Mountain Bike Ride.
The Pensioner.
In deference to The Pensioner’s recent lack of activity, a bit of gentle breaking in was required, hence a flat ride was mooted and it doesn’t come any flatter than forty five metres of ascent in 25 miles. The Seaton and Hartlepool marina run, I occasionally do on the cross bike was pressed into service as a horizontal expedition on mountain bikes. Heading away from Billingham, we passed the chemical factory where one of us infrequently works and the other simply turned up and took the money for thirty years or so. Quiet roads and cyclepaths took us to Cowpen Woodland Park, which is much improved from what we called it as kids - Stinky Beck, although parts do still run alongside the sewage works. A farm track led us to Greatham, a small village on the outskirts of mine and The Pensioner’s old home town - Hartlepool.
Riding through the village and over the rail crossing brought us to the site of the old factory, latterly owned by R.H.M. Foods, then Sharwoods but to anyone of our generation it will always be the Cerebos salt factory and the place where Bisto was invented. The whole area between Greatham and Cowpen Bewley is salt flats where salt industry thrived since mediaeval times but no longer, the factory is now reduced to piles of rubble. A public right of way runs through the ruins and across to Greatham Creek, utilising the dykes which constrain the creek, although the inner dykes have now been deliberately breached allowing the water to flood the surrounding marshes during extra high tides, a new initiative to prevent flooding upstream. Exposed on the flat lands we caught every bit of wind and progress across the soggy grass was slow, particularly as the dykes meander, taking a circuitous route to reach the creek, where a few basking seals eyed us curiously.
A brief bit of busy tarmac, past the tioxide plant, which churns out the pigment for white paint and has done for as long as we could remember, then we turned off onto The Zinc Works road, which no longer has a zinc works but does have what has to be the smelliest chemical plant on Teesside, God knows what they make but it stinks like the bowels of Hell, imagine sour milk and plastic being burned together on an open fire and you could be getting close. Gratefully we turned away from the malodorous stench and along a bridleway cutting across Seaton Carew golf course, eventually arriving in the seaside village of Seaton Carew, (twinned with Panama, according to the graffiti) as busy as could be expected for an East coast resort in December. The magnificently paved promenade follows the coastline to Hartlepool marina, the noise of halyards slapping masts in the wind a constant chatter in the background as we negotiated the lock gates which stood between us and the cafes. The Pensioner compared the marina unfavourably with Monaco - obviously somewhere he’s jet-setting lifestyle takes him on a regular basis - but to our untrained eyes the boats looked equally lavish and expensive.
Fed and watered we retraced our tyre tracks to Seaton Carew, against the wind this time, the open marshes of Greatham Creek were eschewed in favour of a road ride back to Greatham village, from where the outward bound route was followed back to Billingham.
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