Mountain Bike Ride.
The Ginger One, Oz, The Youth, Rod, Andrew B., Andy T.
We are in that strange netherworld between Christmas and New Year when the day people decide their vital jobs are not as vital as the chance to have a week off, eating their body weight in chocolate and watching TV all day. A few day people tore themselves away from the TV and joined us shift workers on cold but bright day to manage almost twenty miles in the sunshine. The vital ladies who run the butty vans, generally at Scaling Dam and Birk Brow, took the vacation option and left us bereft of nutrition - and in the case of Scaling Dam - a car park, which was inexplicably barriered off. A nearby layby accommodated us all.
Bikes assembled, we took to the A171, briefly, before turning off on an icy farm road to High Tranmire Farm, then, after a loose downhill, we crossed Hardale Beck to gaze upward at The Slagbag, a gruesome climb, today shaded from the warming sunlight and retaining an icing sugar coating of hoar frost. Most of us went into holiday mode, only Rod pedalling upward while the rest of us took a more pedestrian approach. Regrouping at the top without an ounce of shame, we pedalled on frozen tracks to the road beyond Greenhouses, continuing to Lealholm Rigg and the long drag up to Danby Beacon, conversation petering out as gravity kicked in. Some long awaited downhill followed, on the 4x4 track to Oakley Walls, a little churned up but for the most part firmly frozen. We all reached the road without incident - or without admitting to any incidents, which is practically the same thing.
A pleasant blast to Robin Hood’s Butts via Clitherbeck Farm soon had us at the start of the Sis Cross track, pleasantly firm, heading toward a huge smoke pall from some localised heather burning, which turned out to be adjacent to our track, although the estate employee did wait until we had passed before lighting that section. Pausing at the remains of the cross, we took a few snaps before beginning the singletrack descending the moor, the frozen ground making it faster than than some summer descents. Continuing through Danby, we climbed up to Ainthorpe Rigg, to enjoy the alternative descent pioneered by The Pensioner, one of the many legacies from constant browsing of the OS sheets and wandering the moors. The steep downhill was verging on slippery, frozen turf and disintegrating loam scoring a few casualties as ambition outweighed ability, riders and bikes parting company to roll amongst the frozen sheep droppings.
Some sketchy descending on icy tarmac took us to Duck Bridge, where we crossed the Esk before beginning the ascent back to Oakley Walls, then Danby Beacon, a mere 600 feet of climbing, which felt like hauling ourselves up a cliff. Eventually we gained the beacon and retraced our tyre tracks down Lealholm Rigg for a little while before turning left onto Roxby Moor to end our ride on the sublime singletrack crossing the moor, as earlier, running fast owing to the chilled ground.
A grand day out as they say on Wallace and Gromit, big team, constant sunshine, fast riding and good company only marred by the lack of a bacon butty to finish the day off.
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