A Frosty Start To The Year

Ride Date: 12/01/2014

Location: Duffield

Riders : Jake, Deley, Matt, Basil & Tony

The first ride of the year gave us a very cold & frosty start at the church in Duffield, with everyone wrapped up warm, we set off up the steps onto the plateau between Duffield & Coxbench where we rode across crisp fields in bright winter sunshine just having to avoid some deep tractor ruts on the way to the first descent at the top of Coxbench Woods.

The frosty start at Duffield Church

We rode the trail down through the woods , (where Felly definitely did not fall off a few years back), all the way down to the tarmac and then set off exploring back in the woods along some new trails that ran perilously close to shear drops, this new trail takes you right down to the main road, and with a bit of fine tuning will become standard on this ride.
Then after a quick blast down the short bridleway to Derby Road we rode a nice and pleasant climb on singletrack and fire road all the way to the peak of Morley Woods. I have to admit I was hoping for something similar to Shining Cliff once at the top, but we found it to be proper downhill stuff with some fairly hefty jumps & drops, so after making our excuses to the lad's up there on their 200mm+ travel bikes we set off down the less aggro side of the trail and on to another new section, Castle Wood. A bit of a cheeky one this, but it was reasonable fun, with the mud and we were soon back down on Derby Road again.

Looking towards Coxbench over the frosty fields

The rest of the ride was the usual Belper circuit written about elsewhere in the blog, we did have to avoid the farmyard on Wyver Lane due to the standard winter axle deep cow shit. Longwalls lane was it's usual good self & we made a more direct diversion to The Chevin avoiding the big & frankly pointless climb to Hazlewood. 
Once on The Chevin it was very hard going on the climb to the top with plenty of mud and also Sunday Ramblers, or Satan's Spawn as Matt calls them. This ended up being a telling blow for some of us and myself and a few others must have just rolled down the other side and down into Milford, we briefly lost Tony for the ride back to the carpark, but found him already there and feeling very under the weather.
It had been a hard ride due to the conditions and also my slight underestimation of the distance with it coming in at nearly 20 miles! Might be worth trying again in the summer when the trails are dusty.

That left a visit to the Bridge Inn to warm up and have a well deserved pint.

3D View of the terrain

Below is a first edit of the video, this may get replaced with a different one once me & Tony have exchanged our versions. There is also a bonus out takes video!

View the ride on Endomondo - http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/285407061/151189