Five Days: Four Rides.

Mountain Bike Ride

Sutton Bank

2nd November 2018 route

A grand day to indulge in a spot of skill training, to prepare The Little Woman (non-patronising, she is a woman and she is little) for our future adventures together, an opportunity for her to try a bit of the rough stuff. Sutton Bank seemed like the perfect venue, relatively flat, varied surfaces, a skills loop ideally suited to beginners, the exorbitant car parking fee which deters the other Terra Trailblazers, the only bad point. After being robbed blind by the ticket machine, we crossed the road and took ourselves down the first loop, which is the Sutton Bank trail most like a regular trail centre. A one mile U turn through the woods, half downhill, half gently uphill on a gravelled trail. It's half term and some parents evidently believe Cycles Only signs don't apply to their family. Not what you want to see when you're going as fast as your almost middle aged legs will take you; anyway, no toddlers died in the making of this blog but mam and dad can’t take the credit for it. We followed the road for a while before picking up the blue Fort Trail, heading for the escarpment via a field edge. At the escarpment, we took the singletrack back to Sutton Bank, the track commanding a splendid view across to the Pennines. Pausing at, what they market as “The Finest View In England”, we took in the vista, looking down on Gormire Lake, allegedly bottomless and to our left, the honey gold sandstone of Whitestonecliffe, the only cliff where getting to the start of the climbs is harder than the actual routes. A few spins around the Skills Loop finished our brief but enjoyable ride. Then the café fleeced me of more money, don't they realise I'm a pensioner?

Cyclocross Bike Ride

4th November 2018 route.

Decided today was the day I could go and reap a bit of nature's harvest, I've had my eye on a sloe bush since the summer and now is about the right time to go fruit picking. Took a spin on the cross bike, putting in a few miles before reaching, what I was now thinking of as my sloe bush. It was a relief to see it hadn't been plundered by others with the same idea. Unlike a more rural one I'd been watching near Danby. A litre of gin, half a pound of sugar and we were in the sloe gin business, it ought to be ready in two to three months but can mature for a year or more. Will it last a year? Watch this space.

Mountain Bike Ride.

Rosedale Round (half of.)

5th November 2018 route

You can't say she isn't keen, The Little Woman expressed a desire to see Rosedale and the forecast being promising, we loaded the car up and headed across the moors. Leaving industrial Teesside behind, we also left the good weather behind, the sky became gloomier until we reached Blakey Ridge where we drove into thick cloud, the lights of The Lion Inn looming out of the murk. As we unloaded the car at Blakey Bank top, it became apparent we were possibly a tad underdressed for the conditions, extra clothing was donned before we set off into the gloom, heading south east, into the wind, along the old railway track. Without the scenery, it is just a dull gravel track, slightly uphill and into the wind, we had a quick break for a glance at the Sheriff Pit airshaft through its sturdy fence, before continuing to the old kilns at Bank Top. 

It was a little early for lunch, so a detour to Ana Cross seemed in order, where I could show The Little Woman, in the style of Jim Bowen from Bullseye, the downhill track we could have been on if we’d been doing the whole route. After a brief stop at the cross, not the original medieval version, which is in the church at nearby Lastingham but a copy erected in 1949, we returned to the road for a peruse of the ROC post at the top of Chimney Bank. This is one of dozens of underground bunkers members the Royal Observer Corps and Home Office scientific advisors would have went to observe the rest of the population dying of radiation poisoning when the cold war became the nuclear winter. The hatch has been welded shut, probably since the time The Ginger One attempted to break in search of food rations, the fact the bunker was decommissioned in 1968 did not deter him; you can take the boy out of Darlington etcetera. The descent of Chimney Bank, the steepest road bank in England, proved a little traumatic for one of us but we made it to the Abbey Tearoom with all limbs intact. After some calorie replenishment, we began the long climb up to the old rail track on Rosedale East Side, The Little Woman did not seem to find Bell End Farm as amusing as The Pensioner always did, there was no giggling as she rode past.

Gaining the rail track, we had the wind behind us for a few miles, which instantly made the cloudy day feel better, we inspected more relics of past industry, old kilns and derelict buildings on our way to Rosedale Head. Because of boggy ground, the trail diverts away from the old rail bed and follows singletrack for half a mile or so, with a few boggy or rocky sections to negotiate. While pushing around a large puddle, The Little Woman found out why I’d chose to ride through the puddle, not so much finding out the hard way as finding out soft way, as she sank to mid-calf in iron-rich orange mud. Some most unladylike language ensued, bringing back more memories of The Pensioner, particularly the day he once managed to fall full length into the same bog. We regained the gravel of the old rail track about the same time as we regained the headwind, plodding back to a foggy Blakey Junction.   

Mountain Bike Ride

Kildale

6th November route

The next day turned out to be similar but worse weatherwise, riding from Kildale over to Baysdale, via Three Sting Hill and The Field Of Heavy Gravity, I made my way to Baysdale Moor heading for Armouth Wath. I rode up into the mist, which became thicker and colder the higher I went, visibility was down to a few feet, plodding gradually upwards, keeping my eyes open and wits about me for the right turn which continues to Armouth Wath, it seemed a long time coming, a right turn appeared but I knew the one I wanted came on a descent, ignoring it I carried on until the correct turn emerged. I followed the track, still climbing gently, expecting at any moment to begin the descent to Armouth Wath, somewhere ahead, the whole valley below me invisible through the damp, grey cocoon surrounding me, the track continued, the descent failed to materialise, no landmarks were visible, nasty doubts began to creep in, “Are you sure it was the proper turn?” “Where am I exactly?” “Where could I be heading?” In my mind I could already hear the voiceover of the dramatic TV reconstruction, “It’s not known why he chose this path but...” The interview with the mountain rescue team, “Only a fool would have been out in those conditions. His survival instincts must have kicked when he ate his own leg. Even though there was a gel in his bag.” Note to future rescuers: I would rather eat my own leg than die sucking on a plastic tube of sweetened donkey semen. I was planning the last words, selfie video, “Bury me with my bike” when the track began to descend, gently at first, then steep and loose down into Armouth Wath, cautiously over the bridge at the bottom, this is no place to break anything, physical or mechanical and I was climbing again on The Flagged Road, which paradoxically is not flagged at all, onward ever upward, up the Old Coal Road to Burton Howe and daylight, albeit a tenebrous post-apocalyptic version of daylight from a Hollywood imagining of a dystopian future. But all downhill from here, more or less, so I was happy in the pre-apocalyptic present, haring down the Cleveland Way, into the light, propelled by an affable tailwind all the way to Glebe Cottage.