January 2020 Round Up and Video

January 2020 Round Up and Video.

Video here.

16 rides. 207 miles ridden. 20,199 feet ascended. 12,692 calories expended.  

For all those fans of mediocre riding in stunning scenery the Terra Trailblazers videos are back in production, after a three month hiatus. A practically pedal-free break, while I went off to be an international man of mystery, as in it's a mystery how a scruff like him can afford to be here. A new intro too, only featuring people who turned out for a ride in 2019, so if you haven’t made the cut you probably had something much more important to do than having fun on bikes. 

The remaining four rides from January are blogged below.

Looping The Loop Around Sheepwash

Monday 27th January 2020

Sheepwash

The Breadlad, The Ginger One.

Who would have thought it? Sheepwash again, that’ll be the fourth time this month. Cod Beck Reservoir, more dog walkers than a bring your own food Korean barbecue. But they were all brimming with bonhomie, apart from one couple for whom the thought of sharing North Yorkshire with three cyclists was all too much, giving voice to their displeasure with some good old British chuntering. As this was also the same couple who thought it acceptable to drive the whole way from Osmotherly to Sheepwash at under twenty mph, with slow motion disregard for following traffic, reasoning with them was never going to happen, so they were summarily ignored. 

Secret trails and hidden tracks were the order of today, another case of, if you know, you know. The riding was good, the weather kind, the best January since the planet began shuffling off this mortal coil, might as well enjoy it before Governess Greta’s dystopian future kicks in. Regular readers will have a rough idea of the route, a few new options were explored although one particular drop has been shelved until we grow a set of bollocks between us and have the protection of full body armour and a private helicopter, I’m sure one of our more fearless*/incautious*/braindead* (*delete as appropriate) friends will turn up and ride it as though it is slight slope, not a gateway to a hospital bed. A little more playing about and we were finished, cars packed and on our way to the Rusty Bike.

Tuesday 28th January 2020
Lordstones
The Breadlad, The Ginger One.

The next day, the same crew met up at Lordstones, The Ginger One having curbed the previous evening’s alcoholic excess in order to have a bike ride. Could he be dipping a toe into the puddle of prudent middle age? Although his life-long love of nineteen fifties sports lead most people believe he was actually born middle-aged. Unusually for this time in the morning, the car park is almost filled, mainly with the sort of oversized German 4x4’s beloved of impoverished farmers and materfamilias on the school run; shortly afterwards the owners appeared, some sort of running club, all Ron Hills and full volume received pronunciation. Why is it only pikies and the braying middle-classes who like to make sure everyone in earshot can be party to their conversation? 

Another fine and dry day although the wind definitely had teeth, as the saying goes. The track up Carlton Bank, which led to the long gone gliding club, gets no easier, particularly for those of us who took tyre-buying advice from a downhiller and we prolonged the agony by continuing to the summit of Carlton Bank. Time for a breather surely? Considering ourselves early adopters, or even local instigators, of the Scottish access model, we rode the Cleveland Way to Scugdale, lengthy, paved, mostly downhill and far too good to waste on walkers. Riding from Heathwaite to the legendary Cowshit Farm, (see TTB12) we spotted a white stoat, in ermine as they are called in winter, before being skinned to make a lord’s robe look pretty, running along the side of the stream, although it could have been a white ferret which had escaped from somewhere, it looked a bit on the large side for a stoat. Cowshit Farm is a misnomer nowadays, a little seasonal mud but the slurry seems to be long gone, as is the bridge further down the track, swept away by a winter torrent. We managed to get bodies and bikes safely across without resorting to the sort of team building bollocks beloved of Powerpoint Pricks and their management courses. 

The drag up Scugdale came next, a tarmac climb followed by a slippery carry until the gate at Stoney Wickes, in a spirit of, not exactly adventure, more masochistic curiosity, we thought we would see if Raisdale Mill Lane has improved over the years since we last rode it. The simple answer is no, it has probably deteriorated even more, sloppy slithering on slender singletrack, at some points high above a gully, leading to a narrow glacier of rocks and mud. 

We emerged, thankfully, at the cottages and treated ourselves to a couple of tarmac miles, heading up to Beak Hills and its choir of barking dogs, heard but never seen, apart from the Jack Russell which usually escorts us from the premises with maximum belligerence. No sign of the little fellow today. Our route continued upward toward The Fronts, from where some less well-used tracks led us back toward Lordstones and some essential calorie replacement.

Going Local - on the MTB

Thursday 30th January 2020
Local
The Novice

The Novice left the cocoon of the control room once again to surrender his delicate posterior to a slender saddle and pedal around some of Teesside’s finest cycle tracks, despite (allegedly) having buttocks like one of Flamingoland’s baboons after the last ride. 

We followed the sweeping curve of the majestic A19, turning off to pass the gothic beauty of the Nitram plant, a monument to those craftsmen of asbestos sheeting and rode alongside the mudbanks of the tidal River Tees, cycle paths all the way to the Tees Barrage Whitewater course. The path continues through Stockton on the White Lightning course, where the locals socialise on riverside benches, engaging in witty banter while appreciating the fine bouquet and sublime flavour of the cheapest alcohol their wine merchant, Messer’s Lidl & Co. can provide. Beyond the imposing cathedral of the Mecca bingo, we enter the quaintly named Boathouse Lane, which has neither houses nor boats, our route continues, quite legitimately, through a hole in a gate and down an alley between industrial units, to pick up a broken and vegetated path a little too close to the river for comfort. The section where we pass under the Surtees Bridge, the water a creepy shade of black, is reminiscent of the sinister government public information films of the sixties and seventies, which filled in the gaps between adverts and terrified impressionable children into never leaving the house. 

Leaving the river behind we made our way around the outskirts of Preston Park, through the, today, unusually glass-free, tunnel under the A66 to the affluent suburb of Hartburn, crossing the road at the bowling club, one of The Novice’s favourite drinking haunts. His lack of interest in old man’s marbles is outweighed by the cheap drink on offer, he had to be reminded he is an athlete now, as he automatically headed for the front door, club card in hand. Plus it was only eleven thirty in the morning. The cyclepath runs north from the opulence of Hartburn, through various incarnations of Stockton until the leafy suburbs give way to the scars of cable fires and discarded mattresses of Hardwick, an estate once having the honour of the cheapest heroin in Britain - and the cheapest prostitutes. A shining example of Margaret Thatcher’s market forces dogma. 

Our track turns to mud and puddles when we enter the urban rurality between Stockton and Thorpe Thewles, giving our chunky tyres some work to do at last. As a special treat, we rode down the steep slope where a viaduct stood many years ago. The Novice expressed some concerns of an incontinent nature regarding the verticality of the track but he cruised down it like a proper Terra Trailblazer, haltingly, brakes squealing, on the verge of going over the handlebars. He reached the bottom unscathed and hopefully, with a better understanding of the attractions of mountain biking. 

A short pedal and we were in the station cafe again, getting fuelled up for the last blast back to Billingham, which unfortunately does include the bank up to The Golden Gates, where spinning classes and the real world diverge but he made it without recourse to pedestrianism. We carried on through Wolviston Court estate, many years ago, the exclusive area of Billingham, (as if there could be such a thing) where people not quite wealthy enough for Wolviston would aspire to live. Now they even have scumbag process operators there, talk about going downhill. A pedestrianised lane cuts through the golf course and we passed men in pastel jumpers and checked trousers taking out their frustrations on little white balls, an obvious aversion to adrenaline and enjoyment preventing them from taking up mountain biking instead. And then it was all over, twenty miles near enough, a nice leg-stretcher for The Novice prior to next week when we venture into the real outdoors for mud, sweat and gears; the slippery slopes and the moaning dog walkers. I bet he can’t wait.

Not Going Gently Into That Good Night

Friday 31st January 2020
Lordstones
La Mujerita

Me and La Mujerita only managed a shorty this morning, a quick blast round from Lordstones because we are at a funeral this afternoon. Given the circumstances, sudden death of a friend, only a couple of years senior, it is inevitable that one's own mortality is brought to mind; which for me always reminds me of a tattoo worn by a character in a Michael Slade novel I read years ago. A depiction of the Grim Reaper, scythe in one hand, hourglass in the other, the words “It’s later than you think.” written beneath, it’s always stuck in my mind. When I worked, although former colleagues have a different opinion and say I was merely employed, the best thing about the job was the time off, something like 220 days off in a year, which is as brilliant as it sounds, especially for those of us with time consuming hobbies. It was hard to understand why people couldn’t appreciate this, instead they would give up their free time to work overtime, fighting and bickering for the extra hours like starving refugees clamouring for free food, as though they weren’t already being paid well in excess of the national average wage. All those days wasted, all that time that could have been enjoyed instead of being trapped in a chemical factory for twelve hours, all for a bigger house or a newer car. I guess we all have different priorities and I know mine was always to live a life not a mere existence in their world of greed and materialism, I always relished my socio-economic inferiority while climbing cliffs or riding bikes, rich beyond most people’s dreams. Life is more than a pay cheque, I gladly took a £30K pay cut to be where I am today - retired. Remember the feeling on the first day of the six week holidays when you were a kid? That is what every day of retirement is like, it’s just a shame it comes at the wrong end of your life. Anyway, I may have digressed a little, there was a bike ride involved at some point, mud, puddles, horses and a play on a little jump area before a nice lunch in Lordstones. Home, shower and off to pay our respects to a lady who definitely put living before existing.