The First Ride of 2016

Mountain Bike Ride

The Ginger One

4th January 2016 route.

The first ride of a new year, empty days stretching into the future, just waiting to be filled with rides on sun-baked trails, never-ending downhills on perfect singletrack, amiable companions and post-ride post-mortems over well-earned coffees (or, even better, beers) in a pastoral idyll. The reality is more prosaic, a muddy station car park, a morning that has not quite managed to get light by eleven am, incipient drizzle and the penalty for festive excess weighing heavily around our waists. Still, it was good to have broken free from the deadly force-field of couch and Quality Street and be heading for the hills.

Or hill, in our case, as we opted for the long way round to Percy Cross Rigg, all on tarmac, as a “nice warm up”, an uncharacteristic easterly wind making things a little tougher than they ought to have been. Continuing up Percy Cross Rigg until we reached the Sleddale turn off, progress was brisk but chatting was still an option. As I had had an eight am appointment earlier, the chat was inevitably about day people and their rush hour, culminating in the often repeated phrase of shift workers, “and they do that every day.” usually spoken with varying degrees of bewilderment.

The off-road climb of Codhill Heights came and went and we had our first break at the seat, just over the fence in Guisborough Woods. Almost five miles of riding non-stop, something of a record for The Ginger One, who regards continuous pedalling as something from the roadie weirdo school of cycling, only a heart rate monitor away from skinsuits and training. The next section was not quite so brisk, opting to “have a look” at the Guisborough Red Route, the bit from Highcliffe to The Secret Path, may, in retrospect, have been the most unwise route decision of the year so far. Eleven months ago it was a complete disaster (February 2015) and has barely improved since, before long we were reduced to pushing through the sort of knee deep wallows a hippopotamus would be pleased to call home, slithering down denuded, muddy slopes and clambering over numerous fallen trees before regaining some semblance of normality and hauling our bikes up The Secret Path - which, astonishingly, is the official direction to ride what has always been a downhill track. Imagine being a first time visitor to the Guisborough Woods trails and following the red arrows; you wouldn’t rush back.

Eventually we reached the Unsuitables gate and were able to have another crack at this pedalling business, making our way across Newton Moor, then round to the top of the new S.O.W. track, which looks like it will be a nice addition to the moors downhill tracks. Another tree planting day occurred yesterday and the area is now filled with green tubes protecting saplings. When I’m in my mid-eighties, and this is a nicely forested downhill track, I’ll be boring anyone in earshot with “I remember when this was all fields”. We continued down the first couple of bits of Les’s, a bit more cautiously than usual, before hauling ourselves all the way back up to the top of steps and onto Newton Moor again. Amazingly, a bit of sunshine attempted to break through the cloud but despite it’s bravery, the clouds regained control of the sky and returned us to the more usual grey gloom.

Some little used singletrack took us damply to the Lonsdale Bowl track, which we followed back to the gate at the end of Percy Cross Rigg. Despite the brevity of the distance covered, we were both feeling the pace, ploughing through mud for most of the ride gets a bit wearing and the New Row track, today replete with a band of jolly walkers, was a welcome downhill end to the ride.