Crew: El Pres, Slim, PTD, Butty, Troll, Stunt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pub: TJ<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Route: Bottom of the Zag, Zag, Saddlers Way, Lower Teggs, Up past the Smithy to the fire road, 1st Right fire road back to the road (to Forest chapel), up the road to the entrance to the Steps and tracks down to the “main” road (from the Rangers Station to Standing Stone), across to the otherside for tracks to the Rangers Station, around the ressie, Shrubberies, Sutton Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conditions: Cold & Clear, very soggy ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are aiming for a weather slot between some heavy rain, and the coming storm Eowyn. The rain is lingering a touch so Pete declares a 15 minute delay, which is good for Butty who is running late! Stunt encounters some unexpected faffing but manages to arrive before he is left to catch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With extremely soggy and soft ground we opt for some harder surfaces – once up the Zag it’s a right hand turn down to Teggs and the rocks and cobbles of Saddlers way – if you can keep upright getting into it – the little bit of mud and grass at the edge of the trail is slithery as heck, with at least one rider having an almost immediate dab!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plenty of mud on lower Teggs, although not so much water in the stream at the ford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regrouping at the Langley bottoms reservoir, and looking out for the apparent alignment of six planets (not all visible to the naked eye), PTD offers some route options and by default becomes routemeister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Passing the Leathers (and the obligatory call for “cheeky pint” from somewhere in the pack) it’s good to see it open and with punters inside. We head on up the road and onto gravel for a short distance before taking the lesser RH trail which does have a nasty steep climb later on….the price you pay for following those on ebikes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fire road ends before the road, and its a swampy grassy muddy slither across to the exit point(s), and then some care required to descend the bank to the lane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gaining a little more height up the road we opt to do the steps decent across to the other road, and then the RHS mini loop. Crossing over to the LHS we do the first steps, tree squeeze, over the little bridge and up the other side..to then find a new mini lake!! Is it the work of Beavers?…well only if they are using cables and rods to hold their logs together…a bit of deliberate damming of the stream to create more wetland habitat by the looks of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PTD explores going round it on the “forest” side but there is no obvious route, plan B is a quick detour on the road and then back in, where we pick up the old trail. It’s not being used much, with fallen trees blocking some parts, and starting to get overgrown, but we find our way to the Rangers Station without too much bother, then swoop round the ressie past Bob’s bench and round to the road at the Smithy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PTD offers to furtle in the Shrubberies for some Whisky (it is sub five after all!), but a quick count up shows we are missing a Pete…most likely having lost us when stopping for a Photo opportunity! We eventually see a light on the other side of the ressie, then El Pres’s phone rings…he’s at Bob’s bench (as we suspected) so he’s told to get a move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Car headlights loom and with a whiff of weed a milkshake cup is lobbed out towards El Pres (surely he’s not been mistaken for Farage!!?) before they zoom off, full on nobbery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
THere is just time to drop in on the Shrubberies, past bulky heat pumps and over boards as the underfloor heating pipes are just starting to go in, nice view of the curved brick vaulted ceiling of the cellar too! The kitchen is cosy with a log burner, and we get a wee dram of Wireworks Whisky (of Sean’s recipe). Then it’s back out and down to Sutton Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lord Lucan and the Plum Porter are the ales of choice, Burger the meal of choice, and we are in the middle round table in the back bar for a bit of variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TJ joins us and updates on ski conditions and troublesome mothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eighties music videos were the best (pick your fave), bits of ski trip planning bizzarely triggered by a question about towels, and the inevitable death of the internal combustion engine and EV’s…how do you charge your electric car if you live in a flat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The voucher is redeemed (std 25% off food) and we manage to negotiate a cheeky whisky post bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Butty van assisted, the Poynton, Bolly brigade avoid the cold ride home, although after 4 pints and a chaser the beer jacket is quite warm. Note these were sensible pints not the silly 5.9%’s of last week \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Crew: El Pres, Slim, PTD, Butty, Troll, Stunt Pub: TJ Route: Bottom of the Zag, Zag, Saddlers Way, Lower Teggs, Up past the Smithy to the fire road, 1st Right fire road back to the road (to Forest chapel), up the road to the entrance to the Steps and tracks down to the “main” road […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tnrs-2025"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5370,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5367\/revisions\/5370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/android-finder.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}