Digital Angel

Digital Angel appears on small Christmas tree in Headingley back street.

Thanks to Digital Photography magazine for the idea for this one.

Hyde Park

The Leeds version, not the London one.

Welcome to winter

A tree in a snowy field near Sycamore Park.

Winter hits the north of England with a slightly dull thud, and all drivers go 'aaargh!'.

When I finally escaped Headingley, I took some snowy pictures.

Washburn

Zoom zoom

The long way down - the finish zipline at Penafiel Castle.

Up and up

Multisport.Fi skate onwards and upwards.

Night night

Ghost skaters - Raid Nature 46 skate through the night to get to La Pinilla.

Cooling down

Bimbache 2008 (okay, a little out of order, but hey)

Descending the canyon on day 2.

Living on the Edge

High Cup Nick, looking towards Dufton area. Imposing but beautiful, and the start of the descent to the finish.

Shining Path

"And memories of winding paths, shining in the rain,
To places where we parted, and we shall not meet again"
(One Green Hill - the Oysterband)

Part of the trail from Cow Green to High Cup Nick.

Hide and Seek

Eponine, in a shooting butt.

Pausing for food on the long drag from God's Bridge to Golds Carr.

Here be Trolls

God's Bridge.

Nice place for a visitors book.

Bull

Strange - there was this meticulously painted sign warning us of the presence of a bull, but I never saw it. Maybe there's a small irony in there...

The Rare Cumbrian Banana Pine

Nine Standards

Looking back up the trail onto Nine Standards Rigg, early on in the 2008 Man of Porage.
Note the absence of anyone behind me...

PFAKS Alpkit 6

PFAKS Alpkit 5

PFAKS Alpkit 4

PFAKS Alpkit 3

PFAKS Alpkit 2

PFAKS Alpkit 1

I'm not going to label all of these pics individually, because in the main, I don't know who they are. But I like the pics...

Blues Snowman

Chris James - awesome blues player from Carlisle.
Dressed as a snowman.

Hmmm...

Buster

The infamous Buster Bloodvessel (of Bad Manners fame) joins The Grit on stage to do 'Pressure Drop'. Bad Manners had played earlier in the night, and completely rocked.

Little Man Kurt

Bass

Little Man Kurt (from The Grit) 's double bass, just before their set in the Bar tent

Tea Tent

Wierdigans, the 24hr Tea Tent.
They do rather nice hot chocolates, with an assortment of flavoured syrups.
I can highly recommend the chilli one.

Roisin

Roisin Murphy takes the Main Stage by storm

KMB Girls take the win

The Keswick Mountain Bikes girls- Cheryl, Emily, Nic and Angela - take the podium, winners of the Enthusiast Women's category.

Pretty in pink.

Middle of the night, and even with a jet wash there are some things you can't completely get clean. Pink Yeti courtesy of Chez Frost, clinging mud courtesy of SiTS 2008.

The real damage

Eponine, my trusty Top Fuel, at the end of the weekend. Badly in need of a clean and, if you look closely, a new rear mech.

Sleepless in the tent

This was the image of the weekend for me. Midnight, sitting awake, waiting for someone to get back to the tent and tell us what the conditions were like. Surrounded by boxes of gear, sitting with a brew, trying just to survive the night.

The big pink machine

Okay, so my taste in racing gear isn't great, but I was happy and I was flying. Bringing it home at the end of the last lap, to bag us 26th place out of 84 mixed teams.

The beginning of the end

The end is nigh - Jimbo hands the baton over to Stuart, who would hand it over to me an hour or so later to ride the final lap. The fact Jim's smiling tells you the course was improving by that point.

Ghost rider

Playing around with rear-curtain flash, I shot this 'ghost rider' as he came through towards the last little 'out-and-back' by the campsite.
A friend asked what I'd done in Photoshop to get this effect, and the answer is 'nothing'.

The way it goes

Just after 4am. I'd got in from a somewhat disasterous night lap, having broken my rear mech and run the second half of the course, and decided I needed to chill out by taking some nice long-exposure shots of other racers. I'm glad I did.

The time of the lost and found

Prepping for my night lap, making sure the lights had been charged and getting my head together.

Nice legs

Emily from the KMB team after one of the night laps. As you can see, it was a little muddy in places.

Surprise!

Chez from the Keswick Mountain Bikes team. They won the Enthusiast Womens category.
I think she was a bit surprised to see me.

Nice rack

A selection of clean shiny bikes. None of which are mine...

Unicycle

Sleepless in the Saddle 2008
This man is a soloist. On a Unicycle. He is therefore officially hardcore.

Cake or Death?

Sleepless in the Saddle 2008
Team 'Cake or Death?'- Jimbo, Suzie, Pyro, Jon, Stuart.
Just before the start - you can tell that because no-one's muddy.

Lighthouse

"I'll always be your lighthouse in these trying times" - The Bushburys
This is the Butt of Lewis lighthouse when a bank of sea fret rolled in. The light shining through the glass is the sun. Kind of spooky, but also quite cool, I thought.

Col de la Seigne (pt 2)

Bizarrely (and probably for the only time on this blog) that's me. The stone next to me is a marker of the border between France and Italy, the big stony white thing in the background is Mont Blanc.

I thought you should see the face behind the name. Feel free to erase that from your memory banks now.

Col de la Seigne

Even Adventure Racers play at aeroplanes sometimes. Add your own 'bwaaaaaaaarrrrp' noises.

Les Chapieux.

Les Chapieux. A beautiful little place in a hanging valley up in the Alps, where the first night camp of the Mountain X Race was held.

I'm going back, sometime.

Checkpoint Zero

(apologies to www.checkpointzero.com for the title)

Here's the start of a new photoblog, from Pyro's Yard Productions. In the absence of any coherent thinking, I'm going to paste pictures in here and ramble a little about them.

Sit back, enjoy the show, and please don't spill too much popcorn.

Pyro