East Is East

A tour of the Eastern Moors.

Ride Date: 14/06/2015

Distance: 19.5 miles

Climbing: 2400ft

Route: White Edge > Curbar Edge > Houndkirk Moor> Devil's Elbow 

Riders : Jake, Matt, Basil, Howard, Tony & Liam

Missing Deley & Scott due to 50th birthday celebrations, Happy Birthday Deley!!
Missing Carro due to general slackness (his own admission!).

Another 8am start, quite enjoying these early morning meetings, nice & quiet on the trails. We did have a slight delay due to the postcode being vague, but were soon underway with the warm up climb up past the hunting lodge and onto White Edge. it was a lot dryer than the previous visit here, still a few puddles about, but no real mud. Liam, despite being on his first Mountain bike ride, was taking to it like a duck to water, however fell foul on a rocky drop, sustaining a nasty hand injury that made riding difficult, but he carried on and we were at the Wellington Monument for the first break in good time.

Breaktime at The Wellington Monument

With energy levels back up, we set off along Curbar Edge, now a fully fledged Bridleway, so can be fully thrashed without fear of reprisals from the red sock brigade! It was on here that Howard became the second casualty, with a spectacular over the bars effort, he came away unscathed though and we carried on this superb trail all the way to the road. A short climb on tarmac took us back to the cars & the midpoint of the ride.
Here we bid farewell to Liam due to the hand injury, Howard due to fitness & Basil due to socialising. That left myself, Matt & Tony to sample the rest of what the moors had to offer.

Excellent Views From Curbar Edge, All Part Of The Experience!

First up was some steady Bridleway work out onto Totley Moor and climbing up to the Trig point, from here we rode an epic descent along side an old dry stone wall, it was fast, steep and littered with rocks and step downs, an excellent test. We dropped out on to a bridleway and on to Sheep Skulls, a downhill inspired trail, hand built and like a rollercoaster for bikes, great fun & well worth the push back up. A bit of leg work took us up Blacka Hill and onto Houndkirk Moor, it was starting to rain a bit and with the strong winds was quite grotty, fortunately it was short-lived though & we left the wide track on to some "cheeky" singletrack over the moor, weird sensations aplenty as despite it looking like you were going up hill, we were actually going at a fair old pace down hill, Tony had a minor off in the heather and we took some "advice" from a walker. A good twisty descent though and as we popped out on to the road we still had the best to come.
Devil's Elbow it's called, probably a fitting name, it's only half a mile long, but it feels a lot more, it's got the lot, roots, rocks, drops, off camber and it finishes off with a fast swoopy section, superb from top to bottom, Tony summed it up nicely by saying that from 90% of it he had no control over his bike. 

Pushing back up a tamer section of Devil's Elbow, Matt obviously still grinning from the descent!

At this point we were feeling tired especially after the excellent workout of Devil's Elbow so we opted to push back up and roll back along the road to the cars, not without taking a minor detour to do the climb to the hunting lodge in reverse, it was a fitting finish with a fast flowy descent back to the cars.

Just time for a nice pint of Hobgoblin Gold in the Grouse Inn

Another great ride, tweaked from it's previous incarnation, the second half adding some excellent trails to the loop along the edges.

View the ride on Endomondo - http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/542194779/151189

Wye Valley Special

A remix & tweak of the first ever Sunday ride, nice & dry.

Ride Date: 17/05/2015

Distance: 21.5 miles

Climbing: 2600ft

Route: Miller's Dale > Cheedale > Wormhill > Priestcliffe > Monsall

Riders : Jake & Matt

Loads missing for this one, reasons too numerous to mention, a production Saturday didn't help either.

We went for an 8am start, seeing as these nice light mornings are too good to miss, plus we can have the trails to ourselves, after a short wait for Carro, only to find he had overlay & wasn't going to make it we set off for a short 1km warm up on the Monsall trail followed by the stiff, rocky climb up to the hamlet of King Sterndale and across a couple of fields to the first short, but fun descent into Horseshoe Dale then the satisfying steady climb weaving around the rocks up to the road. A short section of tarmac took us through Chelmorton and the steep climb at the back of the church, along the undulating single track and the fast blast down the Pennine Bridleway to the A6, another short section of road and it was the steep, fast descent into Wye Dale as we had previously done on the first ride.

We took a quick break and headed up the switchbacks (scene of Basil's chain snap on a previous ride) through many sheep and up to the farm where the famous "Tractor Photo" was taken last time.A bit more road was followed by some trail & fields, this time bone dry and into Wormhill. Straight across the road and on to the good stuff, starting off with single track between dry stone walls, then switching to tree lined, then on to rocky craziness, we were only stopped by a gate and a puncture on Matt's rear wheel. 

Unusually for me, I didn't take any photos, so here's one of the descent from Wormhill robbed from MBR magazine

Not even stopping for a breather we were of again, with the steep but short climb up the the solitary farm house at the start of the Limestone Way & and our route back down to Miller's Dale, another great and long descent, ruined a bit by the amount of gates. Again pushing on well at this point, we headed out of the valley and up a tough off road climb and following the farm tracks out to Priestcliffe, meeting some very courteous Quad riders & some not so courteous Motocross riders, not much of interest trail wise, but the views were nice and with a short stop for tyre pressure adjustments we soon hit Brushfield, from here you get a small up then it's all down, getting steeper & rockier as you drop onto the Monsall viaduct.
All that was left was a nice 2 mile warm down along Monsall Trail back to Miller's Dale.

After packing the bikes up, we had a steady walk to the Angler's Rest and Farmer's Blonde all round, well you can't turn it down can you?

Not a bad ride all in, helped with the dry conditions, it's a good example of what the White Peak offers, and apart from a very minor tweak we can make before the steep drop into Wye dale, it's probably the finished article and a ride we'll likely add each year.

 

View the ride on Endomondo - http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/524007866/151189

Ashover & Beeley Beast!

A Midweek Escape with Gale Force Wind & A Smidge Of Rain.

Ride Date: 06/05/2015

Distance: 31.5 miles

Climbing: 3400ft

Route: Ashover > Kelstedge > Holymoorside > Rowsley > Two Dales

Riders : Jake & Matt

This was all set to be a multi purpose ride, not only a midweek escape, but also a reccy of Ashover in anticipation of a revisit later in the year for a Sunday ride.

With a usual 8am start we headed out of Ashover and round the back of the Poet's pub, with a nice stepped drop down and over the river and a push up what would be a superb descent at the end of the ride, once at the top we took a right and had a superb blast down through Cockerspring woods, before climbing back up via a steady fire road to where we started. Then a bit more climbing through more woods and a quarry led us out onto the road. We then headed out towards the delightfully named Robriding & hit a superb descent down into Kelstedge.

Time for a break at the bottom of a cracking descent into Kelstedge

After a short rest we were off again, via a slight detour due to an error on my crib sheet, a few miles of road work and we were on another short, but sweet down through some woods, before popping out on the road and then on to a strangely satisfying climb up and over the fields to what would be the highest point of the ride. By now the wind was really picking up, made even worse by being so exposed out on the moor.
We soon had some respite though as we swung off the road and dropped down into the many woods above Rowsley, some lovely twisting, undulating singletrack took us on our journey through the woods, there were plenty of trails in the woods an there was much talk of finding a way of adding it in to a Chatsworth or Bakewell ride in the future. We should have taken a bridleway through more woods back to Beeley Moor at this point, but due to some logging operations by the Haddon Estate we had to detour, although this did give us a superb, albeit cheeky footpath blast down to Beeley village.
From here it was more road, this time a 2 mile stiff climb back up on to the top of the moor, the wind was now trying it's best to drive us off the road at this point, plus despite my timely statement that we had got away without any rain, it decided to rain! We dropped down in to Two Dales on what was in hindsight not that interesting a trail and then started to head back to Ashover.
Once back at the bridleway, we retraced our steps from earlier, with the excellent (in name & fun) Coffin lane descent, followed by the equally superb rocky, rooty drop back down to the river in Ashover leaving us just a short push up back into the village.
We just managed to sneak in to the Mucky Duck (Black Swan) for last orders, I can't remember what I ate, but it was more than welcome as I was famished, I do remember it was washed down with a pint of Sharp's Atlantic.

A bit of an epic ride all in, should have no trouble sorting a good route for Ashover later in the year plus also the promise we saw in the woods around Rowsley.

 

View the ride on Endomondo - http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/517001087/151189