The Mince Pie Run

Ride Date: 28/12/2012

Riders : Jake, Ryan, Carro, Deley, Basil, Howard, Ady & Dan.

An early morning meet at the Hurt Arms would be start of of our first ever "Mince Pie Run". A good turn out too with 8 of the 9 making the trip, we'll get Neil on this ride one day!. With the heavy rain of the night before now all but stopped, we set off out of the car park and up the A6 to the start of the Cromford Canal.
 We set a good pace along the 4 miles of canal skipping many puddles and a few dog walkers and quickly arrived at the base of Sheep Pasture Incline, this is a legendary climb rising from the High Peak Junction at the bottom to Black Rocks at the top. It's a mammoth climb coving 1320 yards at a gradient of 1:9 and takes you to a height almost 500 feet above your starting position. A short pause at the bottom of the incline to confirm the £2 per head and first to the top takes the pot competition and we were off, after 12 minutes or so of hard climbing Ryan was the clear winner (I still owe him my £2) also a special mention should go to Basil and Ady for making it up without a stop . We had a short pause for people to regather their composure and stop coughing their lungs up.

Looking up Sheep Pasture Incline from about half way up, still can't see the top!
(Picture taken in better weather)

We set off on the flat for a mile or so to another killer climb, this time up to Middleton Top, this one is much shorter but appears to be steeper than Sheep pasture and we were soon at the top for another breather. and along for flat trail then up the far more steady Hopton Incline.

At this point we took a right over the fields which were quite heavy going after the rain, through a few gates and onto a limestone track, at this point I'd lost the group after closing a gate and seeing them disappear of into the now quite dense fog, turns out they had missed a turning, but a quick call got us all back on track. We continued over the fast rolling tracks and took another right and diagonally down a fast fun field with a few chances for jumps. This took us down to the crossroads at Grangemill opposite the Holly Bush Inn.

We then had some tarmac climbing up past tophill farm and the a left onto Blakemere Lane, which was more fast limestone track but with far more obstacles and stones giving more opportunity for jumping. We took a left at the end of this lane onto rockier climbing and then a right part way up the hill just after the quarry, this was a very muddy and rutted lane with a great bit of technical downhill at the end which gave us, I think the only "offs" of the day with Basil, Dan & Ryan all going "broadside" on the mud. The end of this lane led us to the main road just above Bonsall with some excitement at maybe seeing more dead moles like last time, but alas the gate was mole free.

The macabre array of dead moles from April 

Another small break and we were off again down a short muddy link up on to Nailor Lane, we were now in uncharted territory as we had skipped this bit due to a nasty looking hail storm last time. After some discussion we found the bridleway towards Bonsall, which was well worth the find with some good downhill over rocks, mud and and flowing water all the way to Bonsall village.  Looking at the map it seems we should have taken the left hand fork halfway down this trail, which is a shame as I think it would have been longer and more technical, but we'll know for next time. Once in Bonsall we took a left onto church lane which became a bridleway after a small climb on tarmac, the bridleway came to an abrupt end, splitting into 2 footpaths, one to Matlock Bath & one to Cromford, we took the later and this turned out to be the best bit of the day as we found ourselves on a great bit of single track with fast bits, drop offs and some very sketchy corners next to a steep drop.

This left us with a small ride to the start of the canal at Cromford Meadows and a 5 mile ride back to the Hurt Arms, unfortunately with far more dog walkers and ramblers this time.

All in a good Christmas ride, coming in at 23 miles, the weather ended up being quite good to us with only a few light showers and the dense fog to worry about, although we had to abandon the post ride beers due to the amount of mud and water we have bought back with us.

A muddy shot of the team on the way back past High Peak Junction

Thanks to all that came!

PS. We also got a mention from Canadian pro Rider Emily Batty

@72_Jake haha great pic. As long as your warm, riding in the wet muck with friends is always fun. Thanks for sharing :) Happy New Year Jake

— Emily Batty (@emilybatty) December 29, 2012

See the full route here http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/115258132