Mountain Bike Rides.
Light rain forecast for noon, heavy rain at 2pm. 10:30 am, Chop Gate car park, raining steadily as we geared up for another ride. To cut a long story short, precipitation persisted for most of the pedal but we carried on undaunted. Climbing steadily along the Raisdale Road, then more steeply offroad to Stoney WIckes via Raisdale Mill Lane and across the moor to Brian’s Pond. Still climbing, we made our way damply toward the remnants of the gliding club, ready for a bit of reward in the form of the old access track, a speedy descent on gravel, the weather keeping the pedestrians out of the way, at least.
We passed by Lordstones and failed at the muddy ascent to The Fronts, just too slimy. The remainder of The Fronts was messy but rideable in an exhausting sort of way. The bikes were shouldered for a plod up the steps onto Cold Moor, all so we could ride down the other side into Garfit Gap on a good bridleway, or a normally good bridleway, today slippier than a bucket of eels in Swarfega, some falls may have been taken by those with more enthusiasm than skill. Heather is soft and it didn’t hurt too much.
Another carry took us to the top of The Wainstones, some bike mountaineering skills were employed with mixed results, eventually we gained the track on the top and followed it along the southern flank of Hasty Bank to the old Hasty Bank Quarry. Pausing to inspect some graffiti from the days when hammers and chisels were the prefered tools of the tagger not spray cans, we got our breath back before another downhill section. I’d thought this bit of track was one of my little secrets, it appears to be becoming a bit too popular, bike tracks everywhere. A last bit of downhill, the fire road heading towards Clay Bank car park has been resurfaced with tonnes of gravel and now gives a filling-loosening descent especially for those who don’t lash out on full suspension.
Thoroughly dampened by now, a unanimous but tacit group decision was made to head back to Chop Gate via the road. More importantly, the downhill road, which boosted our frankly pathetic average speed for the ride.
As the old saying goes, “What a difference a day makes”, a sunny start saw us in Kildale station car park, losing a Ginger One but gaining a Bread Lad and an Olly. After the mandatory faffing about, we began with a road warm up, ascending Percy Cross Rigg to the gate at it’s end. The offroad track around the Lonsdale Bowl came next and was relatively dry apart from a few puddles, we pressed on, keeping our height by curving round onto Newton Moor rather than descending Fingerbender Bank. A quick blast across the moor and we were soon introducing Olly to the delights of Les’s, one of Guisborough Woods’ more hardwearing tracks, which was still a little muddy but holding up a great deal better than most of the off-piste tracks which have been mud baths for months now. We did all three sections of Les’s, without casualties or mechanical disasters and made our way back toward Roseberry Common, pausing to watch another rider attempting to descend the S.O.W. track, sporadic best describes his progress. Best left for drier conditions, his verdict when he reached us.
Another carry, not exactly mandatory on Terra Trailblazer’s rides but they do seem to happen regularly, in fact The Ginger One prefers them to steep pedalling but he’s from Darlington, we hauled ourselves up the steps opposite Roseberry Common, back to Newton Moor again. Olly put his bike down and it folded in two, probably not ideal with three big descents between us and the cafe; some investigation revealed a major flaw in his suspension system - the top bolt which holds the shock to the frame had decided it was being grossly overworked and absconded somewhere on the trail. Two pairs of young eyes walked back down the steps in attempt to find the bolt while slightly more mature eyes got to the task of engineering a temporary repair. Searching the assorted junk in our bags for a solution, me and The Breadlad were joined by a local headcase who let us know, quite graphically, about his other hobby, the one which isn’t mountain biking, the one involving “mucky women”. Best leave it there, just like I did with my mudguard in our haste to get away from him.
Three awesome descents awaited us, Black Nab, Codhill Heights and The Yellow Brick Road, the temporary suspension repair worked admirably, although it calmed Olly down a bit, both wheels on the floor most of the time, it’s amazing what you can do with an Allen key and a bit of duct tape.
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