Terra Trailblazers: The Slack Week.

The Slack Week.

Only two rides this week, for a variety of reasons, mainly having to do with clocking up another birthday, where I join my contemporaries, such luminaries as Morrisey, John McEnroe and Sean Bean, on the verge of middle age. Weather-wise, September has started pretty much the same as August finished, cold, grey and drizzling. A heat wave is forecast, probably the same one which was supposed to happen in August - there is a distinct lack of breath holding from all and sundry.

Almost The Sun

To misquote The Stranglers, who actually sang “always the sun.” Obviously they have never spent a whole summer mountain biking in northern England. It felt odd having the first ride in the week on a Thursday, my mind was convinced it was Monday. For some perverse reason, maybe because I was alone, a road warm up seemed a good idea, stretch the legs with a few easy miles on tarmac before hitting the rough stuff. Eight miles and around a thousand feet of ascent later I actually wondered whether thinking like this might be the start of dementia, apparently even youngsters like me can become victims. The tedium of the tarmac finished with a blast down the deteriorating Sleddale road, where the road turns to Sleddale Farm, our route goes straight on, ascending a gravelled doubletrack across Codhill Heights, which is an odd name for a hill but it seems Hutton Village, way down in the valley below Highcliffe Nab was formerly known as Codhill, when it was home to families of local miners. The ascent took me to the top edge of Guisborough Woods, where, after a little breather and a bite to eat, I launched myself down some of the woods’ finest off-piste with all the style and grace of an eel falling down a cliff. Not through any lack of skill or expertise on my part, of course, the constant dampness has left the trails greasier than the underside of Fat Betty’s deep fat fryer on fish and chip Friday and for anyone unfamiliar with Guisborough trails; 30% is flat, 45% is a slight slope and 90% is the angle where locals think trails begin to get interesting. It’s fair to say, I may have required the odd dab to get down some of them. But, as they say, experience is never wasted, a few new trails were stashed away in the bulging file named “Will be okay in the dry.” Even our new favourite descent out of the woods - Brant Gate - had its moments of doubt and pain - to misquote some more song lyrics. (Sympathy For The Devil, The Rolling Stones) At least the Bluebells And Garlic path through the bottom of Newton Woods was in fine condition, having been nicely gravelled and straightened out last year. I could have finished the ride with a call into Cliff Rigg Quarry, to attempt a few of the jumps but the kids might not be all back at school yet and we can do without pubescent sniggering at our efforts, SuperBri gets paid to put up with a classroom full of that. So it was wheels firmly on the floor, all the way back to Great Ayton and the only decision left is Mr. Bun The Baker or Mr. Bacon The Butcher. Mr. Bun today, leaving the pies alone for a bit, after all I am almost old enough to qualify for a bit of middle age spread, or to give it its commercial name “ I Can’t Believe It’s Not Relaxed Muscle.”

September, December it's all the same these days.

“It was the third of September,

That day I’ll always remember

‘Cause that was the day we put the heating on”

It really is that cold, so we’re making our own indoor heatwave with the help of North Sea gas, which isn’t any cheaper considering the North Sea is only about six miles away as the crow flies. To prevent this blog becoming a litany on the shortcomings of the British weather, take it as read that it is cold, grey and drizzling unless you hear otherwise. The Breadlad dragged his aching back over the crossbar today, joining me in a ride from Ingleby Greenhow, to check out a track I spotted a few weeks ago on the moor above Turkey Nab. We could have went straight up to it but a 3 mile round trip is a bit brief even for us, so a circuitous route had us making our way up to the highest point on the moors via the fire road through Ingleby Plantation, a bit of steep road to Clay Bank, followed by a hike-a-bike up Carr Ridge before a final pedal to the summit of Round Hill on Urra Moor. Another ride beginning with well over a 1,000 feet of ascent. To be fair, it was all downhill from Round Hill, apart, of course, from the uphill bits, which were mercifully short. To squeeze in a bit of extra mileage, we turned off the Cleveland Way at Burton How and had a blast down The Old Coal Road and across Ingleby Moor, emerging back onto the Cleveland Way at a singletrack which leads to Turkey Nab - or Ingleby Bank to give it the proper Ordnance Survey name. The singletrack was relatively dry and we enjoyed a stretch of technical riding as a change from the wide, gravel tracks which have comprised most of today’s ride. At Turkey Nab we hopped up onto the moor where I had spotted the promising track, it turned out to be about as promising as an evening in a cut-price brothel staffed entirely by unconvincing transvestites. Just like in the aforementioned establishment, we had a couple of photo opportunities with a scenic viewpoint, then got the Hell out of there. The descent of Turkey Nab is slowly getting back to the slabby, rocky fun it was before sanitisation, water and 4x4’s are seeing to that; mere minutes later we were sat in a wooden shack at The Dudley Arms Coffee Shop, one of a number installed during the great plague of 2020, complete with a ceiling mounted electric space heater - which will be just the ticket for winter rides.