A Ride From Sheepwash

Mountain Bike Ride

The Pensioner, The Bread Lad, Oz.

18th September route.

According to that arbiter of journalistic standards, The Sun, the world as we know it is to be wiped out between 22nd and 28th September this year. If you are reading this in October we must have got away with it and that paragon of truth must have been misinformed. If the world is wiped out perhaps you ought to have found a more constructive use for the last hours of earth than reading this nonsense.

And it came to pass, in the days before the Great Cataclysm, four men congregated at the place known as Sheepwash, an area of countryside for the peoples of Teesside, along the great highway whose name was A19, it was exceedingly popular with these Teessiders because they could enjoy bucolic natural delights without losing sight of their cars. Of the four men assembled, one was The Bread Lad because he held the profession of baker, providing humankind with sustenance in the form of crumpets; two were employed in the arcane trade of process operating, in the chemical industry which thrived in these lands, archaeologists have struggled to find the exact nature of process operation but have ascertained from ancient scripts it mainly involved drinking coffee, reading the popular tabloid misinformation sheets and occasionally pressing buttons; The Pensioner completed the quartet, so called because his three score years and ten were almost at a culmination and he was gifted with a “pension” some free money generally given to those who “grafted” during their working life, in The Pensioner’s case it is unknown how he managed to qualify for a pension. A further process operator was to join the group but was bound under the spell of a sorceress and forced to spend his leisure time in the 21st century pastime of “shopping”. Three of the men idled in the car park as they waited for The Bread Lad, for he resided in a different land with a curious  time aberration which made him perpetually lacking punctuality, eventually he arrived and assembled his two wheeled velocipede, while some idle chit chat was made, using a curious parlance consisting predominantly of expletives, insults and references to sexual deviations.

Eventually they began to make their way through some woods, passing a reservoir and cycling against gravity until they reached a summit from where they rode along a broken track before cautiously descending some jagged rocks which led them almost back to their start point. Anthropologists are at a loss to describe this strange behaviour which is predominantly a trait of the male gender. Entering some more woods, our quartet proceeded to ride down some steps keeping a wary eye out for their arch-enemies - The Ramblers, a dour sect, mainly bordering on sub-human who took offence at the sight of others enjoying themselves on velocipedes, sometimes setting primitive traps or indulging in a ritual form of verbal abuse known as “whinging”. Continuing unmolested, a swooping  track was followed with obvious enjoyment, to field where their downward progress was constrained within a small area defined by blue-topped wooden posts, at the request of the “landowner”, a guardian of the countryside who allowed the common people onto his land only on sufferance.

More uphill riding ended at a set of ancient stone steps, which could only be surmounted with velocipedes being pushed and carried with much heavy breathing and blasphemous utterings. Apparently it was worth it for “the next bit”, featuring what appears to have been the Holy Grail of their pastime, “singletrack”, all attacked it with vigour, at a speed which may have been considered imprudent for a quartet whose combined age exceeds ten score years. A short while later, to the obvious displeasure of The Pensioner, a field was crossed, not without some effort, for the grass was long and the path vague, which brought them to the hamlet of Whorlton, abandoned some four centuries earlier in the time of The Great Plague. After passing through Swainby, The Pensioner opted to walk back up the steps descended earlier while the remaining trio conquered the bank known as Scarth Nick, a notch in the hills, cleaved by the axe of the giant Scarth.

Once again, within sight of their starting point, a further diversion was embarked upon, ascending gradually to the summit of Scarth Wood Moor from where they descended through mud, rocks and water with almost infantile enjoyment.

Regrouping at the car park, they prepared for what seems to be the most important part of the ritual - the cafe. The proximity of the cafe appeared to have engendered in The Pensioner a beneficial performance effect, suddenly going from gasping rear gunner to trailblazing athlete in a few pedal strokes.