Mountain Bike Ride.
The Breadlad.
Bright sunshine and dry trails but the cool wind didn’t let us forget it is still only April, the Easter holidays appear to have started for a lot of people judging by the rapidly filling Lordstones’ car park. Those of who keep the wheels of industry turning while the normal world eat, drink and make merry (or more realistically, trudge round garden centres or veg out in front of Bank Holiday television) managed to coordinate our shift patterns and grab a few hours away from the stress of industrial life.
The usual drag up the old access road to the gliding club was slightly wind-assisted which, despite being a pleasant treat meant we would have to think carefully about our return route to avoid battling into a headwind. From the top we followed dry tracks to Whorlton Moor and paid a visit to the caves in the tiny valley of Thackdale, actually the remains of a long disused jet mining enterprise, a few low tunnels which can be linked together without any sort of specialised potholing kit, just a torch and a disregard for claustrophobia and the thought of hundreds of tonnes of earth above your head.
Continuing past Snotterdale (a North Yorkshire joke, it’s not a dale. Who needs Stephen Fry when we have wit of that standard?) we took a cheeky trail through the woods to join the bridleway in Live Moor Plantation. This bridleway is one of our regular favourites, speedy singletrack through woods, then an open field to Faceby, from where a track through more fields leads to Whorlton Lane and usually to Swainby via Whorlton Castle. Today, however an enticing bit of singletrack, signposted Swainby, presented itself, in the spirit of Livingstone and Scott, we threw caution to the wind and set off to explore. Down through a coppice to a gate, all very nice, through the gate into open meadow, followed by more gates and more meadows, all very well signposted but only slightly less boring than those death by Powerpoint training days the management love to persecute us with at work.
Emerging on the outskirts of Swainby, meant we only had a slight climb to Clain Woods and the undulating bridleway which eventually leads to Harfa Bank Farm, where we paused to fiddle with The Breadlad’s gears. Using our combined knowledge and a bit of luck, we re-indexed them, regaining access to the big cogs at the back just in time for the massive climb out of the Scugdale Valley. The long haul from Scugdale Hall to Stoney Wickes possibly the driest it has ever been, spring has definitely sprung in this part of the world. From the mini craglets of Stoney Wickes we made our way down to Raisdale Mill Cottages via a route of dubious legality but preferable to the rutted monstrosity that Raisdale Mill Lane has become.
Which left us only the road drag back to Lordstones, not the best finish that could have been formulated but the cafe was calling it’s inaudible siren song and at least we’d outwitted the wind.
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