Sunday 17th March

Let’s start with the roll call shall we?

• Keeping the faith this week :- Paul T and Ian
• Keeping their lazy arses warm in bed again :- Paul M, Mike, Andrew.

Paul M, I’m not going to bring it up any more (much) but we are seriously beginning to doubt your commitment to the team.  Where would we be if we all said “its too far, it’ll take too long” (in a whiny voice) eh? It’s only 7,000 miles! Where’s the spirit of Shackleton, Livingstone, Mallory, Stanley et al. If we all had your attitude, we’d never have discovered tobacco! Mike, we know you’ve got your new bike and don’t want to get it dirty, but seriously, you can’t keep riding it round the lounge, you’ve got to take it out sometime.  Andrew didn’t put a sick note in this week but I heard he was jet lagged after travelling back from London!

Anyway back to the people who bothered their arses to get out of bed and do the ride, me and Paul T.  I picked Paul up at 8:30 under clear blue skys with not a breath of wind on the air, perfect biking weather.  “Those losers will be sorry” we agreed as we drove along the A1 to Scotch Corner and then into Richmond.  As we drove through Richmond, the petrol light came on so I had to find a petrol station.  No problem you might think, but not so easy on a Sunday morning in Richmond when all you have with you is an Amex card.  Anyway, I digress, but Caz, if you read this, the filler cap is on the right hand side, its dead easy.

As we drove out of Richmond and on towards Grinton, Paul said “looks like there’s still some snow on the hills over there, hope we’re not going there”. “Shouldn’t be a problem, its only a dusting” said I as we pulled into the car park just outside Grinton.

Looking up to Harker Top

We left the car park and climbed steeply on the road up towards the first bridleway.  Once onto the bridleway, we could see the first of the hills we would be climbing, Harker Top, and there was indeed a little snow on the top of it.  Oh well, we’ll be up and over that in no time.  The ride up to Harker top was a bit of a grind, even for two impressive physical specimens such as ourselves.  But we soldiered on and made it to the lower slopes without too much of a fuss.  As we stopped for our fifth or sixth rest we noticed a couple of other bikers coming up behind us, we agreed to wait and let them go past as they were going much faster than

The beast of Grinton Moor?

we were.  As they approached, it became apparent that these two atheletes about to cruise past us were actually the wrong side of 70.  We need to work on our fitness!

It was as we were hanging our heads in shame that we saw this. I think we’ve found evidence of a bigfoot in the Yorkshire Dales!  Really, this was in the middle of nowhere, whoever (or whatever?) has been walking around barefoot halfway up a mountain must be bloody nithered.  We soldiered on and eventually reached the top of the hill, that snow was a bit thicker than it looked from a mile away.

On Harker’s Top

On Harker’s Top

We reached the top of the hill and started down the other side, only the snow didn’t seem to be thinning out any, if anything it seemed to be getting deeper.  There were some little bits of downhill but the snow was so deep you couldn’t really get any speed up.

My bike on a hill

We rode on for what seemed like miles, but was probably nothing like that, just the snow made it feel further.  We were starting to question the map as it felt like we had rode much too far and we thought we should have been turning up over the hills by now.  We had a good look at the map and decided we were on the right road and we should carry on into what looked like oblivion.  We eventually found the corner we needed to be turning to climb up to Apedale head.  The snow here was a foot deep and we could not ride the bikes, it was difficult even to make forward progress pushing them.  When we reached the top of the hill, the landscape in front of us was less than encouraging.  All

That black speck in the distance is Paul!

we could see in front of us was more snow, it was difficult even to make out which direction the bridleway took.  Although neither of us had mentioned the possibility of dying out here, I couldn’t help ruing the fact that I hadn’t come with a fatter biking companion; I don’t reckon you’d last for more than a couple of days on what you could pick off Paul’s cold dead corpse.  Paul would have been alright if he’d managed to kill me first, he’d have enough to keep him going till August.

It was as hope was about to leave us (I might be overdramatising this) that we spotted a gate in a fence which we recognized, Oh sweet salvation, we were saved! (probably laying it on a bit thick now).

We’re doomed, doomed I tell ye.

After this point it was downhill to Dent’s houses.  The first half mile or so was still a struggle as the path was covered in thick snow and you had to pedal hard to make any headway.  After a while the snow thinned and we started to get up some proper speed; this would be a great run in the summer.  It was going down this part that I made an unplanned diversion to create a one winged snow angel.  I was getting up some good speed when I realised my suspension was still locked out and started looking down to locate the   release.  As I looked down, the front wheel hit the snow in the middle of the track and I went arse over tip onto the side of the road.  Fortunately there was a nice snow drift to land in so no damage done.  Paul gave the resulting snow angel 5 out of 10 as it only had one wing, I argued that, seeing as I had created most of it with my face, it was worth at least an 8.

When we reached Dent’s houses we decided we didn’t want to go down to Castle Bolton only to climb up again or climb to Greets height as this would be covered with snow so we just carried on to the road.  When we reached the road there was a little bit of a climb to the top then it was downhill all the way to Grinton.  The ride down on the road was probably the only time all day we didn’t have to pedal to make progress.  Its a great run down the hill, the road is really twisty and really fast, we managed to get over forty mph.

Back at the car we both agreed it had been good fun, even if we did wonder if we were going to get back at times, but this ride needs to be done in the middle of summer when there is no snow around.

Cheers – Ian