Mountain Bike Ride.
Dave, Rod.
A rare weekend ride for me, a regular occurrence for my two companions, who belong to that curious subspecies of working life: day people. Only shift workers can take the objective view of people who spend Monday to Friday in a work/telly/bed routine, then use their precious time off walking round shops or recovering from hangovers. The occasional day person will maybe grab a few hours riding at the weekend, the really keen ones lash out on high power lights to blunder about the woods after dark on weekdays, when respectable shift-working cyclists have already done a full day’s riding and are relaxing, feet up on the coffee table, smug in the knowledge they enjoyed the empty trails in the hours of daylight. Really demented day people buy turbo-trainers and “ride” in their garages - the less said about that sort of behaviour the better, a bit like the difference between going out for a sociable couple of pints and snorting neat vodka to make sure the alcohol quota is fulfilled.
We met up at an unusually (to me) full Clay Bank car park and commenced the gruesome plod up Carr Ridge onto Urra Moor, passing Round Hill - the highest point on the North York Moors and continuing on the Cleveland Way toward Bloworth Crossing. The short section which crosses the small stream at High Bloworth has been nicely paved which eradicates the former water-filled, muddy trench, we all expected the stream would have been bridged - it hasn’t. Three sets of forks bottomed out in the unexpected dip. On Rudland Rigg, karmic retribution for laughing at The Ginger One’s pinch-flat on The Mad Mile yesterday was extracted as my own pinch-flat became evident, then my pump decided it couldn’t really be bothered with all that pushing air out business any longer, taking a step down and becoming a mere sliding stick. Luckily Rod was equipped with serviceable pump.
Repair effected, we pedalled onward along Rudland Rigg toward the oddly named Golden Heights, it has to be said that Rudland Rigg is one of the most depressing tracks on the moors, always loose, always rocky, always uphill, no matter which direction you’re heading. It can be considered a necessary evil because there are some gems which make their way down its flanks. We were heading for one now, the bridleway which drops from West Gill Head into Farndale, worth every pedal stroke. Soon we were on it, beginning on a vague indentation through grass which became a more defined track contouring the hillside, carving through bracken, which luckily is starting to die off, continuously interesting, and we managed to reach the road with all our rear mech’s intact - unlike The Pensioner last time he rode this track.
At the road, we turned left and headed northward to the low point of the day - the ride back up to Rudland Rigg from Monket House, viewed from Blakey Ridge, a seemingly vertical ribbon of concrete and gravel; viewed from ground level, a lung-bursting, leg-crippling, heart-pounding torture. Slowly we inched upward, until the angle eased and we could ride without looking monks at an Amsterdam sex show. Regaining Rudland Rigg we essentially retraced our steps back over Round Hill until we could turn off on the interesting bridleway which makes its way down Jackson’s Bank into Greenhow Plantation, from where we followed a muddy fire road back to Clay Bank. A finish more suited to our more mature years than the Carr Ridge steps, which have extracted a toll of bruises and bike parts from us over the years.
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