Short But Sweet.

Mountain Bike Ride

The Youth, Young Briggs, The Ginger One.

22nd August route

Another day: another bike ride. Back to good old Pinchinthorpe today for what turned out to be a bit of a shorty ride. Starting an hour later than normal me, Young Briggs, The Youth and The Ginger One went for a scrounge about Guisborough Woods, in two cases, legs still aching from yesterday. We circumnavigated the slope-topped landmark of Roseberry Topping and made our way to the top of Cliff Rigg Quarry, via the landscape frame, stopping for mandatory photos. The upper end of the quarry, known locally as The Elephant’s Hole,  looks as though someone has hollowed out the shale with a giant ice cream scoop, perhaps Wade, the legendary giant of North Yorkshire. Normally we like to ride down this bowl and up the other side, following a track down into Cliff Rigg Wood, today the gorse was big and hungry, crouching to ambush our bare arms, so the the more direct option to Aireyholme Farm was proposed, seconded and carried by mutual cowardice. Part of this route is a steep, grassy downhill, the grass dry and slippery, feeling my wheels beginning to lock up, I let the brakes off a little, roll rather than slide, skids are for kids and all that. I may have released the brakes more than I imagined,  the bike flew forward, to the untrained eye, out of control but using my years of experience, a passing tree was deployed to arrest my headlong flight. My companions (and a passing walker) seemed to think this was a crash, they have a lot to learn. Young Briggs came down and found a hidden hole, treating us to a spectacular somersault worthy of Beth Tweddle, unfortunately before I’d managed to get a camera rolling; he declined to repeat the manoeuvre for the glory, or the £250 from that TV show which rejects all my video. 

Continuing, we made our way back up to Roseberry Common and up the steps onto Newton Moor, skirting the top of Guisborough Woods to reach Highcliffe Nab. From here things took a turn in the gravity friendly direction and we headed through the woods for the Lover's Ledge track, a narrow singletrack traversing a hillside, rooty and rocky, The Ginger One demonstrated his airborne skills, unfortunately without staying on his bike. Even more unfortunately, he was behind me so I never saw it let alone videoed it. Continuing to the bottom is usually a sketchy affair on steep mud, normally just damp enough to make things exciting, today, bone dry and even a bit loose in places. Regardless, we all made it down without further dismounts, of the intentional or unintentional sort and regrouped on the bottom track. More hills and cafe or no more hills and cafe? We decided to defer the decision until Hutton village. 

Reaching Hutton village, the consensus in the vote between more hills or cafe was firmly in favour of cafe, despite the brevity of the ride we'd done a reasonable amount of climbing, so we didn't feel too guilty stuffing our faces with calorific splendour in the Branch Walkway Cafe.