February 2023 Round Up and Video
Don't do words? Click here for video
Another month bites the dust, time shuffles on toward the inevitable decrepitude and death which await us all. Sitting in front of the telly, perched on a big chair with a toilet in it sounds quite appealing. Or adult nappies, there's a thought, it'll be worth it just to get revenge on my daughter, after some of the traumatic changing mat challenges I faced when she was a baby. Probably my own fault for feeding her liquidised curry when her mam was at work. What's this got to do with mountain biking? Nothing really, merely a memento mori. So how did February 2023 pan out, pretty well, so long as you didn't want tomatoes in the pan because this is the month the supermarkets tried to shaft the British suppliers and were in turn shafted by the foreign growers who found other markets easier to export to. Twelve rides, not bad for a short month and eight of them with company. No longer the solitary rider crossing the plain, the lone wolf skulking alone and friendless through the countryside, now I'm Mister Popularity, like a lottery winner down the local. The first three quarters of the month saw us riding dry trails, a minimal amount of rain lulled us into a false sense of spring, only for hopes to be dashed by the last week of February which dampened more than our spirits and enthusiasm. By the end of the month, the trails had reverted to the usual slurry.
The remaining ride of the month is blogged below.
Grim
An uninspiring forecast but three days without throwing leg over crossbar meant a compulsion to do something. Yet another Great Ayton start, hopefully to avoid the worst excesses of the weather. Low cloud and persistent drizzle in my face all the way to Guisborough Woods, I even took the leg stretcher start, through Kildale and up Percy Cross Rigg, all on tarmac, just to get a few miles in the legs without battling through mud. Once I was in the woods, a few half-hearted attempts on trails occurred but the combination of mud and wet roots meant no records were broken. The sun kept putting in teasing appearances, false promises of better weather before the next shower swept in off the North Sea, directly from some frigid land within the Arctic circle judging by the wind temperature. If Jackson Pollock had used mud for paint and me for canvas, the result would have been how I looked by the end of the ride. It was doubtful whether I could see better with or without my glasses, seeing as they were mainly covered in mud or water or steamed up, only useful as covers to stop the unpleasantness being spread all over my corneas. Once thoroughly moistened, if I had been licked by a stamp I couldn’t have been any wetter, it was time to leave the woods and hills behind; three walkers and one other cyclist were the only people I had seen in two hours. I left them alone to enjoy the splendour of the North York Moors while I went to enjoy the magnificence of Cooplands bakery back in Great Ayton.
Clicking on the route names will take you to the Strava page for the route. Where you can marvel at how slow we are.
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