Mountain Bike Ride.
Olly, Trainee#2, The Ginger One.
According to the good old Met. Office today was supposed to be even better than yesterday, Fun In The Sun, mendacious meteorologists make fallacious forecasts, a headline probably spelt out by joining the raindrops on the windscreen. It was not a good start to the day, despite it being half term, the car park at Sutton Bank is pretty much deserted, possibly something to do with the £4.50 parking charge. A little ray of sunshine came into our lives by Trainee#2 thinking an overpriced car park, a cafe, a bike shop and red, blue and green trails meant he was at a proper trail centre, despite being prewarned some of the trails are only old bridleways we’ve rode for twenty years or more with signage added. The poor, misguided fool.
Anyway, the first part of our ride moved away from the visitor centre and out to the valley of Nettledale, always best in the winter before said nettles reach shoulder height and make the route an exercise in self-flagellation best left to niche perverts of the public school variety. Today it felt like fun, probably something to do with the start being almost 4 miles downhill, even though a fair proportion is on tarmac. A ride over the stepping stones signalled the end of the fun and a mile of uphill followed, broken up by finding a dead rat, always a bonus to overgrown schoolboys - which we all are at heart, despite our sophisticated exteriors, except for The Ginger One, of course, a Lidl own-price yoghurt has more culture. A pleasant but brief descent on slippy limestone led to another ascent ending on the road outside Old Byland, from where we made our way, into a headwind back towards Sutton Bank, mainly tarmac until a farm track/field crossing gave us a bit of extra training by doubling the weight of our bikes and jamming the wheels with the stickiest gunge since the excrement hit the eiderdown. Trainee#2 seemed to think our time would have been better spent sticking to the waymarked routes, a few miles later we were literally sticking to a waymarked route, where the mud did a proper job of stopping our progress. The quarry drop on the Blue Route, normally one of the highlights of a trip to Sutton Bank, today somewhat marred by lack of investment in a suitable surface. I’d like to think our £18 will be converted into hardcore and gravel at some point in the future.
The Escarpement was somewhat better, the majority holding up well, with just the odd muddy patch, the weather even improved a bit and the views from the edge, as always, were sublime. We paused to have a look at Whitestonecliffe and the allegedly bottomless Gormire Lake before taking the cycle only track back to the visitor centre. A quick spin around the start again and we were done and ready for the cafe. Unfortunately the cafe was not ready for us, or anyone else for that matter, being inexplicably closed. At least the jetwash was open and the cloying mud was removed; clean bikes all round we set off for home. It’s a poor ride when the highlight is the jetwash but in our grumpy state that was exactly how it felt.
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