March Round Up and Video
Too many words? Video here
“March is the month God created to show people who don’t drink what a hangover is like.”
Garrison Keillor.
March, the calendar’s equivalent of a dystopian wasteland depicted in so many Hollywood movies; a dying planet of a month, a monochrome landscape of raw winds, water and mud, grey skies blocking out sunlight, contrasting with February's bright optimism. A border between seasons which manages to avoid the good points of either, no-man's land with the razor wire of winter behind you and the golden promise of summer’s freedom ahead, between the two lies a charnel-ridden minefield. Like Yeats's great beast, March shuffles towards spring, which glimmers tantalisingly on the horizon, snowdrops and daffodils peek cautiously from the grave-cold earth, harbingers of better days to come. March is a month to be endured, not enjoyed, winter miles make summer smiles and all that. Enthusiasm is hard to come by when the trails are slurry and the wind has teeth. But it’s always better than the alternative: not having a bike ride, it’s difficult enough to fill those awkward moments between the end of one bike ride and the start of the next without letting the weather get in the way.
I wrote this at the beginning of March and it must have frightened the weather into behaving, especially towards the end of the month when it was almost like summer. Great rides, decent weather and for the last bit, we were allowed to go out mob-handed, well, as close to a mob as we’ll ever get without recourse to bribery or sexual favours.
The last three rides of the month are detailed below.
Shredding Those Gnarly Fire Roads.
Forgetting the Easter holidays have started, me and La Mujerita went to Pinchinthorpe, as did everyone else in the immediate vicinity with a bit of free time. The car park was almost full, cars disgorging toddlers and dogs all ready to enjoy a bit of fresh air; we cycled cautiously past the visitor centre and up the first hill, half a mile from the car park there was barely a soul in sight, not that we were complaining. We made our way through the forest on fire roads, stopping occasionally to check the state of trails or show La Mujerita some of the jumps we fail to clear every week. Climbing higher and higher until we reached Highcliffe Nab, then we repeated the exercise in a downward direction. A track we had rode in the depths of winter, when it was a slithering, sloppy nightmare was tried today - no change, still like trawling through the Somme without the trench foot or machine gun fire. Although trench foot is a possibility. More amenable fire road riding took us back to the visitor centre where the cafe was doing a roaring trade in ice creams. Not a bad start to the week’s riding, strong cold wind but otherwise quite pleasant. And as an added bonus there were jars of home made chilli jam for sale at the cafe, it went very well with my toastie.
It’s Grand To Feel The Sun On Your Back.
If the newspapers are to be believed, we are in for the hottest day of the year today, bring it on. Boris says six again and not wanting to break any government rules we stuck to five, just in case there were any covid police watching us from spy satellites in outer space, although being of a certain age we’ve all had the jab, so we’ll be monitored from the nanochip technology cruising round our veins and arteries. Miniature submarines crewed by Raquel Welch and assorted heartthrobs, checking out our internal organs, Hollywood predicted it back in 1966, Fantastic Voyage. Soon we were panting our way up Ainthorpe Rigg, heart rates increasing, Raquel strapped in her chair, hatches battened down, as blood flows went from lazy river to river wild in the space of minutes. A circuitous route brought us to the Jack Sledge bridleway, a mighty fine descent down the hillside, a diagonal slash of singletrack, angling through the heather to the road far below. A lot drier than last time me and The Breadlad rode it, confirming our suspicions that it would be a quality descent in the right conditions. The Breadlad sent us all ahead because he wanted a bit of quiet time at the top, so he could do what a bear does in the woods. No, not hibernating. The bridleway crosses the road for a short continuation which did not continue the earlier magnificence, a long dead sheep rotting away across the track, its bones crackling under our tyres, led to a small swamp before things firmed up as we reached the Fryup road. We followed the track through the fields from Stonebeck Gate Farm, which was pleasantly dry for a change and most of the gates were open which gave us a speedy run through, a little too speedy for Keith who was spat onto the grass by a reprehensible rut. His injuries were only minor and we were soon on our way again, regaining our lost height via tarmac and a gruesome ascent of Oakley Walls, which is looser and rockier than ever. A couple of hardy souls attempted to ride it but the rest of us worked on the discretion is the better part of valour theory and made like Sisyphus for half a mile. A quick blast across the Clitherbeck track and another climb up to Robin Hood’s Butts, eventually brought us to the Sis Cross, a favourite descent of ours, singletrack through the heather, a few muddy gullies to cross, or go over the bars depending how much attention was being paid, as Howard found to his cost. Potentially an expensive little tumble, as he lost his GPS, luckily The Breadlad’s eagle eyes discovered it again, those years of practice looking for euro coins on continental beaches paid off again. We did the continuation bridleway instead of heading straight down the road to Danby, this passes through someone’s garden and over a stream, shallow enough to ride through today, into a remote valley, green and picturesque but a stiff climb to find our way out. Then it was all pretty much downhill to the cafe, the almost forgotten luxury of a post-ride cafe stop, it may have been takeaway only but still a magnificent improvement on the tailgate picnics.
Managed another decent crew today for a few loops around Blakey Ridge, starting from the Bank Top car park, which was significantly milder than our last visit, when we had to park nose first into the wind to prevent car doors being ripped off by the vicious gusts. Today was warm and windless, if anything better than yesterday which was allegedly the hottest day of the year so far. Our first trail was the short bit of singletrack cutting across Rosedale Head, a bit sloppy but improving, we emerged onto the road opposite the ancient moorland cross known as Fat Betty, continuing on the Fat Betty singletrack, an uninspiring name for a nice bit of trail, with grand views over the moors looking back to Castleton. A quick scoot up the road brough us to the Trough House track, a moors’ classic, although nowadays more for the views than the riding, which has been sanitised beyond belief. Trough House is a shooting hut with a stone bench built into one end, always one of our N.S.P’s (Natural Stopping Points), we’d been sat a while, spouting the sort of bollocks which wouldn’t go down well in polite company, it’s a little known truth that any conversation between a group of men will inevitably degenerate to talking about faeces or fornication, or did during my forty odd years working in industry, where ladies were few and far between and even people who used shower gel instead of the free soap provided by the company were considered to be of dubious sexuality. So, there we are, laid about like loppy dogs, as a colleague used to say every time he walked into the control room, and two ladies cycle towards us, obviously Trough House is one of their N.S.P’s too.
“You’ve nicked our seats.”
Being the gentlemen we are, we offered to move but she continued,
“At least you’re not on electric bikes. If you had been we would have come up there and tossed you off.”
I’m sure she meant the seat but just in case, our electric bikes arrive next week. We got a good discount for ordering four. Un-abused, we continued along the track, detouring slightly to show Bri the infamous Glaisdale Corkscrew, a steep and broken singletrack along a cliff edge, the sort of place were mistakes will have a somewhat negative bearing on the rest of your life, if you survive at all. Curiosity sated, we turned off the Trough House track onto the George Gap Causeway, a partially paved bridleway crossing the moor towards Rosedale, normally we ride in the opposite, gravity-friendly, direction but it’s not too steep and as I said, partially paved so things oughtn’t to be too arduous. Except for the mud, the unpaved sections are showing no signs of drying up like the rest of the moors, narrow gullies filled with black peat the consistency of porridge made for hard going at times but the weather is pleasant and the banter is brutal, so nobody minds. We crossed the road and started on our next bridleway, the Daleside Road descent, three quarters of a mile of pure pleasure, terminating on the Rosedale East Side rail track just above (the unfortunately closed) Dale Head Farm tea room. One of those tracks we don’t like to publicise too much in case it is wrecked by overuse. An easy but scenic pedal, round the head of the valley on the old rail track brought us back to our start point, still feeling pretty fresh, we crossed the road to ride a little used track behind the Lion Inn. Or what previously was a little used track, it appears to have been used and abused by a convoy of bulldozers or possibly Challenger 2 tanks taking the long way round to Afghanistan, which have rendered dusty singletrack to muddy ruts, another little bit of fun ravaged by the guardians of the countryside. Shortly afterward we were enjoying a tailgate picnic in the sunshine, the last ride of March over, summer is on the way. We are coming up to Easter, predictably enough snow is forecast.
(Additional photos courtesy of SuperBri)
Click on route name to take you to the relevant Strava page.
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