Words by Alex, Pics by Pete, Lee & Butty
Crew: El Pres, Slim, Stunt, TJ, Butty, Coley, 3 Sheds, Troll, Bern, Lee
Route: BL, Canal, Kings Head, Clarke Lane to Leathers Smithy, White Rabbit Ascent, Nessit Hill, Shutlingsloe Steps & Slabs, Right turn before the gate, “the lost path”, Greenway Bridge, Plague Stone, Leathers.
Conditions: Windy, Cloudy, Warm
Notes:
For late August a surprisingly large crew…(Don’t tell Eric it was double figures!)..it might have been more, but G’s optimistic “I’ll be there” post was followed all too predictably by a “can’t make it” later on…we need a phrase for our perennial ride teaser 😉
El Pres takes charge when no one has thought of a route, and the wind is assumed to make going high a bad idea. He comes up with..”that route on the right hand side of Shutlinglsoe across Piggford moor”. It will be new territory for most!
Realising that GCSE results may mean a packed Sutton Hall, we opt for a Leathers finish, and hence go direct to pre order food from John (serious restraint from Bern to avoid the cheeky pint option)
Decent pace being set tonight, and the wind is a bonus, both blowing us uphill a touch, but more importantly keeping us cool, and the bugs away!
A well earned breather at Dan’s bench, where we spot titanium rails and a suspiciously roadie looking saddle atop El Pres’s bike. He’s only had a custom saddle made, with much hilarity about how they might take your “measurements” and the more you think about that..the worse it gets!!. It’s suprisingly firm, but apparently very comfortable! Saddling up (pun intended) we ride on 🙂
The singletrack from the S bends up to the gate is suprisingly technical due to the vegetation (a sign of things to come?)
Lee wins the king of the mountains – making short work of the steps from the very bottom with no dabs! The advance party get to the gate, look right, and see no trail…backing up a touch we find something that looks like it might be..so El Pres confidently surges forward, finds there is mesh under wheel and we set off!
This lasts about 100m before the mesh runs out, and the trail gets pretty hard to find. Butty and Troll do their best to create one, and there are mutterings from the back..
We work our way round, and do eventually find some very weathered finger posts! It does exist! (although not on the Bing Maps OS layer, or my 1:25,000 White peak paper map either!) Good thing it’s dry, but it is very overgrown, so it’s a good test of riding to blast through stubborn marsh grass clumps that are waist high!!
The final section is a steep descent down a narrow grassy ridge, before a slightly tricky left right, then we are through a gate and onto a lane that joins the main lane just before Greenway Bridge.
More exercise on the slog up to the Plague stone, where TJ provides this weeks tipple as an early birthday celebration (as he’s got a special off road trip in Namibia coming up!)
Lights on for the sprint to the pub!
Phil gets a call from Ruth, who wants to join us, and thanks to the kindness of John manages to get an extra food order in!
The Dark Star light ale is superb, the food gets demolished (its’ been good exercise tonight!) Phil’s table chips reputation almost scuppers him…as John only heard the “Chips” bit of Fish and Chips…but scurries off to the Kitchen and delivers the full article ten minutes later!!
No Dunky to trigger ribaldry (an impressive excuse this week as the post from Business Class “somewhere over Africa” gets him into the Eric, Luc, Kersh echelon!). We do try to tempt PTD up the hill to join us, but to no avail 🙁
Lots of chat as we catch up from our various travels, and a bit of cheeky banter too.
A good showing for the AoE, with 6 Whisky’s and 2 halves to finish, the Talisker Skye extremely good (and bonus crisps!!)
A fine evening all round, and only arm warmers needed for the ride home!
