Mountain Bike Ride
Alone
“If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.” wrote Gallic existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, perhaps looking into the future and seeing a lone cyclist crossing the North York Moors while his erstwhile companions pursue pleasures of a more domestic nature. Riding alone can be a pleasant diversion from the grumbling lantern rouges so often making their opinions vocal from the rear. Or perhaps I ought to change my deodorant, or possibly plan routes which are wholly downhill. Old Jean P. would have been proud of me, pondering my way up hill and down dale, thinking philosophical thoughts on the very nature of our existence and whether to have a cheese or ham sandwich in the cafe.
Leaving Kildale behind I climbed steadily through Little Kildale, surmounting what The Bread
Lad calls “Three Sting Hill”, the road up to Warren Farm, only to lose the height descending into Leven Vale, where a chimney remains from the former Warren Moor Ironstone Mine. Anyone who has ever rode past here will be well aware what comes next - The Field Of Heavy Gravity, an ostensibly level field which soon has granny’s ring working overtime. From here a brief carry for all but the most superhuman leads to Kildale Moor and a loose, rocky descent to Baysdale, terminating at the three barns. Heading west for a short time brings a gate from where a steep drop down through another field crosses Baysdale Beck. A bit of climbing begins starts here, taking the broad moorland track up Holiday Hill and eventually reaching Great Hograh Head some 700 feet later. The track relents slightly here but only briefly before a bifurcation in the track has us undulating across the western flank of Baysdale Moor until the sharp drop to Armouth Wath, apparently once a coal mine.
Unfortunately, the pleasure of the descent is always tempered with the knowledge we must climb up and out of this valley again, on this occasion straight into a head wind, which, despite the sunshine and blue sky, was chilly enough to make me consider dragging a windproof from my bag. Ahead, a deer ambled along the track, oblivious to my approach until I was fairly close, being upwind my laboured breathing went unheard; suddenly it caught sight of me and bounded away through the heather, leaping over the tussocks like a hurdler, I could only marvel at it’s energy, dragging me and a bike to the top of Burton Howe was about my limit, where I had a short breather.
The ride changes for the better from this point, being predominantly downhill with wind assistance a lot of the way. Blowing the cobwebs off the big ring, I set off along the Cleveland Way track, heading north, then northeast, withdrawing a few miles from the gravity bank in a most pleasurable fashion, wind at my back, cruising downhill in the sunshine, passing the only other humans I had seen the whole ride, plodding along weighed down by immense backpacks. What do they carry in them? I am certain I did not have that much stuff when I moved into my own house.
After something like five miles of downhill, I presented myself at Glebe Cottage to solve my philosophical conundrum; ham or cheese? Being an iconoclast I had both - in the same sandwich, a concept which some cafes have considered equal to exotic haute cuisine from the realms of Masterchef but Glebe Cottage advertise it on their boards.
“Ham and cheese? In the same sandwich? Never heard of that.” is a conversation we have genuinely had in more than one cafe in North Yorkshire.
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