Count your lemons! 🍋

At the Armchair Adventure Festival in Cornwall last September we attended a talk from a survival expert. He talked to us about lemons.

Yes, lemons.

When assessing your risk category you need to take into account the things that stack up against you at that moment in time. Each thing is a lemon. Should you get too many lemons then you need to back out, stop, take a break etc. I can't remember the exact figure but you shouldn't go past around 5 or 6 lemons before making a different decision.

We kept talking about the lemons this weekend as each thing went wrong and each little incident started to add up. What we didn't do, was heed the advice and make a different decision...

We set off for a campsite just south of Salisbury Plain. We had wanted to explore the trails around the military training area as we had heard great things about them. The UK is in a very dry period at the moment and we had just come out of a blistering heatwave. Having had no rain for weeks just as we were literally ten minutes from the campsite, the heavens opened and it absolutely teemed down. Lemon one.

Whilst our textiles kept us dry, they were soaked on the outside. Gloves were sodden, inside and out. Joy of joys. Lemon two.

Worst of all, we hadn't stopped to put the rain covers on our tank bags and everything inside was wet. Lemon three.

A kind neighbour let us use his gazebo to keep our things out of the rain as we set up.

The rain eased as we set the tent up and by the time it threw it down again we were all set up inside. Eventually it went off and our gear could be draped over the bikes for a couple of hours in the hope it might dry slightly. It did a little, but it was a soggy start the next morning. The sun and wind dried us quite quickly though once we got going.

Wet things off!

We draped everything over the bikes to dry.

Beds made.

A hot meal.

And a beautiful sunset!

Then sleep, all snug in our beds.

So the damp start to the day was lemon four. After a few trails Carl discovered that the rain had wrecked his helmet camera as he had the microphone plugged in the day before and it isn't waterproof with that connection. That was an expensive mistake and lemon five. His phone has also suffered water damage (but has since recovered!). Lemon six.

So he got the 360° camera out and set that up on his bike. As we went to ride away he realised the lens cap was still on. Lemon seven. As he took the lens cap off he noticed there wasn't actually a battery in it! Lemon eight. 

We seemed to think we were on many more lemons than eight at this stage. I don't think I've remembered them all. Everything just seemed to be working against us the whole time. 

We wanted to ride some of the more off road trails as well as the gravel roads while we were there and we turned onto one, stopped and had a discussion about it. Should we or shouldn't we? We talked about the lemons and was it a good idea to push things. The lane was simple enough, with just a few puddles here and there. We have ridden far more tricky trails. I think we kind of knew it wasn't going to end well, but we set off anyway. 

The trail really didn't look difficult.

When the chalk trails are dry they're great. When they get slightly wet they are exceedingly slippery. Each puddle seemed to have far less traction than a normal muddy puddle and just a short distance into the track I came a cropper. The front end went and I couldn't save it and so I bailed, trying to fall without hurting myself. I didn't quite succeed though and a very sharp pain in my ribs made breathing difficult. 

Carl's main concern at this point was - "is the camera running?"!! 😂 

As Carl walked back to me my breathing eased a little although the pain was still quite intense. We got the bike picked up and decided to turn back and stay on the gravel roads. This day just wasn't working out and I wasn't sure how much damage I had done to my ribs and didn't want to risk falling again. The lemons were well and truly stacked against us and we needed to start heeding their warnings.

We passed an area which had a lot of rusted, burnt out tanks. It was probably a target practice area but it looked an eerie, apocalyptic sight. 

Quite an eerie sight.

We needed food and just a short drop down out of the plains we found Mipo's cafe and what a good find that was. The best bacon and stilton toasted sandwich we've ever eaten. 

We enjoyed the gravel roads that afternoon. It was nice to ride for miles and not see another vehicle and not ride on smooth tarmac. We don't have very long trails here in the South East. 

We will return to Salisbury Plain another day and attempt some of the more interesting routes. Despite not achieving quite what we wanted to, it was a great weekend all the same. And we've learnt to pay attention to how many lemons we accumulate!