Darkness At The Edge Of Town.

Darkness At The Edge Of Town.

Monday 6th January 2020

Sheepwash

The Breadlad

What is it with days like this? Perpetual dusk blankets the land, not even a glimpse of sunlight manages to break through the cloud, as if we are in Alaska or somewhere. Conditions like these infect me with lassitude, sleep is the preferred option but instead I’m in a car park waiting for The Breadlad to turn up. He has forgotten to set his watch to GMT and is still operating on NMT (New Marske Time) which is fifteen minutes behind the rest of Britain, so, when he does roll into the car park, bouncing through the potholes, he’s actually early in his world. After the usual exchange of new year pleasantries, we are soon weaving between dog walkers along the banks of Cod Beck Reservoir, much to the disgust of one old biddy who took a dim view of having to share North Yorkshire with a pair of cyclists. Being the perfect gentlemen that we are, we completely ignored her whinging and carried on with our ride. Or maybe it was because she looked like a rugby player after a particularly dubious sex change operation from the cheapest hospital in Bangkok and could probably have filled us both in with one arm behind her back. 

After panting our way up to High Lane, we immediately launched ourselves back down the hill, on a rooty trail through the trees, in search of Rod’s new track, a handy cairn gave it away. A pain-free alternative to Gorse Bush Alley, nothing too technical but a good bit of trail building from Rod, he must have built it with my limits in mind. Venturing out from the trees, the full force of the wind hit us, the forecast threatened 40 mph, luckily it gave us a bit of assistance as slogged up the hill to Scarth Wood Moor and a quick blast on another of our favourite tracks through some woods, loam and leaves, trees and roots. Even though it is the depths of winter, most of the trails are dry, other than the odd muddy patch, this section was excellent. Emerging onto the moor, we followed the paved path down to the road, continuing into Clain Woods and down The Steps Of Doom, again, quite dry beneath a covering of leaves. 

An undulating bridleway took us down to Heathwaite in the Scugdale valley, fun over for a while, we climbed up to another favourite bridleway, which descends gently through Faceby Plantation, eventually reaching the outskirts Faceby, where we turned into the wind. Not became the wind on some hippy LSD trip, just crossed some muddy fields between High Farm and Whorlton House battling the headwind; the ultimate field is home to a herd of cows, who blocked the path like a gang of youths outside an off licence, daring us to go through them. All those John Wayne films weren’t wasted, although the Hollywood version of wrangling probably used less swearing; eventually they acquiesced with a bovine equivalent of feigned indifference, “yeah,whatever” and let us ride past so we could splatter their ordure all over ourselves on the ride down to the road. A bit of toilet training wouldn’t go amiss. The stench was pervasive, hardly surprising, when we realise there are very few areas of our bikes or bodies that don’t have essence of Fresian faeces clinging on somewhere. For the first time ever on a ride, rain would have been welcomed. The speedy blast down the road to Swainby helpfully shed it from our tyres; no prizes for guessing where it landed.

 A steady plod, literally as we went back up The Steps Of Doom, brought us to the top of Scarth Nick and half a mile of easy road back to Sheepwash. Except our old friend Mr. Headwind is back and owing to the extra height, showing us no mercy. At one point we were pedalling downhill at 5 mph, hoping it might blow some of the smell away. No, it didn’t, is the simple answer and now we have cars that smell like an episode of The Yorkshire Vet. All this talk of slurry and ordure couldn’t help bring back the memory of The Ginger One stalling in a farmyard and having to put his bare leg knee deep into a cocktail of filth way back in February 2004 (TTB 12).