January 2022 Round Up and Video.

Too many words? Video here.

That’s the first month of 2022 over and we have definitely had worse Januarys, a smidgen of snow, a bit of wind, barely any rain and a lot of sunshine. Some named storms - they’re always more important when they are named - created carnage in the forests but on the whole it was a pretty good month. The trails are drying up nicely, giving an early boost of summer confidence in places we would normally be slip-sliding down. I daresay it might be a different tale in a month's time when the weather catches up with us, we have suffered snow as late as May some years, so a dry January is never going to be a portent for a good summer. I don’t know why we worry about the weather, the dedicated of the Terra Trailblazers will be out in virtually any conditions, skin is waterproof and all that. The less than dedicated appear to have faded away in pursuit of other options which lack the arduousness of a North Yorkshire winter; the appeal of the mud, the cold and the wet have, for them, palled in favour of comfort, warmth and the safety of insipid pastimes. Riding their own slippery slope towards sitting in a car park, staring in silence at the countryside through a car windscreen, clutching a tartan flask and a copy of the Daily Mail, shaking their heads at wet, filthy mud-covered idiots riding past. The ones who are not going gently into that good night.

The last ride of January is blogged below.

Cobwebs Well And Truly Blown Away.

The ultimate day of January and it is pretty much like the rest of the month, bright, cool, windy. Yet again a stunning lack of imagination means I am parked at Great Ayton and pedalling up the road towards Fletcher’s Farm, for a change heading up the roots to Easby Moor and eventually Captain Cook’s Monument. A circuitous route meant I was able to explore old tracks in the area, some are unchanged, a few have been improved and one appears to have disappeared completely. The monument was no place to be hanging about today, the wind like the frigid breath of a Norse deity. More tracks led me downhill, through trees, literally in one instance, where the trunk of a wind-blown tree, fallen across the trail, had a handy, bike-sized section, cut out of it to keep the trail flowing. On this side of the hill, all trails lead to Gribdale, from where I was treated to nature’s big hand pushing me up to Newton Moor. A steady pedal around the Lonsdale Bowl and up Percy Cross Rigg brought me to Guisborough Woods, where a few more trails were enjoyed to a soundtrack of creaking conifers, either that or my practically geriatric joints screeching at the thought of another week of riding ahead. But I’m still doing better than that lad who became an archaeologist - his life is in ruins; or the cross-eyed bloke who did circumcisions for the NHS - he got the sack. Moving swiftly on, which I wasn’t because I was climbing uphill to Roseberry Common, the ride finished with a nice downhill to to Aireyholme Farm, on dry tracks, in the shadow of Roseberry Topping, followed with a couple of tarmac miles and the most important decision of the day - butchers or bakers?