Another Three Day Week.

For the second week in a row, only three rides, if this pattern of indolence continues, I’ll be watching TV during the day, shuffling around supermarkets in my pyjamas and thinking being a green-laner might not be so bad after all. Or buying an electric bike. July is petering out and the weather still has more in common with late autumn than high summer.

That Was Harder Than It Should Have Been.

First ride of the week and a little bit of exploration, revisiting a bridleway previously shelved because it deteriorated into a swampy mess of mud-filled ruts and grasping vegetation. The track in question runs from Bank Foot near Ingleby Greenhow to Coleson Banks above Battersby. It lures unsuspecting riders by starting as a nice fire road, promising a quick cut through the bottom of the plantation, after a short while the fire road ends in what was previously a morasse, lately, however things have firmed up and a thin path continues through tussocks of grass and thistles. As it nears Coleson Banks, the path becomes boggy, which turns to deep, wheel-sucking mud, walkable by some strategic hopping; it may be possible to keep riding - if you are the sort of pain-loving pervert who enjoys that kind of thing. Being a former process operator, hence highly trained in the conservation of energy, I did the sensible thing and pushed. Reaching Coleson Banks, I knew the pushing would continue, last time me and The Ginger One were here, the track was metre deep ruts, courtesy of wobbly-headed retards in their 4x4’s; however, I was in for a surprise, no more ruts and a almost pristine gravel trail leading steeply uphill. Very nice. In no time at all, the Baysdale road on Battersby Moor came into view - definitely one to put back on the descents list. 

The full force of the unseasonal 40 mph wind hit me at the top, blowing in from the right, trying to push me off the track. Come on weather, make an effort, at least try and act like it is midsummer. The Cleveland Way beckoned me upward, passing shouting shepherds, with dogs and quad bikes, gathering sheep from the moor. The trail continues gradually upward, to Burton Howe, where I turned off to indulge myself in another descent of the Old Coal Road, or Middle Head Top as the Ordnance Survey calls it. Nothing technical, just one of the many wide tracks which criss-cross the North York Moors, mostly maintained to service the grouse shooting industry. And if some bloke wants to pay three grand a day so I can speed across a moor at thirty miles an hour, I’m all for it. Keeping with the downward theme, I continued towards Baysdale Abbey, stopping above the farm of the same name to watch the sheep being funnelled off the moor, flocking down the road (see what I did there) and into the field I was passing through. They didn’t seem too unhappy about being herded off a moor of inedible heather into a huge field full of tasty grass. 

My route continued along the Baysdale valley to the remote spot known as Three Barns, where at was time to shoulder the bike for a climb up loose rocks and firm boulders on the bridleway which runs across Kildale Moor. Once a popular technical descent, it seems to be little used nowadays, probably because the new breed prefer the groomed pistes and relative certainty of trail centres. The descent on the other side, is less technical than it used to be, a newish trail runs through the heather, avoiding the main difficulties which have become overgrown and almost hidden. A quick whizz down the Field Of Heavy Gravity to Leven Vale, then the last ascent of the day, up to Warren Farm, left only a few miles of tarmac between me and my picnic, including the descent from Warren Farm to Little Kildale, which is always fun in this direction. The lads who work at the bread factory christened it Three Sting Hill - ride it in the other way and you'll realise why.

Could've Been A Good Ride - if the wind would take a day off.

 

As you might guess from the Strava title, another windy one, although marginally warmer than yesterday. Me and La Mujerita parked up in a layby outside Castleton and immediately rode back up the hill we had just driven down, as far as the Shaun The Sheep bus shelter, where we turned off and headed along Robin Hood’s Butts. La Mujerita has the same fondness for singletrack as muslims do for bacon sandwiches, so the excellent Sis Cross was bypassed in favour of a straight run along Robin Hood’s Butts to the Danby Road. It was with a handy tailwind though. Continuing on tarmac, still wind propelled, we continued to Danby Beacon, where an old 4x4 track leads down to Oakley Walls; motorised vehicles have been banned so the track can recover but it is possible to ride a mountain bike on the ridges between the wheel ruts, which is fun, the track becomes loose rock as it nears the road, which is even more fun.  La Mujerita may not have agreed completely but she made it to the bottom unscarred. 

A little used, gated, 25% road leads down Grain Bank to Houlsyke, an exciting bit of tarmac, if there can be such a thing. A bit more tarmac took us to Crag Farm, from where we followed a bridleway through fields to Fryupdale, pausing to observe three birds of prey above Danby Crag, too far away for positive identification but from the ‘baby crying’ noises, they were probably peregrines. A steep little bit of road took us to the junction with New Way, where we stopped for a breather and an energy bar. Normally, peer pressure would mean an ascent of Crossley Side onto Ainthorpe Rigg, carrying bikes to get one last downhill blast. La Mujerita doesn’t carry bikes and her idea of a downhill blast usually involves riding down more slowly than she could ride up, so we took the road to Danby Castle, continued down to Duck Bridge and on to Danby. We squeezed in a last bit of off-road riding through Danby Park, not a park at all, no cafe, no boating lake, no playground and no sexual deviant lurking in the toilets, no toilets come to think of it, merely a track through some woods which delivered us onto the Castleton road. A stiff climb back to the car and it was all over, only the Birk Brow burger van to look forward to.

 

Canny Warm Like... 

 

Slipped into the vernacular there, for those poor unfortunates who live in the wastelands south of the Tees - it was fairly warm today. The papers, can't really call them newspapers any longer, most of the journalism is vaguer than the horoscopes - and here’s what might happen today, or then again it probably won’t. Anyway the papers are predicting the hottest day since the beginning of time or something, when the heat from the furnaces of hell will blanket the land, flames of purgatory scorching our skin, a rain of fire and brimstone to cleanse sinful humanity, do not leave your homes unless absolutely necessary, in reality something like an average Spring day in southern Spain. 

We managed a crew today, I’ve no idea if Boris still says six but we managed six today, ought to have been seven but The Youth pretended he had something better to do. Threlkeld Cricket Club car park, next to The Breadlad’s caravan site is our usual meeting place for Lakes rides and today was no different. The Breadlad even managed to arrive before us for a change but only because everyone who should be in Benidorm or Sunny Beach decided to squeeze onto the A66 and head for the Lake District. One of our irregulars from a couple of years ago joined us, Olly, best known for lending his name to the downhill track near Osmotherly, named Olly's Folly, by The Pensioner from his hospital bed, where Olly managed to break his ankle, on the track that is not the hospital bed. We were also joined by Keith and Gary, on a timeout from their jobs as protective coating executives for Nissan and SuperBri, who is a teacher, so doesn’t really work at all. It is still a little windy but at least it’s a warm wind today. 

Our route was essentially two short routes joined together, a segue between Lonscale Crags and Barrow, both magnificent rides, so we were expecting an awesome day. The Lonscale Crags half is basically an out and back traverse of the valley between Skiddaw and Blencathra, gaining a stoney track, high above Glenderaterra Beck, dropping down to cross the beck, doing a U turn before climbing again to a singletrack traverse on the Skiddaw side of the valley. But first we had to gain some height, pedalling through Threlkeld, climbing past the Blencathra Centre and staying with the uphill pedalling theme to a waterfall, from where a welcome bit of downhill takes us to a bridge over the beck. Only SuperBri had never experienced the pleasure of the first climb, everyone else approached it with the same enthusiasm as visiting the dentist for a root canal; get it over with and let’s move on. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; in the kingdom of the languid, SuperBri is king. Already approaching the status of fittest man in Fitland, we didn’t stand a chance of keeping up with his pace, like two-wheeled Carter The Unstopppable Sex Machine, he is SuperBri The Unstoppable Cycling Machine. Olly, who is so youthful the ink on his birth certificate hasn't dried properly yet, put in a few brave attempts but he is a student who has lived on Pot Noodles and tax-payer subsidised beer for the past few years, so enough said. 

The awesome singletrack along Lonscale Fell on the side of Skiddaw did not disappoint, a few rocky spots to negotiate and a massive drop to our left kept us focussed on the track not the view along the valley and across to Clough Head and the rest of the Helvellyn massif. The really serious bit, where there have been fatal accidents is where the path turns to some shelves of off-camber rock, ready, willing and able to tip incautious riders over the cliff into the stream hundreds of feet below. At this point our party showed an admirable use of a C word, either circumspection or cowardice, depending on your viewpoint and joined the hiking fraternity for a few yards all emerging unscathed, apart from Olly, who is beginning to realise knee pads ought to be on knees not flapping around shins. Still, it was only a flesh wound. A wider but pleasantly brisk section leads to the Cheats Car Park, where me and The Breadlad were a fortnight ago, ready, as we were today, to descend the Spooney Green Lane bridleway down to Keswick, awesome but generally thronged with tourists and mountain bikers, even slow, old and incredibly polite mountain bikers are viewed with the same acrimony as newly released paedophiles standing outside a school playground. Today however, there was barely a soul -  it looks like the shops are open again in Keswick. In high spirits, we rode through Portinscale and on to Braithwaite, for a mandatory ice cream stop, cheerful, socially-distanced banter ensued, mainly because only The Breadlad and me knew what was to come, we did this route last summer. Not to put too fine a point on it, an hour of uphill pushing, or carrying, depending on your preference, to gain the summit of a Lakeland fell, only to fling ourselves like lycra-clad lemmings down the other side. 

We remembered it as a fairly amenable hike and a great ride down, despite The Breadlad’s OTB, today however, the approach seemed much harder, either the thirty degree heat or the sight of SuperBri disappearing into the distance, as he rode up a path we could only push. Again Olly made a valiant attempt but he was only championship compared to SuperBr’s premier league performance, the rest of us couldn’t even be classed as Sunday league, some of us not even Sunday league spectators. Eventually we made the summit, where SuperBri, by now a panting wreck of a man lay supine amongst the rocks and grass. Gradually, we regrouped and enjoyed the views across Derwentwater, catching our collective breaths prior to the descent. It is a wide path, alternately grassy or rocky, with multiple lines for multiple riders, most attempted with varying degrees of success, naturally we would all have gained impressive Strava times which would have left local riders wondering who we were but we had to go back uphill to help SuperBri look for his phone which had ejected itself rather than risk SuperBri’s kamikaze descending. 

Hungry and dehydrated, some of us gentlemen of a certain age are usually marking the trail like tomcats when out riding, not today, we rolled into the Portinscale in search of sustenance, where we were informed we had better hurry up if we wanted food because they stopped serving in ten minutes. It was ten to four in the afternoon. A perfect example of why the current covid enforced staycation is a transient trend and as soon as it all blows over southern europe will reign supreme again as a holiday destination, Britain completely misunderstands the concept of service industry or maybe all cafe staff simply can’t miss Eastenders. Somewhat begrudgingly, we were fed and watered and all we had to do now was get back to Threlkeld. Unfortunately the lovely, scenic and more importantly, flat, rail track route is still a construction site as repairs are effected following floods a few years ago and the other routes back all go over hills, the hill to Castlerigg Stone Circle being the least painful - usually. Today's balminess meant we suffered and Threlkeld came as a welcome sight but not as welcome as seeing The Breadlad’s front wheel turn into the beer garden of the Horse And Farrier. Last time we were here for a pint Boris closed the pubs four hours later, nineteen weeks to the day since I set foot in a pub, here we are again. And some tragic news, Jennings Bitter has not been brewed since the crisis began, now we know it’s serious.