High Cup Nick

Basking In The Balmy March Weather.

Just a perfectly pleasant blast around Guisborough Woods today, starting from Great Ayton. The sun is out, the sky is blue, the trails are dry - mainly. Everything seems so much easier, the climbs don’t drag, the descents flow. Bumped into Guisborough Woods trail building legend Ralph, as always accompanied by Max Saluki, he celebrated his 80th birthday two days ago - I hope I am as fit as him when I’m that age.

Imagine Having To Work On A Day Like Today...

Continuing with yesterday’s weather, today was a Clay Bank start with conditions so perfect they could have been ordered from a catalogue of utopian dreams. Up the steps, across Urra Moor, down the Old Coal Road, down Turkey Nab, all superb, dry and dusty. Finished with the usual fire road drag through the plantation and half a mile of steep tarmac back to the car park.

High Cup Nick

Something a bit different today, I met The Breadlad in the North Pennine village of Dufton, so we could tackle High Cup Nick, a picturesque glaciated valley in the fells to the North east of Appleby. A road warm up took us to Murton, where we began ascending on a wide gravelled track, which is part of the Pennine Way. The initial section of the climb is named Sweety Briggs on the Os map, which used to amuse The Pensioner greatly, his surname being Briggs. Like the man himself, there was nothing sweet about the climb. which was unrelenting, exactly the type of thing electric bikes are made for - shame we are analog bike dinosaurs, we just sucked up the pain and slogged onward and upward. Eventually the track turned onto a spongy grass moor, which was slightly damp but looked as though it would be a complete nightmare in wet conditions. Luckily we are still enjoying the early pre-summer conditions - or possibly this is the summer? The track drops down to cross a stream before rising steeply up to a plateau and suddenly we were riding above High Cup Nick, looking down into the valley many feet below. The valley terminates abruptly with a steep headwall covered in scrappy cliffs and rock pinnacles of dubious stability. We took a breather on top of the cliff, taking in the awesome view and posing for obligatory pictures before the descent to Dufton. As we were packing up, a cold mist came flowing up the valley, introducing us to a peculiar wetness from the sky. We worked out it was something called rain, we don’t seem to have seen that for months. There is a small climb/push/carry over rocks to begin the descent path but once it is gained it doesn’t disappoint, never overly-technical but a few rocky sections to keep things interesting. A superb three or four miles descending, marred only by the rain, which was more of a light drizzle to be honest. Naturally by the time we reached the car park, it had blown over. Even though we had ridden less than a dozen miles and a smidgen under 2,000 feet of ascent, it was a grand day out, with stunning scenery and a feeling of remoteness, despite never being more than five miles from the A66.

Bare Knees And Summer Tops.

Another perfect day, me and Simon T. taking advantage of the dry trails in Guisborough Woods again. Judging by the amount of cars parked on the Hutton Village road, we weren’t the only ones. We made our way, gradually to Highcliffe, descending back to Hutton Village before girding our loins and climbing back up again for a second blast down through the trees on some different trails. Only Dark Knight disappointed us, it is still a morass of mud and puddles, while everything else is baked hard. A grand way to finish a grand week, I’m glad we made the most of it, sleet is forecast for next week.

Clicking on the route names will take you to the Strava page for the route. Where you can marvel at how slow we are.

Another 6 months Of This Please...

and the trails will be perfect.

The start of another week and the weather looks magnificent, to be honest, it is colder than it looks and windy but everything is drying up nicely. Me and The Breadlad had a Hutton village start, working our way up through the woods, slipping in the odd trail here and there. At one point we pushed up (!) the SOW track, mainly to see what condition it was in. The push up made us appreciate how steep some of the sections are, anyway, it is drying up a treat, apart from the bottom section which has some deep ruts and puddles, we’ll give it another few weeks before we ride it. We made our way to Highcliffe Nab via Percy Cross Rigg and Sleddale to descend through the woods on a variety of trails, detouring to the Branch Walkway Cafe for the inevitable toastie before heading back to our cars.

Could've Done Without The Diversion.

As I might have mentioned before, the most difficult part of riding three of four days every week is thinking of where to go. I’ll never be the sort of person to ride the same place day in, day out, so the thought of something different is always appealing. It came to mind we hadn’t been over the stepping stones in the river Esk near Glaisdale for many months; a route was hastily cobbled up and me and The Breadlad (again) found ourselves riding along Scaling Dam as the wind formed whitecaps on the reservoir, another few mph on the wind speed and there’ll be surfers. Old testpiece The Slagbag was dispatched in fine style, well, sweary sweaty, puffy panty style anyway. A bit of roadie stuff took us through Stonegate and onwards on the road toward Glaisdale, at our turn off for the stepping stones, the track which passes through West Banks Farm, was a notice informing us the path to the stones and the bridge alternative are both closed. Dilemna time, the notice was 18 months old, we could take a chance but if the crossings were still closed we would be looking at a big climb back up from the river. Discretion became the better part of valour and we stayed on the tarmac, downhill into Glaisdale, passing the ancient Beggars’s Bridge, very picturesque but not where we wanted to be because we are all too aware of Glaisdale’s main street, which ascends 300 feet from the river to the village green, where things level out again. A detour we could have done without but we gritted our teeth and got on with it, afterwards making our way to Lealholm by the riverside path. The Breadlad exercised (or should that be exorcised?) his bowels in the facilities while I loitered outside like the ghost of George Michael. More of that nasty tarmac stuff followed, all the way to Danby Beacon, from where we had the unmitigated pleasure of the Roxby Moor singletrack, with a tail wind - what a way to finish a ride.

Be Gone Unwelcome Wind

The novelty is wearing off...

Another sunny but windy one today and a lonely one as The Breadlad returns to keeping the nation supplied with crumpets. Birk Brow turned out to be a lot windier than the forecast suggested but I carried on regardless, crossing the road to gain the Quaker’s Causeway, the powerful gusts made things challenging to say the least and I found myself in the heather more than once. By the time I reached Robin Hood’s Butts, the wind was at my back, the track was mostly dry, apart from the giant puddles which have reappeared and I made good progress to the Sis Cross turn off. About eight hours of rain yesterday afternoon and evening have left the track soggier than a Florida swamp, I left it undisturbed, continuing along Robin Hood’s Butts instead, before descending towards Danby on the Pannierman’s Causeway, which was in reasonable condition, apart from one mire which tried to swallow my bike. The Pannierman’s Causeway took me all the way to Danby Park, after which it was back on tarmac for the long climb back to the Quaker's Causeway. At least the wind was in a more favourable direction, not quite a tailwind but enough to push me up the hill and across the causeway in the direction of a much needed cheeseburger from the Birk Brow van.