Bright Side Of The Road

First lone ride of the month, my sudden attack of popularity must have concluded, and first Great Ayton start of the month. Today’s weather might be described as dry but making threats, plenty of clouds, most looking like the sort of black-clad brooding hulks found outside pubs and clubs, scudding across the sky, ready to unleash a flurry of precipitation at the slightest provocation. At least there were plenty of parking spaces. I did the two farms start, up to Roseberry Common, then shouldered the bike for the walk up the steps to Newton Moor. One day me and The Breadlad attempted to calculate how many times I might have walked up these steps with a bike on my bike, at a very conservative estimate, twice a month for twenty five years, so six hundred ascents - give or take. And it never gets any easier. From the summit of the steps, there is a fine view of Roseberry Topping and beyond to my hometown, the sleepy fishing village of Hartlepool, renown worldwide for its no nonsense approach to undercover agents of the simian persuasion. Teesside was being strafed by a rain shower as we, me and my bike, enjoyed summer sunshine. Back in the saddle, I pedalled to the gate at the top of The Unsuitables, with a diversion to ride a trail which is losing the battle against bracken - another one shelved until winter. Continuing, I crossed Percy Cross Rigg, dropped to Sleddale and up the Codhill Heights bridleway, taking advantage of a favourable tailwind all the way to Highcliffe Nab. A great deal of felling is taking place in the woods east of Highcliffe, many favourite trails have succumbed to this season’s cropping, judging by the planing and strengthening on the fire roads throughout the forest, many more trails will be memories in the coming weeks. The forestry investment boom of the 1980’s and 1990’s is coming to fruition and shareholders are benefitting from the harvest. The machines will be gone soon and new trails will appear; in twenty five years, I have ridden trails that have been cropped twice and still remain. I enjoyed a few trails today with the roar of encroaching machinery and the crash of falling trees as a soundtrack, at least the pine scented logs they leave on the side of the trails are more pleasant than the logs The Breadlad leaves every ride. I made my way back through forest, cherry picking trails as I went until I was again on Roseberry Common, with only a couple of miles of downhill riding between me and some post-ride calorie replenishment.

Joyride

Another Guisborough ride today, starting from Miles’ house, which, as luck would have it, backs on to the woods. It’s always a brief one with Miles because he has returned to the world of employment, even after tasting the sweet fruits of retirement. We began with a flattish pedal along the old railway line to Slapewath before livening things up with an ascent of Birk Brow - sadly without recourse to the burger van at the top. Too early in the ride. Crossing over the road, we made our way to the Quaker's Causeway, one of the longest and best preserved stone trods which cross the moors. Some of our compatriots, those with buttocks made from cotton wool and fairy dust, find this track execrable but it is what full suspension bikes were made for. We turned off onto a bridleway bearing west across High Moor, taking us to Westworth Woods, an outlier of Guisborough Forest. This is a great track in the dry, dropping gradually downhill on moorland singletrack for a mile and half of varied riding, with humps and bumps, gullies, tussocks of grass and encroaching gorse bushes to keep things interesting. Just take note of the first part of that sentence - in the dry. There is a stiff climb up through Westworth Woods on a newly resurfaced track of loose gravel, deep and unconsolidated, despite years of carefully honed Terra Trailblazers’ skills being brought into operation, we were soon pushing, unable to gain traction in the gravel. It can’t be a walk of shame when you have no shame. We emerged onto the top fire road in Guisborough Woods, anticipating some friendly-gravity riding, on marvellous, dry trails, all the way back to Miles’ house. Forest Enterprise, however, had other ideas, closing trails with signage, either in preparation for felling or for more legislative reasons, mainly fear of the American disease, being sued by someone too stupid to grasp the concept of personal responsibility. Regardless, we still found enough trails to amuse ourselves with all the way down the hillside, arriving back just in time for Miles to resume his role in the corporate world and me to resume my role in the world of a bone-idle waster.