This was a first bothy night for neil and he's more road than offroad so i gave him my cx bike to ride. We started on the road for the first 6 miles with a nice gentle climb before haeding on an offroad section, first time i'd done this bit and it was a pleasant surprise how good the trail was. We were soon at garrigill though for the monster climb to take us to 2400ft, they re busy renewing the pennineway on this section and the top surface was missing so it was a real challenge riding over the huge rocks. The cloud was low so we were soon in it before reaching the bothy at 8.30pm. Its a real nice one, clean, 2 rooms and no one else there.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5taE7ubyFMWPL2J6A
I lit my alpkit stove and our food was made, pasta for neil and kubto noodles for me followed by cheese and whisky.
The temperature lowered so we lit the fire, neil has a wood burning stove so he had it going in 5mins
The one mistake he did make was to bring an emergency blanket instead of a sleeping bag, i was killing myself with laufghter when he woke us up at 3am covered in sweat, it was like a boil in the bag so he had to relte the fire to get his clothes dry
We woke up to a cloud inversion and a real pretty day so breakfast was consumed then we doubled back half a mile to fill our bottles from the mountain stream, he'd brought a portable water filter from go outdoors so we used that, worked atreat, you basically fill a bag then squeeze it through a filter into your bottle.
A big descent takes us down to the valley before reaching dufton for the climb up to high cup nick, it was a very sweaty affair and hard going for neil on the cx, i was on my full suss so it was easy going.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/unHWWBuXtwJ2yZ5C7
Its a lovely trail that takes us back to langdon beck from there and soon we re having a nice coke back at the pub to finish the ride off.
Day 1 - 17miles (2300ft climbing)
Day 2 - 25miles (2600ft climbing)
