Isle of Man End 2 End

As well as signing up for the Dyfi Enduro 2010 yesterday I managed to get an entry for the Manx E2E, or to give it its full name the Isle of Man End 2 End Challenge.

It’s another Mountain Bike race, this time, as its name would suggest, from one end of the Isle of Man to the other. The course runs from the Point of Ayre at the northern tip of the Island to the Calf Sound at the Southernmost tip – about 75km in total. It isn’t until September so hopefully I’ll be a little fitter by then, but it should be a good day out on the bike. I won’t actually be racing of course, the idea for me is just to finish it and have a good time.

It’s also a good excuse for a long weekend on the Isle of Man.

I went on my recent trip to the Isle of Man with high hopes of lots of quality mountain biking. I had heard that there were a couple of purpose built trails in the South Barrule plantation and that someone from Coed y Brenin had been there to consult on the building of these. I also had lots of routes printed out.

As it happens, the weather wasn’t great, I forgot to take an OS map with me (despite having several of them) and many of the routes involved quite a bit of distance on the road so I didn’t get around to doing nearly as much as I would have liked.

I did manage to explore the routes within the South Barrule plantation. I actually did them both several times. They are both very short. The ‘Kipper’ route is only 1km long and is a simple loop up a fire road and then down through a short (300m) piece of relatively simple single track. An ideal starter for someone new to mountain biking I guess and graded as a blue trail. For the more experienced it only takes a few minutes to do and isn’t really that exciting.

The longer ‘Viking’ route is graded as Red, but is still only 5km long and again not too challenging (although I did manage to come off on it once!) Again it follows a loop through the forest on fire road with one short piece of single track on the way up and then has a longer single track descent back down through the forest where it joins up with the end of the Kipper trail. The single track is nice enough with a few tight corners and some nice bits of ‘north shore’ woodwork to negotiate. Nothing too challenging though if not attacked and some of the corners would probably benefit from some berms to improve the flow. I managed to come off on the first bit of woodwork in the rain when it was a little slippery.

As well as the marked trails there are also loads of other likely looking trails through the forest and I spent some time exploring some of these. Some of them are better than the waymarked trails. They are more natural and a little more tricky and some are full of slippery roots.

All in all, the waymarked trails are a great start, but are far too short to really encourage people to visit them. Some longer trails would really help and there are plenty of natural trails to explore. Some of these can easily be joined up to make a much more interesting route.

Here’s a you Tube video of the singletrack that I found.

I didn’t explore much further due to lack of time, but I did do a nice ride around the Viking Trail and then off into the Corlea plantation and onto a muddy track around the southern side of South Barrule, just above the Whisky Run that came out at the top end of the Whisky Run itself. This bit of track was well used by bikes and a little too muddy to be fun in places but rideable most of the time. From here I headed up to the crossroads and down along a greenway (The bridleways of the Isle of Man) towards Glen Maye. This descent was good with lots of banked water bars to act as ramps and some rocky sections along with a river crossing. From the bottom of this descent there would be many ways to go to make a more interesting route but I simply headed back up a steep lane and back on the road to the South Barrule car park.

There’s certainly plenty of potential and I’ll be back soon. Hoepfully this time with a map and more time to explore properly.

We’ve just got back from a nice holiday on the Isle of Man. I hadn’t been there in the summer before and I can safely say its just the same as in the autumn, mainly grey and wet with an ocassional view of the sun!

We went over for Rebeeca and Petes wedding and as usual stayed with Pat (Anna’s Mum). Pat obviously spolied Morgan but he is her only Grandson so I guess that’s to be expected.

The holiday didn’t start too well, Morgan was ill on the way there and we ended up taking him to the doctors in Port Erin where he was found to have a bad ear infection and given antibiotics. The doctors there were very helpful though and fitted us in immediately to see them. Needless to say, through no fault of his own Morgan was pretty grumpy for the first day or two, but the antibiotics soon sorted him out.

I took my bikes and windsurfing kit with me and managed to get out for a nice sail in Castletown Bay one day and went out on my bikes a few times. (‘ll post a separate article on the mountain biking in the Isle of Man soon).

The wedding went well despite the rain and we all had a ood time. So congratulations to Rebecca and Pete (Mr and Mrs Quaggin-Mitchell!) Thanks for inviting us, it was good to see you on your special day.

Morgan had a good time as well. He especially liked the swimming pool at the NSC and the giant deer in Douglas Museum. The flumes at the swimming ppol were a big hit as was the rest of the pool. Anna enjoyed the flumes and the pool too and it is surprising just how confidence boosting playing around in such a facility is for Morgan and I’m sure his swimming has improved as a result.

Other highlights included a family gathering at the Hop Garden which gave us a chance to catch up with various people that we don’t see often enough, blueberry picking and the basking shark exhibition at Port Erin Arts Centre.

All too soon though the holiday was over and we were back on the boat heading for Liverpool.

It has been a long standing joke in our family that until I was quite old I didn’t realise that Arboretums are where you go to look at trees, I always thought it was where you go to looks at ducks! There is some reasoning behind all of this in that the arboretum on the Isle of Man at St Johns is where me and a lot of others go to feed the ducks. This is what I have done since I was quite little. We never used to look at any of the trees and in fact I would say there are more ducks than trees anyway.

Alan did think it was just me being a bit stupid and was teasing me in front of a few other Manxies, most of which agreed with me and thought the arboretum was for ducks as well.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when we went to Westonbirt Arboretum only to find no ducks!

The next generation of duck loving Manxies are being brought up in the same way I notice. An old friend of mine from the Isle of Man is keeping up with tradition and teaching her son the true purpose of Arboretums as well

http://keithandhelen.com/europe/index.php?itemid=47

We’ve just got back from a trip to the Isle of Man and as we flew over rather than going on the boat I didn’t have any windsurfing kit with me so we did lots of geocaching instead.

The Assume Nothing series by Happy Humphrey kept us busy as did a few other caches. El Presidente involved a lovely walk from the sound to a nice big cache with some gorgeous sea views. The Long Way Round was a nice multi-stage cache with the final hiding place giving me a nice coastal walk in the sunshine.

I spent a few hours walking from one side of the island to the other (Douglas to Peel) along the Heritage Trail and found all 15 caches of the Heritage Trail Series in the process, and despite getting a little wet at one stage had an enjoyable time finding the caches and walking the trail. We did a few other caches as well and as always, geoaching took us to places we’d never been before, gave us some interesting information that we didn’t know and provided us with reasons to go to areas we just wouldn’t have gone to

If you’re planning a geocaching holiday then the Isle of Man would be a good choice of destination.. A high density of caches. We were rarely (if ever) more than 2 miles from a cache and there are caches to suit all tastes, from really easy roadside caches such as the one we found at Derby Haven, multi stage caches with a fair bit of walking involved, plenty of cache series to get stuck into and some devilish puzzle caches if that’s your thing. The fact that it is an island also means that you could, if you have the time, set yourself the goal of finding all the caches on the island… I’m not sure how many there are and it would be a challenge, but what better way to see the island and learn about its history?

Happy Humphrey, a prolific geocache hider on the Isle of Man certainly kept us busy on our recent trip to the Island, especially with a few attempts on his ‘Assume Nothing IOM’ series.

We should have started at the beginning really as we DNF’d (Did not Find) our first attempts on number 2 and number 6 in the series. However, on the last day of our trip we headed for the first in the series and found it without too many problems. So we then went back to Number 2 with the right frame of mind and also found it within seconds. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go to any of the others but next time we are on the island we shall be in search of them again.

Inspired by the series we will hopefully be hiding some similar ‘Assume Nothing’ caches in Wales in the near future.