News
York Rally - 17/07/2010
On the 18th of June the Explorer Unit went to York Race Course to camp while helping out at the cycle rally on the Saturday and Sunday. When we arrived some of the Explorers put up the tent whilst waiting for others to arrive. Once everyone was there we had to fix Job’s bike because he had broken his chain outside the train station in Huddersfield. Once his bike was fixed we had a choice of whether or not we should go support Algeria or to go to the supermarket. It was a tough call but in the end half of us went to the supermarket and the other half went to watch the match. After that we chilled outside for a bit making rubber band balls whilst drinking some coke, which was a big mistake because none of us could get to sleep on the Friday.
On the Saturday it was a prompt 8AM start to have breakfast and set up the stall. It was very cold and windy so some of us huddled up in the back of the van whilst having our breakfast. Once we had set up our stall some of us went over to the entrance of the exhibition hall to sell people programmes which got a bit hectic at some points. After a while we swapped around so everyone got a chance to go on the stall and a chance to sell programmes. Later on we finished and packed up our things ready to go into town to find a place to eat. Once we were about to leave we found that Ed had bought a bike from the auction for £11 so whilst Kev had a look at it and pumped up the tyres we tuck the mic out of it because it was purple and had some strange dials for the gears which were the wrong way round (so 7 was easy and 1 was hard), it wasn’t really something you’d expect to see a 16 year old riding…
Once we set of to town we thought there was some kind of rally on, there was a lot of people in the direction we were travelling in. We then found out that it was a NUDE cycle rally that was coming in the opposite direction to us we slowly cycled on even though Ed wanted to stay with them we had to carry on to town to get some food.
Once we got there we locked our bikes up and headed into town. To Ed’s delight we saw the nude cyclists again because they were cycling all the way through York town centre. Once they had passed we started to look around for a place to eat it took us a while because we didn’t want to go to anywhere to greasy which pretty much ruled out half of York, but then we found a Pizza Hut and had our food (still greasy, but hell, it was nice!). Once we had finished we went on a ghost walk around York, some bits where fascinating but the guy seemed to like saying that he had done a lot of work on television for some reason. There were some stories about York Minster and a few other locations in the centre of York. After that we went back to the race course and chilled for a bit. Not too long after though we went to bed.
Next morning we went on a bike ride to the small campsite where we will be staying at in October. It was a peaceful ride back to the rally, where we then set up out stall and had our breakfast. It was the same drill as on the Saturday but it was a bit easier selling programmes because most people had got them on the Saturday. It was a nicer day today so it was more relaxing.
Come mid-afternoon, Ed had left with his parents, me and Job headed off to catch our train back to Huddersfield while the others continued to sell on the stall.
It was a success and all of us would love to do it again next year we would also like to thank the leaders that took us and made it possible to have such a fantastic time. We also raised £80 for Kandersteg!
Written by Tom
Check out the Photos from this event in the Gallery
