Mountain Bike Ride.
The Youth
1st February route
The First Ride Of February. In defiance of the weather forecast, sleet and drizzle, me and The Youth found ourselves once again in Pinchinthorpe car park, a relatively snow-free Pinchinthorpe car park. Higher up, a picturesque layer of snow blanketed the moors, picking out the pathways and trails in a filigree tracery of white against green and brown, down below it was just brown gruel. We stayed on fire roads to Roseberry Common, hauled up the steps to Newton Moor, a snowy blast around the Lonsdale Bowl to Percy Cross Rigg. A worryingly fast drop on the snow-covered road to Sleddale followed, prior to ascending Codhill Heights to take us back to Guisborough Woods. All without a hint of sleet or drizzle, the sky even made an attempt at being blue, with about as much success as Cliff Richard trying a few Chubby Brown gags on an audience of born again christians.
After a few slippery singletracks, we arrived on top of Highcliffe Nab for a breather and a couple of photos, a spectacular mass of cloud could be seen, rolling in off the sea, heading our way. It looked like we might be in for a bit of weather after all. We descended from Highcliffe, heading for further tracks to finish our ride, before we found them, the storm hit us, a brain-freezing headwind hurling face-shredding snow, pedalling manfully into it, my thoughts turning to the real men who compete in Alaska’s Iditabike, The Youth probably thinking about ice cream or building a snowman.
The first escape route to lower ground came up on our right, we were down it like the proverbial rats deserting a sinking ship, glasses plastered with snow, negotiating the bottom part of The Unsuitables like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles having a day out in North Yorkshire. We stopped at the barrier, cleaned our lenses and continued to the car park looking as though we had just dug our way out of an avalanche, helmets, clothes and bikes plastered with snow, we called it a day and made our way home on clear roads. Amazing what losing a few metres of height can do for the weather. Until we reached Billingham and the ‘great gridlock of oh nineteen’ as it will forever be known. A sudden localised storm had turned the roads to glass, cars couldn’t make their way up the slightest inclines and the place was chaos.
Mountain Bike Ride.
Oz
4th February route
After a restful weekend, which saw most of the snow thaw and drain away, me and Oz were at Sheepwash car park, trying to find the parking space under the least amount of water, or the shallow end, as we called it. It was shaping up to be a nice day, blue sky and a hint of warmth in the winter sunshine. The reservoir was covered in a sheet of rapidly thawing ice, the path along the shoreline still boasted some treacherous patches, some time was spent wondering if the ice would hold our weight if we skidded off the path into the water. Thankfully it remained hypothetical conjecturing and before long we had climbed up through the woods to High Lane, only to lose all the height descending to Cote Ghyll on a pleasant track through the trees.
We climbed up again, to the top of Scarth Wood Moor, only to descend another nicely sheltered track through the conifers, rolling over a bed of autumnal pine needles, emerging lower down on Scarth Wood Moor, descending the paved track to the road, almost back at our start point. Even by Terra Trailblazer’s standards, it was too early to return, so we plunged (almost literally) down the Clain Wood steps and made our way along to Scugdale. We entered the plantation behind Heathwaite and followed the fantastic (firm and downhill, what more could a boy want?) bridleway through the trees,continuing through a muddy field to Faceby. Aware, from recent experience, that all the off-road routes back to Swainby are presently enough of a morass to make us morose, we took the tarmac option and made like roadies for a mile or two until we reached the roadie haven of the Rusty Bike cafe.
Cake, coffee and an extended chat with a former colleague ensued before we reluctantly faced the return leg of our ride. Leg being the operative word, as we had to shank it back up the Clain Wood steps we had descended so timorously earlier. The extra loop option, so beloved of The Ginger One was dismissed in favour of an early bath, especially for Oz’s bike which was treated to a wash in the stream, in the style of The Pensioner, who never tired of telling us - “I’m on water meter, you know.”
Mountain Bike Ride.
La Mujerita
5th February route
The following day was a little duller but still dry and perfectly reasonable for early February, me and La Mujerita went to Kildale for a bit of a leg stretcher, taking the road to Percy Cross Rigg, then the (for me) weekly crossing of Codhill Heights, to Guisborough Woods. We descended the fire road beside Highcliffe Nab, La Mujerita learning, to her dismay, that pulling too hard on the brakes actually makes you go faster on steep slopes.
In the sheltered parts of the forest, ice still reigns, encrusting whole fire roads with white treachery. For probably the only time in my life, I was pleased to be going up The Unsuitables, I can barely believe I’ve just typed that sentence, even then a couple of sections were unpedalable and barely walkable but we reached the gate with all limbs intact. We continued up and over Percy Cross Rigg, breaking through a few ice covered puddles until we reached the tarmac, hard to believe it was completely white four days ago, today just a slightly damp road.
At the turn off to the Yellow Brick Road we paused to allow a multitude of walkers to come up the track, they looked like a refugee exodus which had looted the local Go Outdoors on their way from fleeing persecution at the hands of a cruel anti-Goretex regime. What is with walkers going out mob-handed? Safety in numbers? Safety from what? It beats me. A quick descent of the Yellow Brick Road and we were in Glebe Cottage, slightly muddy - us, not the cafe, enjoying some hearty homemade soup.
Mountain Bike Ride.
The Ginger One, Oz
6th February route
Third day in a row for me, the thaw has totally taken hold, barely a scrap of snow left even on the high moors. I had the pleasure of both Oz and The Ginger One today, there must be something going terribly wrong in the rarefied world of chemical process operation when neither of them can find an overtime shift and are forced out of a cosy control room into the cold, cruel world. We set off from Lordstones, avoiding The Fronts because of its tendency to become a quagmire in these conditions, our alternative tracks were drier but still significantly more draggy than of late. The Ginger One suggested the Cold Moor descent, which of course is preceded by the Cold Moor ascent, so it was bikes on backs and plod up the steps. At the top a cold wind let us know it is still February while we sheltered in our usual hollow, taking on early carbs.
The descent was predictably muddy and slippery in the parts which are usually muddy and slippery but still grand fun, following a rocky, dried up stream bed at first before switching to grassy tracks, then more enclosed riding between fields to emerge through a tunnel of trees behind the church in Chop Gate. A slog back up the Raisdale road follows before we make our way Raisdale Mill and eventually to Brian’s Pond, the pond still well frozen and our gender demanded we stop and test the integrity of the ice with increasingly larger stones until one breached the surface. By virtue of being the lightest, The Ginger One was chosen as the lucky person to test the ice’s weight-bearing potential but he impolitely declined.
The wide sandy tracks heading to Carlton Bank were more mud than sand today, every pedal stroke was a battle, gears were shed, tears were almost shed but gradually, metre by metre, we gained the summit trig point on Carlton Bank, where we stood around before deciding it was far too cold and windy to be standing around and headed down the nicely paved, too good to waste on walkers, track. Despite the brevity of our ride, we headed down the old gliding club access track and straight into the cafe, The Ginger One speculating, perhaps accurately, that our sub-eleven miles had probably been harder than a fifty mile road ride. Definitely a lot more fun.
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