O’groats to start our seven day JOGLE epic…
We’ll try and post twitter updates so look for #HSXJOGLE and if any of you, your friends or families want to donate, they can here…. https://mydonate.bt.com/events/hsxjogle
Wish us luck….
teamHSX doing the JOGLE….
Saturday 9th of May saw the launch of Hampshire’s new Scout Ambassador, James Ketchell, with a ride around various Scout huts in Hampshire meeting fellow Scouts and undertaking a few challenges en route. We thought this would be a great opportunity for the JOGLE team to meet up, support James and gain some valuable experience of group riding.
We met up on the Friday evening for a productive team meeting and stayed the night at Ferny Crofts, 0630hrs on Saturday was the less than welcome alarm call and by 0800hrs we’d sorted our kit out, filled our faces with porridge and were ready to depart along with James, the Ferny Crofts Gold Team and the other Scouts who were supporting him. Our route took us from Ferny Crofts across the Hythe Ferry through Southampton and on to Testwood Lake, here we left James to one of his challenges and headed out to Lyndhurst and back where we were able to practice our group riding and change overs. It took us a little while to get ourselves organised but by the end of the loop we were beginning to get the hang of it.
We rejoined James and the rest of the riders and headed for Romsey Scout Hut for a very welcome lunch, from there we headed to Chandlers Ford, then on to Whiteley and eventually ended up at Lyons Copse where the ride finished with tea and cakes! We covered around 60 miles over the course of the day, met some great people and ate some lovely food. As our first training ride together it was very successful and helped to iron out some potential issues, we’re now looking forward to our next group session in the Lake District, bring on the hills!
More photos from the day can be found on James’ Flikr page here
And… We made it into the Romsey Advertiser…. I spot, Alan, Craig, Chris, Smudge and the side of Toms head.
Day One
The Bursars, Russ and Slattergator travelled up early Thursday in the Russ bus we left just before 5am! The early start gave us an enjoyable afternoon walking up Skiddaw and then we found a little man with ice creams on the way down. Later in the day we met up with the other Torneo that contained the Nepal team plus Hannah, Besty and Chris Laws.
That evening due to a slight hiccup in the accommodation we had fish and chips for dinner, we then got to Great Tower where due to the hiccup we were to spend the night on the floor in the ecology room (luckily they had new mattresses for us to sleep on). Before we splet though Ollie (Event Director) and the other drivers did spend some time planning the next day whilst the Nepal team and Bursars explored the site – for many of us our first trip Great Tower.
Besty, Hannah and Chris Laws made a good choice by opting to sleep out overnight, rather than sleeping in a room with 20 other people. Everyone else arrived late that night – we did all switch to HSX time (1hr forward to make the most of the daylight hours).
Day Two
Breakfast was at 7:30 – two brioche (different shapes) and a cereal bar as there was no where to cook. We then split down into three groups – Multi pitch, Walking & Nepal team. The multi pitch team went to the Langdale Valley and climbed up near Stickle Tarn, for some it was our first multi pitch, so we mainly concentrating on gear placements. The walking group met the three over nighters (apparently Chris still snores) and did a 12km walk up Hellvelyn. For theNepalteam this was their first group activity to Bowfell.
That night we moved into Windermere lodge where after dinner in preparation for his ML Assessment Steve Knaggs gave a talk on flora and fauna. Educating us on everything from symbiotic relationships to Parmelia Saxatilis.
Day Three
The Nepal team plus a few others went single pitch climbing, for some their first experience of real rock. Three Bursars plus Dave went for some more multi pitch – because of Steve’s talk we were able to identify the moss we were trying to climb over. Steve and Mike had an epic day’s scrambling. Alan, Besty, Chris Laws and Rich Batstone did a section of the Bob Graham Round. This left a few of the others to summit Scafell Pike. That evening we had roast dinner – it was good.
In the evening we socialised with other network members – getting to bed at an unreasonable hour.
Day Four
TheNepalteam went for another walk to the old man of Coniston. Stu demonstrated how well waterproof trousers foam if you forget to rinse them and it rains. He must be congratulated on actually wearing them as opposed to getting soaked with your trousers nice and dry in your bag.
Ian, Jeremy and Rich Brimelow went mountain biking.
The climbing group did the piece of classic rock “Little Chamonix”. If the wind blows and your gear falls out it suggests more work is needed on placements.
Joe did a talk about rope work for his ML and how important the over hand knot is, brilliant laugh practicing different types of abseils inside.
Day Five
The journey home – started unreasonably early, 6am in fact.
By Rosemary..
As with every year, HSX had their annual forum on the approach to Christmas and has been the tradition for the past three years, this year was also the Adventure Race.
Once again, the weather kept us on our toes. 2008 had rain and floods, 2009 had ice and cold and 2010 saw a fresh supply of snow dump on the Friday night..
Anyway, thanks to Chris Laws for putting it together and Alan for helping out the course out (especially the checkpoint in the middle of the pond)..
In first place this year we had Chris Slater & Ollie Robinson.. Well done to you two, you also get to organise next years..
