Ride 032.

Date:    26th October 2004           Distance: 22 miles

Another day: another Terra employee dragged kicking and screaming from the warmth and comfort of the control room into the harsh climate of the North York Moors. Colin’s limited stature made him the ideal candidate to test my ‘eBay bike’, the 13” Marin hardtail I built up during the summer. Both exceeded expectations, nothing came loose, fell off or broke; the bike fared well too. 

We met at Clay Bank on a, wait for it, sunny morning, Bob, Col, Oz and occasional Trailblazer Doug and immediately introduced our novice to the brutal climb up Carr Ridge onto Urra Moor and over Round Hill. Conditions were slightly damp under-wheel following the three preceding days of hurricane and typhoon weather but today was shaping up to be perfect. Dropping down toward Bloworth, the climb up was soon forgotten as we let gravity take the strain. The track becomes a bit rockier along the western edge of Ingleby Moor, teaching a Col some of the limitations of a hardtail. We followed the Cleveland Way from Tidy Brown Hill to Battersby Moor; this is one of my favourite bits of track on the whole moors, fast doubletrack which brings us, all too soon, to the Baysdale Abbey road. More fast downhill, this time on tarmac and minutes later we were swigging coffee at Glebe Cottage, sitting outside in the autumnal sunshine. 

Our new trainee hadn’t suffered nearly enough yet and it being way too early to return, an executive decision was arrived at to show him another facet of mountain biking. Why ride on fast, hard, moor top tracks when you could be wallowing about in claggy mud? Leaving the café, we rode up the road to Bankside Farm and hung a left into Millbank Woods, where we met two descending mountain bikers, Oz’s rush to give them clear passage through the gate went all wrong and he ended laid in the mud as the other lad’s emergency braking technique was put to the test. Further into the woods, things began to become unrideable and the normally excellent singletrack cutting through the bracken on Easby Moor was a chore on the uphill sections. Into Ayton Banks Woods where we tried to convince Col the path jump is a regular Terra Trailblazers initiation but he wasn’t buying it. Onward to the Red Run for some exemplary excuse making; too wet, too eroded, too scared, etc.  

A permissive bridleway past the angling club pond brought us too Little Ayton and pleasant tarmac interlude, through Ingleby Greenhow, passing (much to our trainee’s amazement) the pub and on to Bank Foot for the undulating fireroads ascent through Battersby and Greenhow Plantations. Col slipped to the rear of the peleton, complaining of cramp in his leg, joining Bob in uttering breathless profanities, as Bob tried to psyche him out with dark mutterings about the final climb up to the car park.  

But like all these things, once it’s over it never seems as bad, the sun shone all day and we were muddy, wet and tired but happy. Col acquitted himself well, 22 miles of varied terrain for his first ever mountain bike ride and he only sagged in the last couple of miles.

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