A Bit Warmer And It Would Be Just Like Summer.

A rare Saturday off from attempting to teach teenagers that the search for their own unique guitar tone doesn't necessarily rely on the same volume and distortion as the main stage at Download Festival. Do they listen? Of course not, they can't even hear me. I spent this Saturday mingling with day people, as we used to call them when I worked shifts. Those strange troll-like people who only come out on a Saturday or Sunday, the poor unfortunates who have only weekends for their leisure, jamming the car parks and clogging up the trails, never experiencing the joy of empty single-track or vistas uncluttered by like-minded brethren desperate to get their adventure fix prior to being thrust back into the 9 till 5 grind. Today featured a rare catch up with international jet setting, crumpet-fiddler, The Breadlad and his Uncle Ian, who hasn’t been out with us for some time. We convened in Great Ayton, slightly earlier than usual to beat the throngs of day people intent on stealing our parking spaces. In deference to our early start, The Breadlad was only 5 minutes late. It is the first day of June and the weather is pretending to be summer, blue sky, sunshine, only the temperature, which barely scrapes into double figures, lets things down. Our route involved a scrounge about Guisborough Woods, eventually ending up at the gate behind Highcliffe Nab, heading down Codhill Heights before climbing up onto the road at cross Percy’s rigg. A quick scoot around the Lonsdale Bowl and down Andy’s Track, took us toward Gribdale. The Pensioner actually discovered Andy’s Track but we gave it The Breadlad’s proper name to annoy The Pensioner, who was definitely unaware of the old aphorism, “Offence can’t be given, it can only be taken.” From Gribdale we could have headed directly back along the road, back to base but instead we hauled our, on the verge of middle-age, bodies up the hill to Captain Cook’s Monument. A new trail has presented itself and it is only right and proper we should make an attempt at riding it. Pushing up it, the other day, it seemed quite amenable with a couple of steep sections; looking down from the top it appeared to be a vertical plummet on a rutted and rocky singletrack which is fighting a losing battle against encroaching bracken. Uncle Ian, who is more a death or glory sort of gadgie as opposed to a discretion is the better part of valour bloke, made some brave attempts on the steep sections which usually resulted in an impromptu roll about in the bracken, The magic of the internet tells me Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Which pretty much sums up all our efforts to clean this trail. Eventually the angle relented and we enjoyed a nice, flowing section which took us to the bottom. There was one more technical section of this route, the only barrier between us and the cafe, a drop down over a collection of exposed tree roots, which have less soil and more root everytime we ride them, some devious lines were employed, we managed to navigate them without a phone call to the air ambulance, which is always a bonus. A short time later, we were sitting in a barn enjoying the best Fletcher’s Farm shop had to offer, enjoying the wintery sunshine - shame it is June.

Just A Quickie.

Another one of those dash round before the rain days. A Great Ayton start and a quick blast around the Guisborough Woods, the exact details elude me because it was almost a fortnight ago. Judging by the pictures Highcliffe Nab and Newton Moor were involved and I don’t recall getting wet at all.

Enjoy your ride you lucky retired people 🚴🏼‍♂

The title of this ride comes from a message from The Breadlad, left in our WhatsApp group, directed, with grudging admiration, to me and Keith. He was busy crumpet-fiddling while we pedalled through another day of the fake summer, enjoying the outdoor vista of heather and bracken. It is still colder than a week in an Icelandic nudist camp, despite it being June; it looks as though summer may have been cancelled this year. Keith ventured down from the outer reaches of civilization to Danby. We left the village hall car park and began climbing toward Ainthorpe and then climbed some more to Ainthorpe Rigg, which was followed by, there is a bit of a theme going on here, a climb up Ainthorpe Rigg. From AInthorpe Rigg, we made our way to the road, which bears the curious name of New Way. There was nothing new about the way I climbed it on my manually operated bike, the same old panting and wheezing as every other instance. Keith, being a friend of Billy Bosch, was completely unperturbed by the hideous amount of ascent we were suffering, happy to be out in the greenery, breathing moorland air and not be at work like The Breadlad. Eventually, the gate to the Trough House track appeared, we rode through and stopped after a few metres at the aforementioned house. It is a small, stone-built building, used as a shooting house by whoever runs the grouse shoots, much the same as many others across the moors, except this one has a handy stone bench outside. The very place to rest our weary legs, well, my weary legs, Battery Boy hadn’t broken sweat yet. The track that runs by the house is called Cut Road by the Ordnance Survey but we know it as the Trough House Track, once considered by some mountain bike aficionados to be one of the finest tracks in North Yorkshire, before it was gravelled and sanitised for the Coast To Coast walkers. Nowadays it just has the scenery to recommend it. Running across the head of Fryup Dale, high above the valley, the views back along the dale are magnificent. We rejoined tarmac at the far end of the track, above the Glaisdale valley, lush and green in the strange sunshine we have been getting lately. It looks like sunshine, it acts like sunshine but there is no heat, just a cool brightness. We dropped down the road for a while to pick up another off-road track, which drops down to Bainley Bank, another trail which has had a visit from the gravel fairies, one wave of their wands and 90% of the fun is gone. More downhill action, this time on tarmac, took us back to Esk Dale, we crossed the River Esk and had a last climb, up from Houlsyke to Oakley Walls, so we could finish the ride with the Clitherbeck bridleway, followed by the Lord’s Turnpike and The Flying Bees. The Flying Bees is so called because there was sign, for many years, which read, Beware Of Flying Bees, much to the irritation of The Pensioner, Chief Constable of the grammar police, who regarded the sign as a heinous tautology, worthy of twenty minutes of profane ranting on every occasion we passed this way. The track emerges at the top of a hill in Danby village, at the bottom of the hill is the Danby Bakery. A perfect way to end a ride.

Hot Lappin'

Three days later, me and Keith are once again panting up a hill, well, one of us is, this time in County Durham instead of North Yorkshire. His mobility bike is losing its Hamsterley virginity, as we embark on Hamsterley Hotlap, version 7.2 or whatever we are up to. If I remember rightly our haul of trails was, Section 13, Special K, Brainfreeze, The Grove Link, big climb up to Polties Last Blast, K Line and Transmission, then it would have been Accelerator and Nitrous but they were firmly closed for renovation of some description. We found some reasonably dry off-piste as an alternative. Then, as if I hadn’t suffered enough, we climbed up to Pike’s Teeth, which we followed with a Hamsterley original off-piste - Green Man. Gluttons for punishment, we then climbed a short way back up the other side of the valley so Keith could have a spin on the new, improved Skills Loop and (unbelievably) his first ever go on the see-saw. We had begun the ride in light rain with waterproofs on, these were ditched on the first hill and the remainder of the ride was like a pleasant March day. Shame it is actually June but at least we stayed dry.

A Few Easy Miles

A lone ride for me today, Keith took his manual bike out for a pedal in the interim between today and Hamsterley and found he needed to lie down for a few days following the unaccustomed exertion. I took myself to Sutton Bank for a change, the top of which is an extensive plateau, home to a car park, visitor centre, cafe, bike shop, pump track and a selection of graded bike routes. A mixture of old trails we have ridden for years, which are now signposted and some purpose built trails in the area of the pump track. It is possible to plan a route with minimal climbing providing you are not tempted to drop off the plateau. I was tempted but not too far. Yet again we are having one of the fake summer days we are becoming accustomed to, bright and sunny with a wind straight from the mouth of some frigid Nordic Hell. I made my way over to Boltby Forest and rode sheltered tracks before climbing back up to the Drove Road, which runs along the plateau and heading back toward the visitor centre, with a detour to ride the Quarry Drop and the speedy singletrack which follows. The edge of the plateau is known to one and all as The Escarpment, a narrow track with fresh air and views across to the Pennines on one side. Ridden North to South, it culminates in what the National Park describes, without undue modesty, as The Finest View In England. They’re not far wrong though, to the left, the mighty Whitestone Cliff thrusts up through the greenery, glowering down on the allegedly bottomless Gormire Lake, which is fringed with thick forest, looking like a bison’s eye peeping out from green fur. From The Finest View In England, a pleasant, green graded trail leads back to the visitor centre and the end of my ride for today.