Ride 068.

Date:   19th April 2006            Distance: 14.5 miles

Our first TTB ride out for quite a while, mainly the lure of lucre for Oz and the lure of the settee for Simon, winter holidays and general lassitude for the rest of us. However we managed to synchronise our days off and found ourselves at Kildale Station car park during the Yorkshire monsoon season.

Not the best of days for Oz's son to have his first ride out, pouring down with rain which showed no sign of abating. He seemed quite baffled as to what strange quirk of circumstances had led him to water-logged car park, watching three old gadgies (even someone as youthful as Simon is an old gadgie when you are fifteen) assembling bikes as water dripped down their necks. And then they begin riding into the rain, exhibiting a curious mixture of enthusiasm and depression as they leave the shelter of the car park, the one with the GPS on his handlebars muttering something about a 'one hill ride'.

A tarmac warm up took us to Bank Foot farm, then  the old rail track along the bottom edge of Battersby Plantation brought us to the one hill of the ride - the dreaded Ingleby Incline. Two words guaranteed to send a shiver up the spine of anyone familiar with the bridleways of the North York Moors. This particularly spineless bunch of cyclists, greeted the sight of an apparently perpendicular fire road with incredulity and not a little whimpering. Young Tom, son of Oz, was away like a whippet leaving us old dogs trailing in his wake but only briefly, youthful enthusiasm defeated by the sheer verticality of the track. Like the proverbial hare followed and overtaken by middle-aged tortoises, Tom watched as we panted past him before we ground to a halt only a marginal distance further up the slope. Pushing remained until the ground levelled back into some semblance of the railway track it once was, transporting iron ore from the Rosedale Mines to the Teesside steel industry. We mounted our cycles again and pedalled to Bloworth Crossing, where once an actual crossing existed, complete with crossing keeper who had to leave his cottage twice a day and open the gates. Not exactly overworked even by our regrettably low process operator standards.

The rain ceased as we made our way back across Ingleby Moor, pedalling above the slope we'd spent so long hauling bikes and bodies up. Steady away across the moor until we reached the Cleveland Way turn off, leading down Battersby Moor and onto the Baysdale Abbey road and a chance to be repaid our investments in the gravity bank. Four and a half miles of (mainly) downhill riding; wondering who'll be brave enough to crack 40mph on the wet tarmac. It certainly wasn't Young Tom who judging from eye-witness reports managed a spectacularly gymnastic bail out over the handlebars, luckily landing on the grass verge and suffering only a couple of grazed knees.

Minutes later we were once again trampling mud across the floor of Glebe Cottage prior to coffee and teacakes all round. Typically the weather had improved so much people were lunching al fresco. My suggestion of a quick ten mile extra loop was greeted with the disdain it deserved and shortly after we were jamming bikes back into cars in the late afternoon sunshine.

 Height Profile: (click to enlarge)

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