Delightful Dales?- A Snowy Audax

So Sundays ride was a nice hilly 200 km Audax round the dales, the weather forecast on Saturday promised sunny intervals and light winds it was looking promising. However waking up 1.30am Sunday morning and looking outside it had been snowing- not so promising. 

We arrived at the start in Clitheroe and meet up with Amy (http://trio25.blogspot.co.uk) on her nice new Kinesis for an early start at 7.30- and set off into sleet, rain and more sleet. We managed to make good time to Kettlewell for the first big climb of the day over Park Rash- this was where it started to get interesting, we probably got 3/4's of the way up before it became unrideable with snow covering the road, this being the point you remember road tyres and snow are not a good combination.  So everyone got off and pushed over the top for about a mile till we hit some landrover tracks and could gingerly start the descent to Middleham. 

Park Rash- it got worse after this...

After a quick hot choc to warm us up it was off over the tops past the rifle ranges at Leyburn into some sunshine and a nice crosswind, another fast descent took us to Fremmington where we had to stop at the Dales bike centre for a very good coffee and some much needed cake!

Fueled up we rode through Swaledale which is actually quite rolling! before another climb up and over to Nateby and a control stop at the Black Bull pub where the landlady feed us sandwiches- these were much needed as  we still had another 84km to go and had just turned into the wind. From Nateby we climbed out the valley and dropped onto the main Sedburgh road - before turning off to climb the Coal road which again  due to it's height was covered in snow. This was mostly rideable if you could manage to stay in the Landrover tracks and still had it in your legs, once over the top the road becomes a steep downhill with lots of twisty turny switchbacks that had us all stopping at the bottom trying to get some feeling back into our hands.

On the Coal Road.

 Another 'rolling' valley road soon popped us out on the Newby Head pass and from there it was a quick 50 km via Horton in Ribblesdale, Settle and some interesting back roads to the finish. 

A long days riding,11 hours though we managed 128 miles, 13,008ft of climbing and probably should have ate more. Big thanks to Amy as always for the company, the mindless chat (between panting up hills) and Haribo's when needed!

Snowy scenes in Dovestones dog trotting heaven

A secluded roadside campspot at the weekend with some early morning pup training on the Pennine Way. Hot chocolate in Settle, yum.

Scoping

Out wandering around looking for wild launch spots.

Great day in the North Peak.

Warm sunshine sprouting from a cold, foggy start.

placebo

 

 

time to shed some weight

pbw sth grvl

running and kipping

So, we've got this running ultra entered for October - a great excuse to get some miles in for the 3 Peaks Cyclocross race a month before. Weather looked great this last weekend, just for a change, so we grabbed our chance along with our bivvy bags and headed out to recce a big chunk of the route.


A handy bus ride out to a point around 15 miles into the 50 mile route and we were away.  Trotting, chatting and sometimes just walking fast we stopped after and hour or so and had some tea in a freshley mown field with ever curious cows checking us out. Once we'd got going again, cue a bit more 'fast walking' to let the pasta digest, it wasn't long before it was getting dusky. Darkness soon followed and we were flailing around in places as the route challenged us in the dark - luck played more part than judgement in some places, dark is very dark in the woods.

We carried on in this vein for a couple of hours and jumped behind a wall at around midnight, snuggled up in our bags we were buffeted and blustered by high winds for the next few hours. We woke at seven to a completely mist covered hillside, went back to sleep for a bit! Another few miles in unknown territory through damp woods and over sandy moorland trails and we were heading back towards sunny Manchester on the train. Well worth the trip out as we have now got most of the route covered. A night on the hill is always worth the effort though, eh?

Rich.