SuperBri Is Released Into The Wild.

Kids in the streets, teachers out on bikes, it must be half term, the time when SuperBri can decompress, away from the demands of teenage minds. Unusually the weather is on our side too, blue sky and sunshine but our old friend, the wind is still determined to make life difficult. We had a ride from, yes, you’ve guessed it, Great Ayton, so SuperBri could see for himself the decimation of Guisborough Woods. Shortly after we arrived at Great Ayton, it became apparent I had left my Camelbak at home, not something I make a habit of, so it was a quick dash into the Coop for a bottle of water and we were on our way. I have to say, losing the few kilos off my back made a difference to the riding, at times I almost kept up with SuperBri - only almost though. Our route was the usual mixture of fire roads and any dry(ish) trail we could find, eventually we arrived on top of Highcliffe Nab, being buffeted by the wind. A descent of Codhill Heights followed, slowed by a headwind. A pedal around the Lonsdale Bowl and a sketchy sun in the eyes bounce over the rocks of Fingerbender Bank took us to Gribdale and a few downhill miles back to Great Ayton. We stopped by the butchers for a selection from the cornucopia of pastry-wrapped animal flesh products, an adequate calorie replenishment strategy for athletes such as ourselves.

Afternoon Quicky With SuperBri.

As the saying goes, owing to circumstances beyond my control, this had to be an afternoon quickie. Me and SuperBri took ourselves to Swainby on what turned out to be another fine day. We rode uphill out of Swainby until we reached the Clain Wood steps, which are beyond even SuperBri’s pedalling power, where we shouldered the bikes and trudged upward. Further climbing took us over the ford at Sheepwash and up onto High Lane, which is part of the old Hambleton Drove Road, once used to drive animals from Scotland to markets in the south of North Yorkshire. An old drover’s inn, Chequers, still remains although it is now a private residence, more famous nowadays for being the accommodation in Bob Mortimer and Paul Whithouse’s Christmas special edition of their fishing programme. We continued upward, still following the Drove Road, until we reached Silton Woods, in the shadow of the mighty Black Hambleton. Silton Woods has also had an attack of deforestation but the trails have survived, we rode a couple of the higher ones, unwilling to drop all the way to the bottom of the woods and face a brutal ascent back to the Drove Road. After a bit of fun, we were retracing our tyre tracks along High Lane, dropping into the woods above Cod Beck Reservoir to ride a Rod trail through the trees. We finished off with the bridleway which runs parallel to Scarth Nick Bank, sloppier than we would have liked but still rideable. A short bit of tarmac and we were back in Swainby, arriving as the first few fat raindrops fell out of the sky. Perfect timing.

Tremendous Tripsdale

This will be the last ride of the week for SuperBri, for him half term will soon be over and he must return to his attempts at turning Stockton children into mathematical geniuses. For the last ride of the week, we gained a brace of companions, The Breadlad, taking a break from his crumpet fiddling activities and Keith, who has made the journey down from the metropolis of Sunderland, despite last week’s moments of borderline hypothermia. Today was vastly more amenable, as we converged in Clay Bank car park, ready to take on the classic Tripsdale route. Keith, as we know, has joined the battery boys, so the usual, up the steps start, to Urra Moor had to be bypassed in favour of the electric bike start, popularised by The Pensioner when he realised hauling a 30 kg bike upward without the benefit of a motor was out of the question. Some perusing of the maps yielded another route to Urra Moor, which was christened ‘the electric bike start’, although today it became ‘the “wish we’d brought a chainsaw” start’. Numerous fallen trees blocked the ascent, slowing our progress, until The Breadlad’s desire to emulate an incontinent bear in the woods brought all movement to a halt, all movement except bowel movement, that is. He rejoined us, somewhat lighter judging by the time he took. His arboreal excretions are now so regular, there is a suspicion he brings a newspaper and polishes off a sudoku or two mid-squat. We pedalled along the broad Urra Moor tracks, sandy highways built to service the grouse shooting industry, until we reached the long Tripsdale bridleway. A track in the ‘Spanish’ style, sandy and loose, dropping gently at first, the angle increasing until a set of steep hairpin bends set us up for the final plummet to the valley floor, crossing the beck via a rudimentary bridge of concrete. Naturally, there is a price to pay for so much pleasure, the climb out of the valley is brutal, the only highlight is looking across the valley, after gaining some height and seeing the track we have just descended carving through the heather for more than a mile. We climbed, more gently, back to the summit of Urra Moor and had some fun riding down the stone steps we had avoided at the start of the ride. Only The Breadlad managed a clean descent, his crumpet-fiddling fingers are just that bit more dextrous on the brake levers. And then it was all over, another grand day out in good company. We were polishing off our sandwiches at the picnic table when blue turned to grey and big fat droplets of rain scattered us into our cars. Perfect timing yet again.

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

A Good Drying Wind

Bereft of companions and looking at a forecast when the wind was not going to drop below 40 mph the whole day, I thought I would have a Pinchinthorpe start, spurting away pounds of my pension just so I could finish the ride in a nice cafe. It is ludicrously expensive when you consider it only costs just over a couple of pounds more to park at Hamsterley, where we are rewarded with an awesome examples of the trail builder’s art, properly built to withstand the ravages of wind, rain and chubsters on electric bikes: in Guisborough, as far as can be ascertained, not a single penny is spent to benefit mountain bikers. I was glad of the shelter from the remaining trees as I made my way to the top of the woods, working on my old principle of tailwind high, headwind low, eventually ending up at the far eastern end of the forest, having a play about on some of the One Man And His Dog trails. All these trails and many more throughout the forest are the work of an octogenarian who has put more effort into the area than Redcar and Cleveland Council ever have. In spite of the recent wet weather, the more open trails are not too bad to ride, it’s a good drying wind as they used to say in the olden days, before tumble dryers. Riding down the Concrete Road into a headwind knocked more than a few seconds off my PB and I headed back to Pinchinthorpe on the old railway track which runs between the bottom of the forest and the top of Guisborough. Still feeling fresh, an unaccustomed burst of enthusiasm saw me turn off the nice, flat, sheltered track and begin climbing back into the forest, keen and eager to slot in a few more trails before the cafe. Could I be having some kind of mental breakdown? Evidently not because it wasn't too long before the siren call of coffee and toasties lured me to the steamy warmth of the cafe.

Not Bad For February

The wind dropped a bit today, so I was able to ride with Chad, my imaginary expat American mountain biking companion, he wouldn’t come out yesterday because it was too breezy. He went shopping instead but was thrown out of Go Outdoors after he asked an assistant to show him her fanny packs. Two nations separated by a common language and all that. Today’s venue was a sun-dappled Scaling Dam for a routine ride, nothing out of the ordinary but enjoyable nonetheless, especially for Chad who finds the mud of North Yorkshire more challenging than Californian loam. The brutal hill, we know as The Slagbag was especially challenging despite being almost mud free. The remainder of the ride followed a fairly standard sort of route, Lealholm Rigg, Oakley Walls, Clithebeck Farm, Danby Beacon, finishing with the superb Roxby Moor, a speedy track across a heather moor, with views across to Scaling reservoir and the North Sea beyond. Apparently it is “way rad.” whatever that might mean but sunshine and amenable temperatures meant it was a great finish to our ride. As a special treat, we stopped at Birk Brow on the way home so Chad could sample a proper British cheeseburger,a bit of a shock compared to the homogenised bland burgers he is used to.

Fickle February

Keith could have picked a better day for the inaugural ride of his new bike, despite it being the better day of two days of atrocious forecasts. He’ll need to be a bit careful out in the damp too because he has joined the battery boys, not the batty boys, who, I believe, are something quite different. He has succumbed to the lure of motorised legs and assisted breathing, leaving me and The Breadlad looking like relics from a bygone age, we may as well turn up on penny-farthings wearing top hats and frock coats. Frock coats, not frocks, that’s something we save for the weekend. We left Great Ayton in a steady downpour, me regretting the fact the incredibly expensive jacket I bought last autumn doesn’t have a zip to match the price tag and is currently in the process of heading back to Endura. As height was gained, rain turned to sleet, then snow, the trails were soon covered in a thin layer. We rode up to Gribdale, two thirds of us panting up the steep bank, the remaining third ambling upward, enjoying the view while Billy Bosch did the work for him. Not having a pair of Elton John’s windscreen wiper glasses, I had to remove mine as the lenses were being obscured by the white stuff, only to discover, snow plus wind plus bare eyeballs is a painful combination. Around the Lonsdale Bowl and along Percy Cross Rigg, snow being driven in by a bitter wind, we kept riding until the shelter of Guisborough Woods. A bit of local knowledge found us some dry(ish) trails and we spent a bit of time sliding off them into the trees before an unspoken agreement saw us heading in the direction of warm drinks and all-butter pastry, both requirements fulfilled admirably by the farm shop at Fletcher’s Farm. Despite being wet though, with numb extremities and shivering like nuns in a sex shop, we sat in an open barn as though it was a summer day, being watched by turkeys with face’s like prolapsed rectums. The snow had reverted to rain as we came lower but the temperature hadn’t got any warmer, the remaining couple of miles back to the cars would only have been enjoyable to that maniac Wim Hof and we were shaking like shitting dogs as we packed our bikes away. Then we all agreed it had been a thoroughly enjoyable ride and went our separate ways, hoping to do it all again as soon as circumstances permit.