In what is already being described (here, by us) as the charity fundraising event of the century, Bankstone and friends rode 8 monkey bikes up and or down 15 of the steepest hills in Yorkshire in two days to set what will surely shortly be confirmed as a new world record for riding up and down steep Yorkshire hills on monkey bikes over a two-day period.
If you enjoyed the numbers 8 and 15 in that last paragraph, you’re sure to love this next one, because it’s simply packed with numbers. Numbers like the 326 miles ridden over the aforementioned 2 days, the 81 sandwiches, 23 pork pies, 16 muffins, 27 gallons of petrol, and 12 cans of Red Bull consumed along the way, the 48 stunning views surveyed, the 38 cattle grids and the 31 bridges crossed (more fluvial traversal, surely, than even Reggae-Ska legend Jimmy Cliff could ever have contemplated), not to mention 10 riders, half a dozen support crew, half a town cryer, and one wounded knee.
Plus, of course, the £ [insert total value (in GBPs) of coppers rattling around in collection tin] raised for an excellent cause, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service, or YAA as it likes to be known.
Day One (the Dales) of this epic expedition took in no fewer than 159 rugged miles, up and down hills ranging in steepness from 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 (sometimes even fewer) and in elevation between 19 and 586m above sea level. The names of said hills (not one of which, almost unbelievably, we’ve made up or misreported) were Park Rash, Witton Steeps, Stony Bank, Garland Hill, Haverdale by Crackpot, Feetham, Howgate Head and Beamsley Beacon.
Day Two (the Moors) was only very slightly less challengingly extreme, ranging in elevation from 11m to 422m above sea level and taking in such fearsome ascents and descents as Sneck Yate Bank (Parts I and II), Ristbrow, Hawnby, Botany Bay (not that Botany Bay obviously), Cockayne, Blakey Ridge, and, last but very certainly not least, Rosedale Chimney (the steepest road in the UK, at a near-vertical 1 in 2.94).
Readers will doubtless now wish to salute the bravery, endurance and pork pie eating prowess of Bankstone’s marvellous mountain-ascending monkeybikers by making a huge donation of their own. This they can most conveniently accomplish by the simple expedient of clicking on the Just Giving thingy they will find a bit lower down this page and over to the left somewhere. The benefits of donation include the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from having finally done something good for once in your miserable life, and the opportunity to post an abusive comment in the field marked comment.
So stop hanging around reading this entirely pointless final paragraph and get donating!
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