Mountain Bike Ride
Rod, The Youth
In a change to the usual programme, we had a 2pm start to our ride today, while we waited for The Youth to finish work. If you can call belaying kids for a few hours work. Whitby Regatta weekend, so the moor road was impossibly busy as a families flocked to Whitby to watch drunken scaffolders fighting in the quaint old-fashioned streets. We joined the traffic for a mile or so, this has got to be the only start to a ride where you average 25mph, then turned off to Swindale Lane and Moorsholm, returning to cross the moor road from opposite Freeborough Hill. According to a legend, King Arthur and the knights of the round table are sleeping within Freeborough Hill, waiting for the moment when England needs them; they haven’t appeared yet, so everything must be okay, despite what The Daily Mail would have us believe.
We eventually crossed the road, The Youth being honked at by an irate motorist who obviously imagined his Astra could cover the 500m between him and a cyclist in nanoseconds. Our first bit of offroad came at Dimmingdale Farm and the bridleway was not in bad condition considering the 16 or so hours of constant rain we had yesterday. Robin Hood's Butts featured some large puddles but not the usual lakes of standing water more often encountered in other seasons. Some way along Robin Hood’s Butts we turned off onto a bridleway over Danby Low Moor, heading south to join the road above Rosedale Intake - the steep road hill out of Danby. The bridleway proved to be a bit of a find, narrow singletrack through the heather, gently up at first, then gradually downward, very enjoyable apart from the odd muddy patch. At the road we followed tarmac all the way to Danby Beacon, to try another ‘new to us’ track which is the B.O.A.T. leading from the Beacon to Oakley Walls. Turns out it’s a good track if you stick to the edge, away from the deep trenches gouged in the ground by the ‘One Life: Live It’ wobbly-head retards in their 4x4’s.
A brief bit of road along Oakley Walls took us to the Clitherbecks’ bridleway, always more fun in this direction, then we made our way up to the east end of Robin Hood’s Butts and retraced our tyre tracks all the way back to the bus shelter on the Castleton/Commondale road. Only the Quaker’s Causeway remained, an enjoyable prospect, except for The Youth on his hardtail. Rod and I engaged full-bounce mode and powered across the uneven paving, The Youth suffered the sort of pounding normally afforded to unwilling young men on the high security wing of Durham prison or perhaps a favourite choir boy after a particularly lurid confession has inflamed the passion of the man in black.
The ultimate section, back to the car park is more enjoyable, especially to those with tender glutes and it wasn’t long before we were braving the traffic again to return to our cars. Another cafe-less ride, it’s easy to tell The Pensioner is otherwise indisposed.
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| Mud - actual mud. In August? |
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