Fun In The Sun, In February?

Mountain Bike Ride

Olly, Trainee#2

Starting a blog without mentioning the weather is like starting a day without coffee, it just doesn’t happen. Today was one of those exceptional February days where a slip through some cosmic wormhole fast forwards us to June for a few hours, if only the trails could have followed suit, they were still muddier than a muddy puddle in the middle of Muddyville Marsh. Our intrepid trio left Great Ayton behind and as the saying goes, headed for the hills, passing Fletcher’s Farm and making our way up the slippery slope to the Red Run, an area of old industry, now a motocross track. The Red Run used to be a bit of a test piece for tyro mountain bikers, a steep slope of red shale, starting practically vertical  a fast descent but with a long flat run out. Erosion has taken its toll and the slope is no longer steep or vertical, more like a trench funnelling aspirants downward. The youngsters still had a few goes, those of us who are older and wiser did the enjoyment versus exertion ratio equation and stayed at the top.

Moving on we made our up through Ayton Banks Wood to Easby Moor with a combination of riding, pushing and sliding up slick slopes, only to ride down the other side on a slightly less greasy track through the woods which brought us out above the scrappy cliffs of Cockshaw Hill. Another slope of doom delivered us to Gribdale, my main bike and (more importantly) it’s mud tyres are currently languishing in the bike shop, the old 26 wheel bike was dragged from the back of the shed and hastily refurbished to get out today, the tyres, Maxxis Crossmark, are brilliant all-round tyres, providing you go all round the mud. Unfortunately that can be a little difficult this time of year, the front wheel took to washing out on the bends, throwing me over the handlebars with callous disregard for the person who pays it's bills. (Anyone who has kids will understand the parallel). From Gribdale we recommenced climbing and I was able to reconnect with my old granny ring, spinning casually upward rather than the lung-ravaging, thigh-bursting effort usually required by these trendy 1x systems.

Our next fun bit was the descent of Little Roseberry, another local classic, steep and, today, slippy naturally enough but a cautious approach paid off with a casualty free descent. A circumnavigation of Roseberry Topping followed before a foray through Newton Woods to, at Olly’s request, the Elephant’s Hole, a gigantic shale bomb hole at the head of Cliff Rigg Quarry. The only way down is a painful descent through an alley of gorse bushes, which included another front wheel washout, the fall down the hillside broken by a handy sapling and a pair of lightly padded testicles. The lower quarry features a bit of a bike playground, mainly jumps and berms normally populated by embarrassingly talented pubescents riding bikes which probably cost less than our tyres. A lack of teenagers today meant we were free to indulge without humiliation and some time was spent attempting to get both wheels off the ground simultaneously, with varying degrees of success, pretty much in inverse proportion to our ages. The burst of hyperactivity destroyed the youngsters, the plan, involving mud and ascent had to be shelved and a return to Great Ayton had to be made on the tarmac.