Dog Day Afternoon: Lune Valley Rollertour, Saturday 29 January 2005

I have been asked to write this article in order to bring a fresh perspective to the arcane activity of rollerskiing - a four-legged, wet-nosed perspective, to be precise. My name is Polly and I am a collie belonging to Ian Tod, a Lakeland Club member who enjoys the occasional rollertour organised by the MCCSC. When he told me we were going skitouring, I had high hopes of scaling one of those big mountain peaks like that K9 you humans are always drooling over. It turned out instead to be the Lune Valley cycle path in Lancashire and when I saw the little bits of metal with wheels that he and the others would be skiing on, I thought he must be barking.

We met up with the rest of the humans at the disused railway station at Halton. A bossy little female, Ros Brown-Grant, was trying to control a pack of six alpha males. I soon realised why I had been brought along - to help keep this lot in order. No mean feat this, since one of them, a young pup named Grahame Aspinall, kept running off in front and I had a hell of a job to round him up each time the pack needed to rest. We set off along the cycle track by the River Lune to Lancaster, a smooth, wide path parts of which had clearly been flooded in the recent January storms. Ah, what tales of the riverbank my nose revealed to me and which I could tell to you, had I but space and time...

A couple of the pack members, John Wolstencroft and Chris Greene, hadn't yet been fully roller-trained so two of the others, Ralph White and David Painter, gave them tips and drills to perform. I heard things like "weight transfer", "pole planting" and "longer glide" being mentioned several times. It seemed to be working as John and Chris made great progress along the track but I thought it was mean of Ralph and David not to reward them with chocolate drops when they did their tricks so well.

We met plenty of other friendly humans and dogs on the way past Lancaster and on to Morecambe and I managed to sucker the bossy female into throwing the occasional stick for me. This seemed to tire her out a bit, to the obvious relief of the males in the pack. She was determined, though, to get the others to a place called Old Heysham because when we reached the seafront at Morecambe, she told them to follow her along the promenade to a distant spot on the horizon. I would have settled for an ice-cream lunch on the pier and for chasing a few oystercatchers on the sand, but she insisted. When we arrived at our destination, I began to see her point as we ended up having lunch in the lovely beer garden of an old pub in Heysham village. We all sat outside in the sun, eating baked potatoes, lasagne and panini, whilst I supped on a bowl of cool water. I could have had some chocolate mints too if that Grahame hadn't kept stealing them from everyone else's plates. Eventually, one of the pack, Chris, took pity on me and bought me a big bag of crisps. He is now my new best friend, and I can't wait to meet his dog Tilly, who I believe may be a distant collie cousin of mine, though with a touch of lurcher.

After a pleasant doze in the garden (NOT a cat-nap, I might add), I led us all back to Morecambe in the warm afternoon sunshine. A pleasant breeze blew and I had my happy ears on as I trotted back and forth keeping the pack in order and enjoying the stunning views of the Lakes across the bay. All were now skiing at a good, brisk pace and the return journey along the cycle path seemed to go very quickly. I tried to persuade everyone else to join me for a dip in the river but they were all saving themselves up for showers, apparently. We arrived back at the cars at 4.30 and I have to say that even I was dog-tired by then. Judging by their bright eyes and sleek coats, the pack had all clearly had a fun time,with plenty of exercise, good food and fresh air.

I understand that there's a whole bunch of these MCCSC rollertours going on this spring, the next one being at the Howden and Derwent Dams on Sunday 20 February. I'm not yet sure if I can make it, but I strongly urge you to do so if you can. Tails up and best roller forward!

author: “Polly”
publish date: March 2005

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