Ride 017.

Date:   15th April 2004                Distance: 18.5 miles

The first Terra Trailblazers venture outside the North York Moors saw us assembling bikes in the centre of Reeth, in the Yorkshire Dales. The fact we were ringed by hills and the only way to anywhere appeared to be up did not go unmentioned. A few fresh faces, joined us today. Howard, another shift worker bored with lonesome mid-week rides, who contacted us through the web site and Doug, a mate of Oz’s, who fancied a ride out. We also had an apprentice, Chris, who was having his first go on a bike for twenty years or more – discounting the exercise bike in his garage.

Unusually for this year the weather was almost clement. 2004 has been appalling, it’s as though someone threw a switch on the first of January and plunged us from dry, bright winter days to a choice between snow or perpetual monsoon, sometimes in the same ride. I deference to Chris, we chose a road warm-up, following the river Swale to Gunnerside. Later described by Chris as:

“We left the car park and turned left up a 45 degree road”

Perhaps a trifle exaggerated, anyway it was a very brief uphill preceding a pleasant seven mile pedal to Dyke Heads farm to the West of Gunnerside.

We regrouped at the start of the first off-road track and waited for Chris to catch us up. He took a quick glance at the track and paid us a bar of chocolate each to let him ride back along the road on his own. Just to be on the safe side we kept all his other food too, prior to pointing him back in the direction of Reeth. Still, 14 miles is a valiant effort for someone who’s last bike outing was probably riding down to see Prince Arthur of Connaught open the Transporter bridge.

The remaining six of us embarked on the steady climb along the side of Jingle Pot Edge, an amenable middle ring jaunt of a climb to four of us. Simon reached the top, collapsed into the heather and informed us his vision had gone monochrome with exertion, Bob brought up the rear with quite a refreshing lack of profanity. A speedy descent brought us to Gunnerside Beck, weaving through the confines of Gunnerside Gill; numerous relics of Swaledale’s mining past litter the area and as boys will be boys, we spent a little while exploring mysterious ruins and tempting holes in the hillsides.

Back on the bikes but only briefly as the terrain became too steep and broken for our feeble legs and inept handling to contemplate, we headed up the gill, shouldering the bikes for the steep carry up to Friarfold Moor. We rested briefly to let Bob catch up and regale us with some obscene variations on his usual theme, a bar of Chris’s chocolate shut him up and soon we were on the wide, gravely bridleway, which would, if our map reading was correct, be the start of a pleasant 3 mile downhill. The inevitable black clouds began to build up but the descent was so much fun we barely registered them. From the exposed moor top, a wide track swoops through spoil tips and old mine workings, passing long redundant bits of rusting machinery to a gate at Level House Bridge. After the gate we continued in our gravity-assisted pleasure dome, following the track alongside Old Gang Beck. Simon went into downhill mode, neck and neck with Howard, rounding a bend, they spotted an unavoidable gully going directly across the path, Howard managed to stay on his bike, Simon fought the rockier side of the track: the rocks won, claiming a large chunk of his helmet and several square inches of skin as souvenirs. It wouldn’t be over-dramatic to say without the helmet we would have been sharing Simon’s possessions between us before pushing his lifeless carcass down an abandoned mine shaft.

Somewhat more cautiously we continued along the mine track to meet the road at Surrender Bridge, crossing straight over into our first major gloop field of the day, my £50 a pair, mud specific tyres finally proving their worth. The bridleway took us over Novel Houses Hill, dropping unexpectedly and sharply into a chasm, improbably named Cringley Bottom. As we pondered the map, which appeared to show the bridleway using an invisible bridge to straight line across the abyss rather than the perpendicular sheep-track actually in front of us, the rain began. It would be too much to expect a 2004 ride without a little of God’s lubrication. Waterproofs on, it was heads down for a quick blast on gravel and tarmac into Healaugh before following a brief portion of our outward route back to Reeth.

A welcome coffee in a handy tea shop and another day of fun and frolics was almost at an end. We’d adhered to the mountain biker’s version of the country code: we took nothing but pictures and left nothing but bloodstains.

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