Coast to Coast

Rock Climbing

Scribe: LCpl Klue 5 FS Bn REME

Adventure training week with the Royal Welsh down in wales: I did rock climbing for the week and Jamie Waddington was our instructor. I absolutely loved the whole week, thoroughly enjoyed rock climbing as well as the group of people I was with.

I couldn’t fault it in any way, and I feel like I had gotten a lot from this week as I pushed myself to be in situations I wouldn’t normally put myself in.

I’d never climbed on real rock faces before and this was a new experience for me.

Overall, I genuinely have nothing bad to say about the week and hope to have the opportunity to go again when there are more courses running.

Closing Words

Organising an event of this size was hard work but extremely rewarding. It was nice to get so many REME personal away on AT especially after the year we have just had. I hope everyone who attended enjoyed the exercise. In total over the 5 weeks we managed to give 87 qualifications in an AT activity. Hopefully we have ignited a spark that will result in some of the instructors of the future. I would like to personally thank ASM Townsend as the Chief Instructor and all of the instructors we used over the duration of the Exercise for facilitating some excellent training, and the Capel Curig staff for being so helpful and accommodating.

Charity

Coast to Coast Charity Ride Challenge

Scribe: Sgt Fry (LEAT (M))

Whitehaven start point. Left to right: Sgt Fry – WO1 (ASM) Browning.

As with most of the UK, the Land Equipment Assurance Teams (LEATs) normal routine has been quite disrupted during the lockdown periods, with audits being conducted remotely and most of the staff having to work from home. Therefore, after a light bulb moment, I thought it would be a great idea to get some of the team together to blow out the cobwebs and to organise a road cycling team bonding challenge. As a keen cyclist, I decided to take on the Coast to Coast Challenge and to combine the event with raising money for charity. We decided all the money donated would be given in aid of WO1 (ASM) Simon Cooper’s home renovation fund. I settled on a two-day ride, starting on the 14 July 2021 from the West coast of Whitehaven to the East coast of Tynemouth. Covering approximately 140 miles and climbing 12,000ft (which is higher than Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon if they were all stood on top of each other) through the Lake District and the Pennines. Most riders taking on this route generally complete it in around four days. Surprisingly

Garmin course map

with this in mind, I had two sporting volunteers who accepted the challenge (WO1 (ASM) Browning and WO2 Thomas) and a willing support crew (Civil Servant) Darren Mawdsley and my wife Kirsty); we now had a team.

On day one, we set off from Whitehaven and began the 80-mile ride to our campsite in Alston. The first day was tough, I broke the distance down into 10-15-mile check points, where we met our support crew to refill essential water and to take on food (we needed it). The hills were steep, and some seemed to go on forever (we all now know what thigh burn feels like!). We worked hard as a team and managed to keep together and push each other on. Thankfully it was not all climbing, there were a lot of long speedy descents which were enjoyable but sacrificed all the hard work climbing beforehand. This process continued for the duration of the day, after which we had completed almost 8200ft of the climbing and in a strange way was quite satisfying. Day one ended by cycling down a 25% hill into Alston. Luckily, we were not heading in the opposite direction to start day 2!

After a well-deserved night’s rest and with only 60 miles remaining to cover and much of the climbing behind us, we set off for day 2. The first 20 miles mirrored day one as we entered Northumberland and then shortly into County Durham. With plenty of ascents and descents to start, we encountered some of the biggest and longest climbs of the trip so far, but also some of the most stunning scenery. Some of the hardest road climbs in the UK are in County Durham giving testimony to how challenging this terrain is. After much of the climbing was thankfully behind us, we enjoyed a nice ‘relatively easy’ remaining 40 miles into Tynemouth, which for the most part, was an absolute pleasure. Throughout the trip, morale stayed high with lots of mutual encouragement and thankfully not a puncture or broken chain in sight.

Overall, the route was amazing and the majority of the route had great surfaces to ride on. The views were also spectacular to enjoy, once you had managed to catch your breath from the steep climbs. The team including all the support crew were outstanding. It is particularly noteworthy that one of the cyclists was on his second ever ride on a road bike, making this trip an even bigger undertaking (with only 2 cleat incidents as well!). It was a real privilege to be able to organise and take part in such a challenge for a good cause, and to enjoy a change of scenery from our normal places of work. This was a highly enjoyable challenge that I would recommend to all budding cyclists.

Entering Northumberland. Left to right: Sgt Fry, WO2 Thomas and WO1 (ASM) Browning.

Tynemouth finish point. Left to right: WO2 Thomas, Sgt Fry and WO1 (ASM) Browning