September 2018 Round Up and Video.

September 2018 Round Up and Video

You lucky people - two for the price of one this month.

September 2018 Part One - clicky

September 2018 Part Two - clicky

My first month without gainful employment has passed in a blur of hills, heather, trails and pedalling, I’m probably buying twice as much diesel as previously but having ten times the fun. It did become apparent, fairly early on that rest days are required, riding day after day depletes performance, so I have had to calm down a bit but the freedom to take a day off, knowing that there will always be the next day or the day after, is immense. Mountain biking is no longer the meat in the work sandwich, it’s a whole man versus food pig out. And now I have more time to keep the blog updated and make videos, which explains why this month we have a double bill, so many rides, so much footage, despite a few rides where the weather was so rough I didn’t bother getting the camera out. A few storms hit us in September, mainly wind rather than rain but being Fans Of Outdoor LifeStyles (F.O.O.L.S for short) we were still there. It seems this retirement lark is settling down into a routine, two days riding, a day’s rest, two days riding, to days rest and repeat with variations. All helped by the weather holding up well, although the more sensationalist papers are already predicting a winter to rival Antarctica on a bad day. Apparently journalistic flights of extrapolation in 48 point headlines sell papers. 

The remainder of the past month’s rides are blogged below:

Cross Bike Ride

The Little Woman

24th September 2018 route

This week’s riding began with a flat ride to the seaside, Seaton Carew, the town made famous by one man and his canoe, via Greatham Creek, home of a local seal colony and passing through the ruins of the factory where Bisto was invented - there’s a bit of local history for you. Reaching Seaton at lunchtime meant a visit to The Almighty Cod was pretty much mandatory, eating chips on a bench looking out at the North Sea while an audience of seagulls scrutinised our every move, just waiting for a dropped scrap. Obviously the “don’t feed the gulls” signs mean nothing to them, rebellious little blighters that they are, blatantly disregarding an order by none other than the council. Riding home later, we were mysteriously drawn into a pub beer garden, must have been some kind of science fiction tractor beam which took control of our handlebars. All in all something approaching the perfect ride, no hills, chips and beer.

Mountain Bike Ride

All Alone

26th September 2018 route

The next ride turned out to be a Billy No Mates affair, setting off from Great Ayton and making up for the last ride’s lack of ascent by starting with a haul up to Captain Cook’s Monument, followed by a circumnavigation of The Matterhorn of North Yorkshire - Roseberry Topping. Then a steady ride back to Great Ayton with a detour to the butchers to correct the calorie deficit. 

Mountain Bike Ride

Benny The Brawl

27th September 2018 route

Hamsterley with Benny The Brawl the next day, he turned up looking like a dandelion clock after someone has blown on it to tell the time, apparently, it’s the most fashionable hair style of the moment. For a change, we missed out the Pike’s Teeth track and ventured out onto the moor to do the Doctor’s Gate track, leading back down to the forest at the top of Rocky Road. It wasn’t to his liking, rocks, uphills, wind, open air, it didn’t seem to gel with him. Plus the fact he has more ailments than a nonagenarian, always some incipient medical problem which means he can’t ride as well as he should, despite his gym-gotten gains. Once the delusion that going to the gym makes you fit wears off he might have a chance of becoming a normal human being. We took a few off-piste tracks before regaining the official trails, at Oddsox, continuing ever-upward to Poulties, K Line, Transmission, Accelerator and Nitrous. Chilling at the stone table, or possibly altar, at the start of Transmission, we chatted to a couple of guys who had came from Bradford, just to ride at Hamsterley. Benny (19) decided he couldn’t possibly make it up to Section 13, so a whole half of Hamsterley was left untouched and we took The Grove Link back to the car park before retiring to the 68 cafe to replace our energy.

Mountain Bike Ride

The Youth, Creaky Keith, Gary

28th September 2018 route

To round the week off me and The Youth met up with a couple of our Nissan Brethren for some XC riding on and off the Hambleton Drove Road, we drove up the road to Square Corner, where we were greeted with the sight of an energetic youth, jumping his bike around the car park in a way that us more mature gentlemen can only dream about. This turned out to be Gary, who had travelled down from the metropolis of Sunderland with our brother from another mother, Creaky Keith (named after his saddle, not his joints, we hope.) An ascent of the Mad Mile soon calmed Gary down, in fact it did none of us any favours, one by one we arrived panting and perspiring at the cairn, where my assurances no more climbs of that magnitude would be happening were greeted with some scepticism. We headed due south on the wide track, following in the footsteps of eighteenth century drovers who used this route to take animals to market, there is an interesting article from the Northern Echo here, if you can be bothered with all the adverts.

We took a detour down to Gallow Hill for the fun of the downhill before taking fire road back to the top of Boltby Forest, from where we continued to Dale Town Common, through many fields to the quaintly named Noddle End. 

“Sounds like something from The Shire.” said Keith. 

We didn’t meet any hobbits on our way down but encountered plenty of loose limestone on the narrow path, luckily dry today, as in the wet it becomes slippier than a gay orgy. From the bottom of the descent, we made our way through Peak Scar Wood, beneath the mighty, grey cliff which gives the wood its name, the venue for many a rock climbing adventure for me and The Youth.  A little tarmac toil took us to Hambleton Mosses and the tail end of The Escarpement at Boltby Scar, the view from here was complemented by the weather, an azure sky the perfect backdrop to fields and woods, a swathe of green stretching to the Pennines. 

Another diversion took us down the highlight of the Sutton Bank Fort Trail, the drop through the quarry next to Boltby Scar, we stayed a while to play about in the quarry, looking for steep lines to ride down as The Youth meandered up the vertical walls without the benefit of ropes or chalk. From the quarry the route arcs round to below High Barns and continues through a gate dropping into the woods below Boltby Scar prior to taking a zig zag path back to The Escarpement. Not willing to lose so much height, we pushed back to High Barns from the gate, emerging breathless at a spot about two metres away from where we’d started. The usual hunger pangs were beginning to develop, High Paradise Farm couldn’t come quick enough and it wasn’t long before we were relaxing in the sunshine, sat out in the courtyard surrounded by a multitude of dogs.

All that remained was to retrace our tyre tracks back along the Drove Road, stopping for a play in the bomb hole before the highlight of a ride of highlights, revenge on the Mad Mile, the beast which tortured us for one thousand six hundred and nine metres four hours ago,  now transmogrified into a ribbon of rocky rapture. It was delectable, dry, fast and not a walker in sight to spoil the fun. A grand day out as a certain cheese loving clay animation might say. 

This blog post is dedicated to Charlie who sadly passed into the clutches of domestic duties and missed a superb ride.