Mountain Bike Ride.
Trainee#2, Benny The Brawl, Oz, The New Bob.
19th September route
I’m finding it hard to believe myself but this will be my first mountain bike ride since the 19th of August, mainly owing to lounging on a beach by the Black Sea or lounging in a control room to facilitate the social lives of my colleagues. We managed a reasonable size crew for a change, as well as the regulars, Oz and Benny The Brawl, Trainee#2 has reappeared and we’ve found ourselves a new kid, who shares the same name as the legend that was The Pensioner, so he had immediately became The New Bob. We met in the car park at Pinchinthorpe, the mainly empty car park at Pinchinthorpe, it looks as though the revenue raising idea of tripling the car park fee hasn’t been quite the money spinner it may have seemed to whatever bunch of paper-shuffling desk-jockeys dreamt it up. Geese, golden eggs and so on and so forth.
Benny The Brawl being the one who lives the closest naturally arrived late, somehow managing to divert himself through the centre of Guisborough, for future reference, the clue is in the words Guisborough bypass. His shiny new bike was admired by all before we eventually pedalled away from the car park and embarked on the fire road climbs which lead to the good stuff. We had a fairly standard slog, making our way to Roseberry Common and introducing The New Bob to the concept of hauling his bike up the steps to Newton Moor. Regrouping at the top, we basked in the unaccustomed feel of sun on our bodies, it seems like September is not panning out into the indian summer everyone hoped for but we couldn’t complain about today. Glad to be finally on relatively level ground we had pleasant pedal along the moor and around the Lonsdale Bowl, before the gentle climb up Percy Cross Rigg and down the the other side to The Unsuitables, four fifths of our quintet eager for some challenges of a more technical nature. Benny, realising we were about to embark on The Secret Path became most vocal in his displeasure, heaping opprobrium on one of Guisborough’s most popular routes, which, let’s face it, is hardly a tester, not particularly steep with a scattering of rocks and roots, every bit rollable for those of a nervous disposition. Definitely not the abhorrent (his very word) waste of land Benny made it out to be.
Some time later we reached the fire road, ceasing the vituperation from the back - for a while at least. A brief but sharply uphill pedal saw us regrouping beneath Highcliffe Nab, ready for the singletrack leading to the Lover’s Ledge area. This turned out to be a little muddy but still rideable, a couple of jumps and berms thrown in for good measure, continuing along the open hillside, the track is much improved since the trees were felled, we took a right turn onto the track we call Rod’s Ridge and followed it downward. Benny was blooded here, finding out the hard way bare skin and prickly bushes are the quickest to becoming Mammy’s Little Soldier. From here, a gruesome fire road ascent took us back into the forest, perversely Benny seems to enjoy these more than the downhills, more fire road took us to our penultimate trail of the ride, Les’s 3, more amenable than Les’s 1 and 2, just follow the groove to the bottom. It became apparent that all the cycling talent in Redcar has been usurped by Danny Hart because like Benny’s home town predecessor, The Captain, the concept of riding a bike down a hill does not seem to be in the realms of possibility. We waited at the bottom, on the verge of sending a search party back up the trail to see if Benny might have been abducted by aliens and probed for any signs of intelligent life when he appeared, apparently having taken the opportunity for another impromptu trackside lie down but actually on his bike, which is a major improvement since a month ago when he walked down the same track.
A mainly fire road blast took us back to the Branch Walkway Cafe for suitable refreshments following a gruelling almost twelve miles, The New Bob has yet to master the inter-word swearing and general misanthropy of the old Bob but I’m sure we can train him.
