This was Mishap Thursday

Clive and I set off at 6.45 pm with the intention of doing the West Kip loop, a distance of just over 25 miles, and  reached halfway up the pass above Loganlea reservoir when we discovered Clive's rear tyre was down. We'd left home and Clive had remembered he'd forgotten to change his pump over from one rucksack to another but I foolishly declared that I had a pump and also 3 gas cylinders to put the tyres up in the event of a flat. Anyway the pump failed to work very well and then the handle parted company with the body, "we've still got the cylinders" I stated confidently, only then discovering there were only 2 not 3 as I had thought. The new tube in the tyre was duly inflated with one and a half cylinders and off we set only to discover that after about quarter of a mile the tyre hadn't been properly seated in the rim and had popped out and jammed the wheel! We had to then let air out the ruddy thing to get the tyre seated again and with only about half a cylinder of gas pump the tyre up again, which wasn't very hard at all! We decided to abort the West Kip route, too rough, and go back by Harelaw where we were bound to meet another cyclist but tonight of all nights there were none to be seen. However with careful nursing of the almost flat tyre we made it back down to the Flotterstone and civilisation again where we eventually managed to stop a roadie of all things and borrow his pump to put a little extra pressure in. (these roadies do come in useful sometimes). The last 4 miles were incident free and we managed to do over 24 miles which considering the tyre only had just over 10psi most of the time wasn't too bad at all!