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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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| Breaktime at The Wellington Monument |
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.
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| Excellent Views From Curbar Edge, All Part Of The Experience! |
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! |
Another great ride, tweaked from it's previous incarnation, the second half adding some excellent trails to the loop along the edges.
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