Mooching About The Moors

A nice, crisp start to December and as the song goes - alone again, naturally. Great Ayton start, up to Guissy Woods, trail conditions - sloppy in parts but mainly good. It wasn’t a bad day to be out and far superior to the alternative, which is, of course, not being out. Especially this time of the year when it is either sitting on the settee worrying about how much it is costing to keep the heating on or doing the zombie plod around tinsel bedecked shopping centres to the sound of Cliff Richard and Slade. Returning over Newton Moor toward Gribdale, a phenomenal cloud inversion filled the valley below, blanketing Great Ayton, Swainby and Stokesley, the top of Whorl Hill near Faceby just peeking out above the cloud. You’ll never see that from the settee.

Lonely Quicky

John Steinbeck said in East Of Eden, “All great and precious things are lonely.” As I’ve long suspected. And here I was again, a solitary rider on a lovely clear day although it was a bit squelchy underfoot. Had a quick ride from Lordstones over Carlton Bank to Faceby Woods, rode a few trails before hiking up to Stoney Wickes from Scugdale. Took myself down the muddy ravine which Raisdale Mill Lane has become nowadays to the road. Pedalled back up to Lordstones and explored a few more trails around Carlton Bank before calling it a day and heading home. Just in case anyone gets the wrong impression, I don’t actually mind riding alone, to quote another writer: “If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.” A free ride to anyone who can name the writer.

Her Favourite Route

The first decent bit of sunlight following two days of rain. Me and La Mujerita drove up to Square Corner, where, it seemed, a number of other people had decided to take advantage of the weather too. Eventually got a parking spot and we had a whizz around La Mujerita’s favourite route, which is essentially down to Cod Beck Reservoir, via Chequers, up and down Scarth Wood Moor, return to the reservoir and climb back to High Lane taking the road back to Square Corner. There are plenty of variations in the general route depending how energetic or brave we are feeling, so it doesn’t become boring. Using the car as a windbreak meant we could even have a pleasant little picnic at the end of the ride.

More Smiles Than Miles - with Miles

A disturbingly (for me anyway) early start today because Miles wanted to spend the afternoon indulging in something he calls work, a concept I can only vaguely remember. I think it’s where you are trapped in a room for twelve hour shifts with a bunch of dickheads who’s conversational skills barely crawl above football and overtime and someone gives you money to compensate for the trauma. Or something like that. We rode from Miles’ house in Guisborough and had a concise scrounge about the woods on frozen trails, finishing with Guisborough classic - The Chute which I rode with about the same style and élan as Stevie Wonder falling down a cliff. Literally all over the place, I blamed the frozen ruts, of course.

Cycling In A Winter Wonderland.

The Breadlad was allowed out to play today. We had a Great Ayton start because I had important business in the village - putting my Xmas meat order in at the butchers. Great Ayton and the surrounding area was grey, misty and bitterly cold, temperatures have been below freezing for days now and show no sign of rising. Climbing higher, we found ourselves above the cloud and spectators to the best temperature inversion I have seen in almost sixty years of wandering about the moors. I can hear what you’re saying. “He doesn’t look old enough.” “Surely not” “I thought you were just a teenager.” but, unfortunately, it is true. My dad first took me hiking with him and his mates when I was five and I’m sixty three now; or as I like to say, fifty and a few months, one hundred and fifty nine months to be precise. So, just on the verge of middle age. A lot of time was spent on Newton Moor, photographing the inversion from various angles, before we sped (relatively speaking) along the moor, down to Gribdale and up to Captain Cook’s Monument to recommence the picture taking. To be honest it would have been difficult to take a bad image. Reminding ourselves of the true purpose of today's outing, to do a spot of mountain biking, we took an almost wholly off road route back to Great Ayton because the road down from Gribdale looked as though the council have built a Christmas ice-rink on a twenty degree slope.

Not So Lucky With The Weather Today

The following day, I plunged back into the mist, only this time I would have needed to swap my Whyte 140 for an Airbus A380 to get above the clouds. An arduous prelude to the ride, you can tell I was alone, this start would never have got off the ground with companions, climbing up from Swainby, through Faceby Woods to the summit of Carlton Bank. For all this effort I was rewarded with a view of the trig point and the area around two metres beyond, after that a wall of solid grey. Not wishing to hang about, I rode to Brian’s Pond - frozen naturally. Not being in the company of anyone gullible enough to step on it (you know who you are), the thickness of the ice went untested. From Stoney Wickes, a grand ride down Scugdale opened up, as did the cloud, letting in patches of blue sky and weak sunlight. The road at Scugdale was equally as treacherous as Gribdale the other day, so I went off-road, through the yard of the oddly named Harfa House farm, greatly improved from the old days when we knew it as Cowshit Farm, after the legendary incident when The Ginger One (blast from the past) wobbled on his bike crossing the yard and put his foot down, only to find himself knee-deep in the foulest slurry imaginable. From the farm, a track across the fields picks up the Cleveland Way to Clain Woods, from where a bridleway leads back to Swainby.

Just Me And The Grouse Today

To paraphrase world champion virtue-signaller Bono - it was a cold and grey December day but we didn’t touch the ground at JFK, only Great Ayton again, mainly because a lot of the roads further across the moors are impassable today, owing to snow. It has been below freezing for well over a week now, earth as hard as iron, water like a stone, as another song says. I made my way to Captain Cook’s Monument by a brutal route which involved pushing up an old downhill track in the woods but it offered a little shelter from the frequent snowstorms sweeping in from the sea. Captain Cook’s Monument was cold, snowy and deserted, only my tyre tracks marred the pristine whiteness. I didn’t hang about, descending through conifers to Gribdale before climbing back on to Newton Moor, where the snow started coming down in shovelfuls. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that, it seemed like a good time to reduce the chances of becoming a mountain rescue statistic and head downhill. Back in Great Ayton, big, fluffy, snowflakes became thin, bitter sleet. Time to get the bike in the car and home for an early bath, I’ll probably have a shower later, once the bike is warm, clean and dry.