The One Ride Week

 Keep The Weather Like This Until Christmas...

...and we might forgive August.

Unusual in recent times, one ride in a week, unusual for me anyway, to the shirkers who used to ride with us and nowadays see golf and overtime as alternatives to having fun on a bike, one ride a season would be more their style. Alone again, naturally, as Gilbert O’Sullivan sang when I was a mere boy, I headed out from Kildale station, the suspicious puddle still taking up one corner of the car park. Suspicious because there has been no significant rain, it is next to the toilet block and never dries up. After the spoke-snapping, mech-bending disaster of the last ride, a fine repair job and service has been done by Doug at Wheely Good Bike Solutions, who operates from his home in Stockton, giving speedy service at sensible prices. It felt like a new bike as I pedalled up Percy Cross Rigg, sweat running into my eyes as it turned out to be the second day of an Indian summer, which, if it keeps up, might let us forget the grim August we endured. Across Codhill Heights and into Guisborough Woods to ride a few gentle trails and play with the drone, a perfect day for a few shots from Highcliffe Nab. For a change I had a foray onto the old red route, pretty overgrown nowadays, it has definitely seen better times, eventually arriving, bitten and scratched, at the top of The Unsuitables. The official direction of the red route included ascending the Secret Path, one of Guisborough’s original downhill routes, roots, rocks and loam; everyone was perplexed when the route tackled it in the wrong direction. I continued up the off-road section of Percy Cross Rigg and around the Lonsdale Bowl to Gribdale before plodding up the fire road to Captain Cook’s Monument, surprisingly busy seeing as the general populace is supposed to be returning to normality, schools have returned and the homeworkers are being pushed, kicking and screaming in a lot of cases, back to their little partitions in factory-farm offices. The climb to the monument hasn’t got any easier and failure is still the preferred option on the steep steps around the memorial to the 1940 plane crash. 

After a brief rest, the height just gained was thrown away, in a most pleasurable manner, taking the track known on Strava as Down The Wall!! (not my apostrophes, I was always taught using apostrophes is like laughing at your jokes - just don’t!) The trail was in good condition, a little excess growth creeping out, a bit like my ear hair but dry enough to give a speedy descent to the fire road. Hunger began to get the better of me, I took the soft option, fire road and tarmac back to the car park, where today’s tailgate picnic was a socially-distanced affair, not keeping away from virus carrying hordes because I couldn’t have been more alone if I was attending a Jimmy Savile fan club reunion but from the dodgy puddle outside the toilets.