Short But Sweet.

Mountain Bike Ride

The Youth, Young Briggs, The Ginger One.

22nd August route

Another day: another bike ride. Back to good old Pinchinthorpe today for what turned out to be a bit of a shorty ride. Starting an hour later than normal me, Young Briggs, The Youth and The Ginger One went for a scrounge about Guisborough Woods, in two cases, legs still aching from yesterday. We circumnavigated the slope-topped landmark of Roseberry Topping and made our way to the top of Cliff Rigg Quarry, via the landscape frame, stopping for mandatory photos. The upper end of the quarry, known locally as The Elephant’s Hole,  looks as though someone has hollowed out the shale with a giant ice cream scoop, perhaps Wade, the legendary giant of North Yorkshire. Normally we like to ride down this bowl and up the other side, following a track down into Cliff Rigg Wood, today the gorse was big and hungry, crouching to ambush our bare arms, so the the more direct option to Aireyholme Farm was proposed, seconded and carried by mutual cowardice. Part of this route is a steep, grassy downhill, the grass dry and slippery, feeling my wheels beginning to lock up, I let the brakes off a little, roll rather than slide, skids are for kids and all that. I may have released the brakes more than I imagined,  the bike flew forward, to the untrained eye, out of control but using my years of experience, a passing tree was deployed to arrest my headlong flight. My companions (and a passing walker) seemed to think this was a crash, they have a lot to learn. Young Briggs came down and found a hidden hole, treating us to a spectacular somersault worthy of Beth Tweddle, unfortunately before I’d managed to get a camera rolling; he declined to repeat the manoeuvre for the glory, or the £250 from that TV show which rejects all my video. 

Continuing, we made our way back up to Roseberry Common and up the steps onto Newton Moor, skirting the top of Guisborough Woods to reach Highcliffe Nab. From here things took a turn in the gravity friendly direction and we headed through the woods for the Lover's Ledge track, a narrow singletrack traversing a hillside, rooty and rocky, The Ginger One demonstrated his airborne skills, unfortunately without staying on his bike. Even more unfortunately, he was behind me so I never saw it let alone videoed it. Continuing to the bottom is usually a sketchy affair on steep mud, normally just damp enough to make things exciting, today, bone dry and even a bit loose in places. Regardless, we all made it down without further dismounts, of the intentional or unintentional sort and regrouped on the bottom track. More hills and cafe or no more hills and cafe? We decided to defer the decision until Hutton village. 

Reaching Hutton village, the consensus in the vote between more hills or cafe was firmly in favour of cafe, despite the brevity of the ride we'd done a reasonable amount of climbing, so we didn't feel too guilty stuffing our faces with calorific splendour in the Branch Walkway Cafe.

The Only Bog In North Yorkshire

Mountain Bike Ride

The Youth, The Breadlad, Rod.

21st August route

Idly leafing through the latest edition of one of the more upmarket mountain biking magazines available, my eye was caught by a familiar map, a route centred around Danby, mapped out by the lads from The Yorkshire Cycling Hub, featuring two tracks I have never managed to deface with my tyres in twenty or so years of riding. Today was as good a day as any to rectify this situation. The summer is continuing in half-hearted fashion, the temperature has cooled from the excesses of July and rain has not been a stranger either. Today began unpromising, dull and slightly moist but warm and humid, too warm for coats, despite this, we managed to get a team out today - a whole four of us, assembling bikes in Danby Village Hall car park. Time constraints meant we truncated the magazine route a little, beginning by riding through Danby Park to Castleton, then up through the High Street, not as easy as it sounds because Castleton sits high above the river Esk, which we had just crossed. Even the High Street is on a slope. We found our way onto the bridleway to Danby Dale, one of the previously unridden tracks and followed it through fields and gates, farm tracks and gates, tarmac roads and gates, more gates than the Microsoft founder’s family tree. 

Eventually, we reached Botton Farm and eyed the track climbing up the hillside to Danby Rigg with some trepidation, steep, narrow and overgrown, with a sprinkling of slippery rocks to make matters a bit more difficult. I could pretend we battled up until conditions forced us to push but in reality we capitulated within feet, wet bracken, wet grass and (only slightly less flies than a mass grave before the diggers move in)more flies round us than the cow pats in the fields we had just rode through. Plodding upward in the sunshine, the weather took a turn for the better, we left The Youth trailing, three blokes with over 150 years between them, just saying like. And then we found a damp patch, probably the only damp patch left in the whole of North Yorkshire, the damp patch progressed to a full-blown bog and we squelched upward, wet feet in the driest August for years, it could only happen to us, our heads still orbited by legions of flies until higher ground brought a slight breeze to send them back to the depths of whatever hell they came from. 

At the road The Breadlad departed to fulfil conjugal obligations, taking the speedy way back to Danby. We pedalled up to the Trough House track, or The Cut Road as it is called on the OS map. Just like last week it was dry and fast but without the grumpy walker to shout at us. The magazine riders took The Glaisdale Corkscrew back into Fryupdale, although they call it The Waterfall Trail, we have done this trouser-filler quite a few times, with varying degrees of dabbiness (dabbiness, like happiness but you put your feet down more). However, the bridleway at the end of the Trough House track, almost where it joins the road, the magazine’s chicken run alternative to the corkscrew, is another of those we’ve managed to overlook. I think The Pensioner might have had a lone venture down it many years ago and his account was, in common with most of his utterances, somewhat negative. 

I’m not saying we were swayed by the opinions of a perpetually grumpy, partially-sighted, sexagenarian but it has taken twenty years for us to give it a try.The top section is a perfect moorland singletrack, squiggling through the heather, just on the pleasurable side of horizontal. A gate leads to a sparsely wooded hillside where the track takes on a different character, steeper and more enclosed, shoulder height bracken with the odd boulder here and there to give dilettantes like us pause for thought. All part of the fun, as the old saying goes. Reaching the road in the dale bottom, we could see the roof of the magnificent Yorkshire Cycle Hub in the near distance, beckoning us onward, with only some brutally steep tarmac between us and the cafe’s calorific comestibles. 

Hydrated and satiated, we felt ready for one last hill before home, an old favourite Ainthorpe Rigg, a ride/push/carry up the steep side leads to a rock splattered track down the other side, a lot less technical since it was sanitised a few years ago but a speedy blast down to the road at Ainthorpe. From here we were soon back at the cars, all agreeing it had been a good ride, the ascent from Botton wiped from our minds by the restorative power of a fast downhill.

Fifteen Years And Counting.

Mountain Bike Ride

Guillo sin amigos.

15th August 2018 route.

Back in the mists of time, 15th August 2003, when some of the present riders were still sucking dummies, the inaugural Terra Trailblazer’s ride  took place, when the cycling duo of me and The Pensioner (who was a pensioner even back then thanks to the financial delights of voluntary severance - the lucky bastard) were joined by a chubby youth who came to be known as The Ginger One. (TTB 001) Now he’s gaunt and virtually bald and new starters at work are baffled by the nickname. Things snowballed following this ride, other feckless shift workers decided riding a bike over the moors was as good a way as any to waste their ample time off. The firm we work for was called Terra at the time, someone, with heavy irony, named us the Terra Trailblazers and the name stuck, despite the firm going through several name changes since then. Same job, same chair, different colour overalls; so long as they keep paying us who cares what we are called? 

Our route that day around Silton Woods and Boltby Forest has changed beyond recognition, wooded singletracks are nowadays empty tracts of open moorland, covered in the branches of long dead trees or overgrown scrub of brambles and gorse. To celebrate this momentous anniversary, it was felt the Rosedale Round would be more appropriate, a North York Moors classic route we have enjoyed once or twice a year for the past fifteen years.

Today I opted to start from the top road, opposite Blakey Bank, meaning a mid-ride cafe stop, as I set off into the blustery wind, I could hear the sound of The Pensioner whirring round in his metaphorical grave. Mid-ride cafe stop indeed. Heresy. Almost as bad as a pot of tea with no accompanying pot of water. Four miles or so of old rail track saw me crossing the road at the top of the notorious Chimney Bank and taking the track to Ana Cross, where I had a breather and a spot of selfie filming before continuing on the wide, sandy track to Lastingham. The perpetual headwind meant no records were broken today on the downhill but the track was dry and the sun was shining, so it barely mattered. A brief bit of tarmac to High Askew Farm and then off road on the track along the valley bottom to Rosedale Abbey, riding thought heather and bracken, cautiously down the gully which claimed my collar bone six years ago. I still find it hard to believe such an innocuous looking section of track could have caused so much damage. Flashback: as I laid in a crumpled heap at the side of the track, The Pensioner rode up and took a cursory glance before deciding next to the cripple would be as good a place as any to relieve his bursting bladder. There’s nothing like laying battered and bruised while a pensioner pops out his python beside you.

The amount of cars in Rosedale Abbey vindicated my decision to start from the top, getting parked today would have been a struggle. A quick snack in Graze On The Green, putting back some energy and I was off again. Up the road, past Chairman Whelan’s favourite public toilet, climbing ever upwards, hearing a ghostly titter passing Bell End Farm, until I reached Hill End Cottages. From here a farm track leads steeply upwards to the remains of the Rosedale East railtrack, passing through a farmyard populated by chickens, turkeys, ducks and ducklings. The rail track heads around the head of the valley in a scenic fashion, contouring the hillside to keep an amenable gradient, relics of the  ironstone mining days are all around, the huge calcining kilns where the stone would be burnt to boil off moisture before being transported by rail car to be processed in Teesside. Looking at the bucolic idyll today, it’s hard to imagine six thousand people once earned a living in this valley; apparently Rosedale Abbey was akin to a wild west frontier town, pubs packed with drunken miners, fighting and brawling like a Redcar saturday night. 

Once the railway track is gained it’s a steady pedal around the valley, beneath small cliffs and over embankments, arcing round in a huge U turn, the path varying from cinder rail bed to compacted singletrack, crossing streams the colour of Irn Bru. There’s still a lot of iron in them thar hills. The path turned back into the headwind for the last mile or so, needing that bit of extra effort to plod along the cinders back to the car park, what would really have been useful was a big daft lad to draft but he couldn’t come out today.

Fifteen years to the day and still going, if not strong, with enthusiasm undimmed, for some of us anyway.

“There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.”

Mountain Bike Ride.

The Fireman, Young Briggs

13th August route.

“There's no such thing as bad weather, just soft people.” Bill Bowerman, coach and Nike founder.

Or perhaps that ought to be, there’s no such thing as a bad forecast, just daft people who do not read the forecasts properly. A 20% chance of rain doesn’t mean the Lord is speaking to a latter-day Noah about rounding up a quick menagerie before the rest of humanity is entered in the world’s biggest treading water competition.

"The ground will be sodden and unrideable" Benny The Brawl.

In defiance of the forecast, three intrepid Trailblazers gathered under a glowering sky, ready to disregard the elements and ride through the rain. Drive trains wet-lubed and waterproofs at the ready, like good boy scouts, we were prepared. We left Lordstones and made our way along The Fronts, contrary to the dire predictions of Benny The Brawl ( who, of course, was nowhere to be seen) the ground was not sodden and unrideable but dry and firm, with only the occasional puddle for us to swerve round. Evidently, the forecast had dissuaded others from a day out because we had the hillsides to ourselves. This being the first time Young Briggs had been on this part of the moors, me and The Fireman treated him to The Cold Moor Descent but not, unfortunately, before The Cold Moor Ascent which is more or less a vertical carry onto the spine of Cold Moor, this sorted the men from the boys, as the saying goes and soon the youngster was trailing behind two geriatrics as we plodded ever upward. 

From the summit of Cold Moor a bridleway leads due south, a little up and down at first, then downhill all the way to Chop Gate, almost two and a half miles away. A superb track, beginning as rock strewn single track, broadening to wide gravel before turning more steeply downward, first on a dried up streambed full of technical features, drop off, ruts, loose rocks before reverting to singletrack to pass through a small swamp - today drier than a camel’s foreskin. A series of wooded gullies finish the ride, bringing us out at Chop Gate and payback time, a steady pedal back up the road to Clay Bank, not fun but the weather improved with every turn of the cranks. Continuing the upward theme, we left the road at the summit of Clay Bank and made our way up onto Urra Moor, just above Carr Ridge, where we headed for the track around the outside edge of Urra Moor, overlooking Bilsdale, we call it The Rim for want of a proper name. Again, in exemplary condition, springy turf and dry trails, every minute a pleasure, cruising along in the sunshine with only sheep for company. 

We reached Medd Crag and made our way to the top track, where we stopped for a chat with a shepherd and his mountain biker wife before I introduced my companions to the East Bank Plantation descent. Dropping down to the gate into the plantation a sign informs us that we are under CCTV surveillance, must be a well hidden camera and solar powered judging by the lack of power cables in the forest. But just in case, we styled it up for the viewers. When it is dry, the track is a sublime trip through the woods, with a few right angle turns to liven things up. Too soon it was over and we were continuing downwards on farm tracks to bring us back to Chop Gate, before the long drag back up the Raisdale Road to Lordstone’s, in the blazing heat of an august afternoon. 

The Seated Man.

The Seated Man

Mountain Bike Ride

The Youth

7th August route

Over a year ago, in June 2017, a 3 metre tall statue of a seated man was placed in a prominent viewpoint on Castleton Rigg, staring contemplatively across to the hamlet of Westerdale. Despite being on the moors two or three times a week, I had never got round to seeing The Seated Man. Today was the day to remedy the omission. If anyone requires some art appreciation it is The Ginger One, who has less culture than an Aldi own brand yoghurt, however, as he was not available, The Youth became his understudy. 

Planning a route to the man without miles of road riding proved tricky, so I tried to make the off road sections compensate for the dull tarmac bits. We began from Danby and made our way toward Castleton via Danby Park, a pleasant pootle through woods and fields with only a dead sheep for company before starting the long drag up to Castleton Rigg. 

It was not difficult to figure out where the statue is situated, a cluster of cars parked at the roadside and a broad path leading across the moor gave us a clue, the statue is visible in the distance, a steady line of walkers coming and going, it seems to have struck a chord with many people. Having spent the whole of my working life masquerading as a process operator, I am well used to seeing seated men but this one is something else - his eyes are open for a start. Up close, the fellow is definitely impressive, big and bulky to avoid being swamped by the landscape but detailed, right down to the creases on his weatherbeaten face, eyes alert and open, taking in the vista with quiet enjoyment, oblivious to two mountain bikes leaning against his giant legs. As a piece of public art, it works well, resonating with viewers who see a favourite uncle, brother or grandad enjoying his day on the moors. We were enjoying our day on the moors too but it was time to move on and we plodded up more tarmac to the Trough House bridleway which cuts across the head of Fryupdale in spectacular fashion. 

Like everywhere else at the moment, the track is dry and hard, giving speedy passage across top of the dale, views back to Danby and beyond across undulating green humps and isolated dwellings. Today, it was a sublime piece of off road track, not even spoilt by the grumpy walker who took exception to sharing the bridleway. A brief bit of tarmac took us to another track, leading down to Bainley Bank above Street, this is a fast doubletrack, loose and rocky, speed tempered by a few holes and small drops. At the end, we opted to stick with the road back to Danby, owing to time constraints but the road to Fryup End is a fun bit of tarmac, downhill all the way to Houlsyke. We headed back to Danby via the ford at Duck Bridge, today completely dry and the river lower than I’ve ever seen it. A few minutes later we were sprawled on the grass outside The Stonehouse Bakery, tucking into some of their savoury delights.

Not Quaking At The Causeway

Not Quaking At The Causeway.

Mountain Bike Ride

The Fireman

6th August route

Two men on the verge of middle age, a deserted rural car park with a seedy toilet block, lube, rubber and Lycra, it can only mean one thing - another bike ride. Me and The Fireman taking advantage of the continuing summer to stretch our legs in the time honoured fashion and my first venture into the wilds of North Yorkshire for quite a while. Our start was harsh, through Little Kildale and up to Warren Farm using, what The Breadlad named Three Sting Hill because just when you think you’ve cracked it, a steeper bit of tarmac rears up in front of you. From the farm, we rode down through a field, to Leven Vale, past the chimney, a remnant of the ironstone mining days, built in 1866 as a vent for steam from the boilers, we were soon steaming as we plodded up The Field of Heavy Gravity, quite dry today and nothing like it’s usual squelchy self. 

The continuation of the ascent, on to Kildale Moor is not rideable, not by us anyway and we shouldered our bikes for a short carry to the top of the moor before the technical descent down to the Baysdale Valley. The three barns where the track comes out are looking rather dilapidated these days, long past the stage of “fixer upper”. We followed the bridleway eastwards, the dry weather has left in fine condition and it was not long before we reached the road at Sloethorne Park, above Hob Hole. Keeping our height we stayed on tarmac all the way to the oddly named Foul Green on the outskirts of Commondale, before returning to off road riding on the Box Hall bridleway, again flowing dry and fast. Back on tarmac, we slogged up some more road, passing the Shaun The Sheep bus shelter and continued to The Quaker’s Causeway. 

The Quaker’s Causeway - lesser men tremble at the very name; lily-buttocked youths refuse to consider turning a pedal on any of it’s countless blocks, laid down hundreds of years ago so pilgrims could reach the burger van at Birk Brow without being hindered by a boggy moor, or maybe it was Guisborough Priory, history is not my strong point. The Fireman and me are made of sterner stuff, suspension on full bounce and buttocks of steel clenched tighter than the new boy on D wing, we set off across the causeway, paralleling the busy A177 a mile or so away, in contrast to the Whitby bound traffic, we were alone on the ancient stone thoroughfare, nothing around us but heather and sky.

 At a bifurcation, a trail leads to Westworth Woods, an outlier of Guisborough Woods, initially boggy, the trail descends to some pleasant singletrack leading to the woods. Generally, experiencing the initial bog deters most people from riding this trail  a second time, in the hallowed words of The Pensioner, “I told you it would be shite.”. However, the unprecedented dry spell may have made things a bit more amenable -  that was my theory anyway. And, up to a point, it worked out until we met a JCB digging out a drainage ditch and dumping bucket loads of wet slurry across our path, an unavoidable paddle later and we were back on track, the driest summer in years and here we were with wet feet. The swooping singletrack from my memory was actually pretty overgrown with heather and vicious gorse bushes which pounced on our bare arms and legs like fat blokes at a free pie stall. Oh well, experience is never wasted and all that. 

Back on the more familiar territory of Guisborough Woods, we took in a couple of off-piste trails before hunger kicked in and sent us scurrying back over Codhill Heights to Kildale and the epicurean delights of Glebe Cottage. 

The Whole Of July In Two Rides

Not much to round up this month and there’s no video for July, only two mountain bike rides happened, owing to that unpleasant inconvenience we know as work and a rather more pleasant family holiday - Spain was far too hot to be riding bikes and it would have been difficult to squeeze a ride in between the eating, drinking and snoozing in the sunshine. Apparently it had been a bit warm in England too but we arrived back the day after the weather broke, a chilly 18 degrees at Newcastle is a great shock after leaving Malaga’s 30 degree heaven.

Both mountain bike rides were Billy No Mates affairs, work and holidays too for most people, although to the generation brought up on reality tv, it seems manscaping is worth missing a bike rides for. Manscaping? Apparently an essential part of contemporary life for the modern imbecile, no doubt to to substitute for their lack of a discernible personality. If the diatribes of Benny The Brawl, our arbiter on today’s youth culture, are correct, (and it’s a big if), the whole country is populated by vacuous narcissists living a wholly vicarious lifestyle, where the only ‘gains’ that are important are what can be seen in a mirror. They are welcome to it; I’ll be riding my bike in the sunshine.

7th July 2018 route.

The first ride started from Clay bank car park on a saturday - a curiously empty Clay Bank car park, apparently there was a football match on in Russia or somewhere and the majority of the country would be bereft if they missed it. All the more moors for me. And it was hot. After the slog up the Carr Ridge steps to the top of Urra Moor, a slight breeze made things a bit more amenable. The track around the edge of Urra Moor, which we know as The Rim was in perfect condition, dry and springy, excellent views across the verdant patchwork of Bilsdale, The Wainstones peeking up over the shoulder of Hasty Bank. Reaching Medd Crag, I decided to give East Bank Plantation a try and wasn’t disappointed, the usual quagmire sections were dry and the whole downhill bridleway flowed like a trail centre route. 

A bit of road work took me to Harry Wath Wood, near Lordstone’s, a mental breakdown of some description made me decide it would be a good idea to carry my bike to the summit of Cringle Moor, just so I could ride down the Carlton Bank downhill track. At the top, it seemed nobody wanted to share the seat/viewpoint with a heavily perspiring mountain biker on the verge of middle age, so I was able to manspread on my stone throne like some Tolkienesque king surveying his lands; wondering what he might do about the twin cesspits of Redcar and Darlington. 

It turned out that the downhill course has changed to offer more of a challenge to today’s longer travel bikes, the small drop offs I remembered are now fully grown jumps, well above the level of my pitiful skills. The bits I did ride were fun, then I turned onto The Fronts, the roller-coaster track which contours the face of Cringle Moor before continuing as a bridleway below Cold Moor and Hasty Bank. Again, the recent weather has left everything a pleasure to ride, even the puddles of gloopy mud in the dark sections, shielded from the sunlight had managed to dry out. 

The last section of track, beneath Landslip, the often inspected but rarely climbed cliffs which overlook Clay Bank, has been sanitised, the wide rock garden is now a gravelled track, the trees are being felled, returning the landscape to how it was when I first started scrambling about at The Wainstones and abseiling down Raven Crag with my dad, back in the - dare I say it - 1960’s. Clay Bank car park was still only a quarter full when I returned to lay on the wall, basking in the sun like a lycra-clad walrus, gulping down slices of malt loaf instead fish.

30th July 2018 route

The second mountain bike ride of July occured on the penultimate day of the month, when I had returned from Spain, tanned but fatter (according to my mother - thanks for that mother. She’ll only have herself to blame when I develop anorexia). The Glebe Cottage cafe at Kildale has reopened, so it is my duty to sample it, wholly for the benefit of the readers, you understand but first a little spin on the bike to build up an appetite. It seems the weather in England had also been Mediterranean while I was away, however, the inevitable thunderstorms rolled in an destroyed the idyll, today was a bit cloudy with a cool breeze but still managed to be pleasant. 

This being my first ride in almost three weeks, a road warm up seemed in order and the pedal up to Percy Cross Rigg did not seem to arduous, perhaps tapas and cañas are a new unrecognized training diet I may have use for a book and TV series. Or maybe not. Continuing down to Sleddale, then up and across Codhill Heights, I rode round the back of Highcliffe Nab on fire roads towards Westworth Woods where I decided to explore some little used bridleways from twenty years ago when I first began mountain biking. What used to be a tree-dodging slalom through the conifers is now a single track through heather and brush across open moorland - not quite the same but still strangely enjoyable. 

A few more of Guisborough’s finest tracks followed before the long drag back to Newton Moor, Roseberry Topping was busy today, only to be expected now we are into the school holidays, nice to see some kids giving their thumbs a rest and having a go at being outside in the fresh air. A quick scoot around the Lonsdale Bowl back to Percy Cross Rigg, then hunger pangs took me down the Yellow Brick Road to New Row and back to the cafe. I am pleased to report that cheese and onion toastie was just perfect.