Autumn Polaris, 2002



This weekend, Andy Cockburn and myself took part in this year's Autumn Polaris in the Lake District. The Autumn event, like the Spring one, is the full monty: two days of mountain bike orienteering with a wilderness camp in between, and teams must carry all their kit with them. I'd only ever done the Summer version (no wilderness camp) before, and Andy had never done a Polaris, so this was a new experience for both of us.

The weekend started with a 300-mile trip up the M6 on a stormy Friday night. We arrived at the event centre in Braithwaite (which is about as far from Cambridge as it's possible to get and still be in the Lake District!) well after 11pm, but registered and set up camp for the night. After that, we'd hoped to annotate our map with the out-of-bounds and allowed areas, but were too late, so we had no choice but to go to bed!

Saturday morning dawned dryish after the overnight rain, but the world seemed a gloomy place when we got up before 7am. Our start time was 9.35, so we had time to mark up our maps, eat a hearty breakfast, and divide the essential kit (or at least most of it!) between our rucksacks.

The start was a short ride from the event centre, and before long we had started the climb through Whinlatter forest to collect the checkpoint scores for the day. Soon we'd plotted a route and set off on a long route via Lorton Vale, Loweswater, Mosedale and Ennerdale. The weather was very Lake District: dry, even sunny, spells interspersed with downpours, one particularly memorable one being when we were in a moorland bog somewhere up above Mosedale with a panoramic view over Cumbria and the sea, which were bathed in sunshine while we got drenched. The ride culminated in an epic and spectacular carry over Scarth Gap Pass down to the overnight campsite, fortunately arriving just 5 minutes early on our allowed 7 hours. Despite the wilderness location, our electronic tags allowed us an instant computer print-out of our results: 300 points today.

Once we'd found a good spot for our tent and huddled inside sheltering from the rain, it was time to cook dinner. This was when we discovered our packing mistake: we'd forgotten half of it! We made do with noodles and Soreen (not together) and braved the 1km walk to the toilets (yes, really). Sleep was welcome, and my new little tent worked surprisingly well with two of us in it. Andy was none too impressed with his ultra-lightweight bubble-wrap camping mat, however!

Sunday morning was mercifully dry, with a beautiful view of the mountains around Buttermere greeting us as the sun came up. After breakfast there followed a comedy few minutes of two people trying to get dressed inside their sleeping bags in a one-person tent. Soon we were off, starting the day with a brisk warmup climbing Honister Pass: it felt good to be riding, albeit slowly, past a lot of teams who'd chosen to walk up. Sunday's loop took in Borrowdale, Newlands, a long dead end down Coledale, and a big climb back up into Whinlatter forest. At this point I was feeling distinctly knackered, but Andy and I managed to persuade each other that it was worth going for another checkpoint, along a steep and slippery path above Bassenthwaite Lake. We got to the finish with just over 10 minutes to spare and a grand total of 500 points, which put us at a pleasing 33rd out of about 240 seniors teams in the provisional results.

All in all, a very fine weekend and well worth the 600-mile round trip. Fantastic riding of all types, a great course, and top teamwork - special thanks to Andy for putting up with me being slow and moaning about being knackered.

Roll on the next one - who's coming to the Isle of Man in April, then?

Chris Jones