Tales of Trails: A Calver Christmas

Ride Date: 28/12/2013

Location: Calver

Riders : Jake, Deley, Matt & Howard

This ride took us back to Calver, the destination of the first ever post on this blog, for this years Christmas ride. Plenty of absentees this time including Dan due to headset trouble , Basil due to Center parcs, Ryan & Rob due to colds & Tony due to a bad back, some say down to his hard work with Santa over the last week! I also had some back trouble myself, but was OK for most of the ride, just struggled on the steeper climbs.

We set off through Calver village on a crisp sunny morning with Howard sliding off on some black ice at the first junction, good job he had his new knee pads on. Soon we were at the foot of the first big climb, it was just as difficult as I remember but it wasn't too bad especially with the good views lit up by the winter sun. After negotiating a few gates we were soon at the top and decided due to the small group we would make some "on the fly" route decisions and adapt as we went along. So we carried on past "Old Man's Demise" and headed for the quarry descent down into Eyam. The descent was nice and quick although it looks like the council have seen fit to resurface a good section of it, making it fast, but not technical. The last short section however, remains untouched and a good bit of fun.

Next up was a very pleasant climb on the roads up to Riley's Graves at Eyam, with a small break in the village center on the way. This led us to the start of the very good descent down through the woods to the road below, it didn't disappoint, throwing up rocks, ruts, roots & fallen trees.

The View From The Bottom Of The Riley's Grave Descent

A short bit of tarmac led us next to the blast down to Stoney Middleton which was as good as I remember from last time, worthy point of note, if you ever find yourself at the bottom of this descent put your hand in the roman spring, lovely and warm flowing water especially in winter.

Next up was the steady 3 mile climb back up to Old Man's demise via Coombs Dale. Once at the top we hit Old Man's Demise, another excellent descent that is now a shadow of it's former self due to the council's over zealous resurfacing, it's still a good blast down, but with no real skill needed.
All that remained was to ride back down the first climb we had come up, despite a few interruptions from gates, this proved to be a decent end to the ride.

We finished off with a pint and a nice bit of dinner in the Derwent Water Arms, very nice chips and I'm told, by the other three, that the homemade pies were very nice too.