The Ten Day Breaks Have Recommenced.

The Ten Day Breaks Have Recommenced.

Despite heralding the approach of winter, the first ten day break after the summer period is always as eagerly anticipated as an eighteen day break. Knowing we're only incarcerated twelve days a month and have the remainder to go out and play makes the season of mists and mellow muddiness bearable. The first batch of riding days was planned out, Benny The Brawl opting for an unprecedented five days out of ten, plotting to get fit and show the old blokes a thing or two.

Mountain Bike Ride.

The Breadlad.

11th October 2017 route

Benny’s enthusiasm faltered at the first hurdle when he was too tired to turn up at for our first ride, Great Ayton, texting some unlikely tale of being awake all night. That just left me and The Breadlad and a bit of route rescheduling, now we didn't have a gigantic teenager moaning about tree roots and steep, muddy tracks. The few miles of ascent we began with wouldn't have suited him either, we weren't that keen to be honest but plodded up to the top of The Unsuitables, The Breadlad hampered by a binding brake which gave him a bit of an extra workout.

From The Unsuitables, a foray into less-travelled conifers seemed like a plan, so a slow pedal into the wind took us to some trails around the FloRida area. Surprisingly muddy in the trees to begin with but things improved as we made our way down, weaving between trees on a blanket of pine needles. Crossing a fire road, the track continued onto a recently felled area; the trail had not survived the clearance, soon deteriorating to a tangled mass of branches, brambles and swampy puddles. Against our better judgement we carried on, quite literally carrying at some points until a fire road we recognised came into view. Back in more familiar territory, an enthusiastic but ultimately style-less descent of Stripes followed, before we climbed back up into the forest and made our way, via a couple more off-piste tracks to Roseberry Common for the varied descent around the side of Roseberry Topping, joining Brant Gate, to the road by the car park. The car park of nocturnal assignations between canine walkers.  Or so I've heard. Time constraints saw us pedalling down the road, directly to the most important part of the ride - Stamps cafe, followed by a pie from Stokesley Butchers.

Mountain Bike Ride

Benny The Brawl, The Fireman, The Breadlad, Trainee#2, The Youth

12th October route

The next day saw a better attendance probably because it was Hamsterley and a chance to ride down the mighty fine line that is the K-Line line (to paraphrase Lonny Donegan). Benny The Brawl staged a recovery, The Breadlad was spotted mingling with paying customers in the car park, The Fireman joined us, along with Trainee#2 and The Youth came along to reduce the average age of our posse to below forty years.

Our route was the usual Hamsterley hot lap with some off piste variations, away from the official tracks it is still surprisingly dry in the woods, a few muddy puddles about but all rideable. Benny is beginning to improve due to our 'coaching’ which is predominantly a combination barracking, abuse and encouragement and the ever-present possibility of £250 from You've Been Framed. It won’t be long until he reaches the same standard of mediocrity as the rest of us. We managed to break some kind of slowness record, over four hours out to do less than thirteen miles, without accident, puncture or mechanical, it's difficult to explain where the time went but we were having fun so it didn't matter. Especially seeing as the 68 Cafe has began staying open a bit later.