The Manx 100 is a 100 mile single day ultra-endurance mountain bike race around the mountainous terrain of The Isle of Man.
It had been on my radar since it inception in, I think, 2012. This year was the first time that I had found a window to enter.
Mitch, Paul, Pascal (Fluffy), Alan, and I set off from Belper with great expectations - not of winning, I might add, but of an adventure and a great challenge.
Unfortunately, as we were driving up the M6 on our way to Liverpool, Mitch received a text message announcing the cancellation of the ferry crossings due to bad weather in the Irish Sea. Sod's Law dictated that during one of the hottest and driest summers on record we were heading to The Isle of Man on the only shitty weekend for months, you couldn't make it up. We sat in limbo at the dreary Knutsford Services whilst trying to figure something out. A phone call to the ferry provider - The Steam Packet Company - confirmed our worst fears, no places were available on subsequent ferries until the following day which meant we wouldn't be toeing the start line for the race. A phone call to Nigel Morris, the race organiser, didn't bring any further hope even though he bent over backwards to help us out, thank you Nigel. It also turned out that Nigel had never known of a ferry ever being cancelled in July.
