A door a day. Welcome to December.

From Snow To Slop.

December is upon us once again, advent calendars - just in case there isn’t enough chocolate to plough through this month, frantic shopping, festive jumpers, non-stop Xmas songs everywhere you go, black-eye Friday, drunken revelry. It’s no coincidence there are more babies born around the twenty fifth of September than at any other time in the year. That mistletoe has a lot to answer for. It is three days into December and this is only the first ride of the month, mainly because the world went white again yesterday, with another dump of snow all over the moors, very picturesque but fresh snow is usually a nightmare to ride through. Today, it had all gone again, courtesy of a sudden thaw. I met Miles in Hutton Village and we embarked on the least energetic start, four miles along the old rail lines to the Concrete Road, where things became unpleasantly energetic as we scaled the concrete cliff to the moor. When the panting had subsided, Miles was introduced to the ‘One Man And His Dog’ trails, all built by Guisborough woods regular and sprightly septuagenarian Ralph. We headed further into the woods for a spin down Screwball Scramble but Storm Arwen, with all the cunning of an aggrieved rambler, had toppled a few substantial trees across the trail. Other trails came and went until we eventually reached old school Guissy Woods trail, Les’s, which Miles had yet to have the pleasure of. The top section, Les’s 1, naturally, has deteriorated since the halcyon days of signposts and funding but is still rideable. For the sake of completeness we rode all the sections, which took me back a bit, to days of yesteryear, clunky hardtails, elastomer suspension forks which went solid in cold weather, 2.1 inch tyres, triple chainrings and tiny cassettes, when 52 tooth meant a family of five from Darlington. The other sections are holding up well, built on solid foundations, we finished down an old off-piste trail which comprised mainly dead leaves over mud with the odd tree root to fling you off the track, as Miles found out the hard way. We returned to Hutton Village to find the parking restrictions of finally appeared, they have been applied sensibly, at the pinch points rather than along the whole road, so The Breadlad's piggy bank is safe for a little while longer.

Staying Ahead Of Storm Bratwurst

The second named storm of the season was forecast for this afternoon, something beginning with B, so I took myself out for a quick schlep in the slop around Guisborough Woods, everyone else cowering at the forecast like Daily Express readers. I lashed out four quid for the honour of parking at Pinchinthorpe Visitor Centre, daylight robbery considering not a penny of that money goes towards mountain bike trails but it is nice to visit the cafe at the end of the ride. A pretty bog standard ride around, through the woods, Roseberry Common, Newton Moor, Lonsdale Bowl, Sleddale, Highcliffe Nab and back down to the visitor centre, arriving at the cafe just as the rain began. The wind was pretty vicious for most of the time I was riding. When the big trees begin swaying, it’s time to question the wisdom of being in a forest but there’s always the voice of reason (or should that be treason?); the one which says there is more chance of being hit by lightning than being crushed under a falling tree. And it is nice and sheltered in the firs. So, how about it? One more trail can’t hurt. And it didn’t. I arrived at the cafe wet, muddy but mercifully devoid of conifer related crush injuries.

Ralph's Ripper.

For the second time this week, Redcar And Cleveland Council conned four quid out me, as Pinchinthorpe saw my custom again. This time I had been dispatched by La Mujerita to buy a Christmas tree. Here’s a thing, if it wasn’t for women, would men even bother with Xmas decorations? The consensus (amongst men I know) seems to be: would they bollocks. Especially at our age when the kids have flown the nest but the ladies insist and who are we to defy them? Anyway, no point wasting a whole day for the sake of a dead conifer, so the bike came too. Feeling somewhat languorous, I made a point of having the laziest ride possible just because I could. So, it was a gentle pedal along the old railway line to Slapewath, another flat track to Margrove Ponds and on to Margrove Park, the leisurely envelope was stretched a bit ascending the majority of Birk Brow but from then it was pretty much downhill all the way. In the woods above Margrove Park, I had an explore of Ralph’s latest trails, which he gave us a map to the other week. Quite a lot of storm damage, mainly small branches but it looked as though he had been out doing some maintenance. I found myself on a trial called Ripper, I knew this because of the number of name tags along the route. What a nice trail - it’ll be even better when the weather picks up. At present, a carpet of pine needles is covering soft mud, which livened up some of the steeper descents. The bottom of the forest has suffered most from the wind, some quite big trees down, leaving water-filled mud-holes where the track used to be. Tiring of climbing horizontal trees, tyre tracks were retraced to Pinchinthorpe, fourteen and a bit miles with less than a thousand feet of ascent, superb. Then it was home for a bit of reverse lumberjacking before La Mujerita transformed the house into an Xmas wonderland, using a sizeable proportion of China’s GDP in plastic tat.

Lovely Day For It...

Making up for my slack day yesterday, me and The Breadlad rode from Lordstones to the summit of Carlton Bank, doing the whole of yesterday’s ascent in under two miles. Only to ride down again, firstly on the ‘too good to waste on walkers’ Cleveland Way track, then on the track we found last week, directly to Faceby Plantation where we finished on some of the trails. Unfortunately descent must be paid for and soon we were slogging up the hill from Scugdale, topping out at Stoney Wickes, ready for another descent, this time a distinctly soggy Raisdale Mill Lane, for such a fine day, there is a disproportionate amount of water about. We splashed our way down, water spraying from our back wheels, as we rode through rivulets cascading down the hillside. Slightly moister than when we‘d set off, we reached the road and climbed up to Beak Hills, passing the ultimate Yorkshire sign, imploring motorists to moderate their speed - “Fooking Slow Down”, a classic.

From Beak Hills, sodden fields, like riding on wet sponges lay ahead for us to squelch through and we were glad to reach the relative firmness of The Fronts. Not that relative firmness is always a good thing, especially if your relative was Fred West. Fire roads took us around Cringle Moor, where we whizzed down a bit of enduro track at the speed of two blokes on the verge of middle-age, riding a muddy track in the middle of winter; no records were broken. Either way we were soon in the warmth of Lordstones cafe, me having a nice coffee and a toasted teacake while Sergeant Slack Colon gave the septic tank something to chew on.