Mountain Bike Ride.
The Bread Lad.
Another cool and breezy start, it has been a very poor attempt at a summer this year. August, depending who you believe, is going to be a wet and windy washout or hotter than Barbados. Is being a weather forecaster a real job or does it have about as much credibility as being an astrologer? About as accurate.
Shivering slightly at Scaling Dam does not have the same ring to it as busted flat in Baton Rouge but it was a bike ride not a Janis Joplin song and the next line would have to be, just waiting for a Bread Lad, not a train which doesn’t scan at all. Eventually said Bread Lad arrived and we ventured forth onto the moors, utilising our standard Scaling Dam start, High Tranmire Farm and The Slagbag to Green Houses, then road to Lealholm. Lealholm being in a hole, it’s always going to be a battle against gravity to leave it behind, we chose the longest, up Shaw Hill to Glaisdale Rigg and ever onward to leave tarmac behind at Cut Road, or as we know it the Trough House path. Once rated as one of the best rides in the North York Moors, it has now been sanitised beyond recognition, although still worth doing for the spectacular views around the head of Fryupdale. Pausing briefly at Trough House, we sheltered from the cooling wind and had a quick snack while considering our options. Having never done the George Gap, we decided to give it a try even though it might mean retracing our steps. No Pensioner to react with abhorrence at such a concept, so we turned left onto the road and followed it around Seavey Hill above Rosedale before picking up the bridleway to George Gap. The path begins as a track through heather and grass, turning to a paved section heading gently downward, a little smoother than the Quaker’s Causeway above Danby but maybe a little narrower. Some gaps break things up a bit and catch out the unwary, as evidenced by my slow motion over the bars moment which left me laid on the floor, tangled up in Stumpjumper while my companion rode off oblivious to the comic potential behind him.
Back on the Trough House track, the Glaisdale Corkscrew was ahead of us but we decided to return to Trough House and follow the road downwards to the Round Hill bridleway which we have not ventured onto for quite a while. Judging by the bracken not many others have ventured down here either, eventually we gave up trying to ride and struggled through the head height greenery on foot until we reached open hillside and remounted for a speedy ride to the quaintly named Fairy Cross Plain. At Stonebeck Gate Farm, another bridleway, complete with yappy, snappy Jack Russell terrier, led us to Crag Wood and Crag Farm before we commenced another mammoth climb, eventually topping out at Danby Beacon, we were starting to feel the pace now, a quick check on the GPS told us we had ascended over 3,000 feet.
The Roxby Moor singletrack came next and it was just perfect, flowing across the moor, dry and fast, augmenting our mediocre skills until we were cycling gods, totally in the flow, gliding through the heather, men and machines in perfect symbiosis - in our imaginations anyway. Euphoric, we reached the road and returned to Scaling Dam, our day made complete when we realised the burger van was still serving. An unusually arduous mountain bike ride for us, almost 24 miles and 3,400 feet of ascent.
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