Apedale The Wrong Way

Another lovely sunny Sunday saw us over in Reeth for the first time since we ventured out in the snow back in late December. The lovely weather had brought out the crowds and Reeth was teeming, unfortunately it hadn't brought out many of our squad and only three of us were doing this ride! Apparently we'd done much of this ride before, more than once, but always in the other direction. Today we were doing it "the wrong way", just for a change.

We started with a short road section from Reeth to Grinton, just long enough to warm up the legs ready for the slog ahead. Taking the Grinton to Redmire road we climbed and climbed and climbed. It seemed like it would never end, every time a welcoming looking bridleway left the road we'd pass it by and continue climbing. It was a climb to sort the men from the boys, and fortunately only men had turned up, the boys had decided to stay at home today.

Eventually, after about 1.5 miles of road climb, we took a bridleway off to the right. This didn't make life any easier, as the gradient stayed the same but was now on damp, slippery, energy-sapping grass instead of lovely tarmac. Eventually, after a total of 1100' in 2.5 miles, we reached the summit at The Height Of Greets. 1100', that was half of the day's total climbing done on the first hill!

Well, if this was the summit then the only way from here was down! Down we went to Dent's House, 500' of descent on fast, stony double track. There was some strange undulation going on here, a series of small, sharp bumps that reverberated through your arms despite the fork's best efforts and it felt really wierd. I guess I don't have my fork set for optimal small bump compliance, and Neil reported the same sensation.

First photos of the day at the bottom of this descent and then it was off again, though not straight back up as I'd expected, but a right turn and a little bit of (almost) flat before the climb steepened again up to Apedale Head.

From Apedale Head it's another fast plummet, not quite as fast as the last one because of the twisting nature of the track (though it looks straight on the map!) but all the more interesting for that and with a nice little splash through a ford near the end. The attention I'd paid to the "How To Keep Speed In Corners" section of the Dirt School DVD had obviously paid off as I had to wait a fair while for Neil to arrive at the bottom. Nothing compared to how long we waited for Tony. I had my phone out and was calling Dales Mountain Rescue when he eventually appeared, quoting "loads of photo stops" though knowing Tony this probably meant "fell off".

A brief lunch stop and then off again, taking the tarmac to the right as we followed the road to Grinton for about half a mile before taking a bridleway on the right. This starts off quite easy going but eventually turns into a right slog as you work your way at 45 degrees through a field towards a gate in the far corner. It's uphill, riddled with molehills and covered in half dead vegetation. It's horrible. Beyond the gate it doesn't get much better and soon we were all off and pushing as we trampled through the worst of the heather on a barely discernible track.

Glad to be able to get back in the saddle (I hate pushing) we joined the main track running along to Harkerside. Half a mile of easy going brought us to Blue Hill where we were saying goodbye to Tony for now. I was going to introduce Neil to the delights of "The Pipeline" and given Tony's variety of skeleto-muscular problems and his propensity for falling off, he'd decided not to risk this part of the route. So off we went, another lung busting climb (though thankfully short at only a couple of hundred feet) took us to the start of the bridleway to The Pipeline. This is just about the most indistinct bit of track we ever ride, and even locked  onto the GPS trail we still had no idea where we were supposed to be headed. Sam has an uncanny knack of being able to ride straight to the start of the descent, without him Neil & I weaved about a bit until we found the cistern, the man-made landmark that marks the starting point.

Seats down and off we went. The pipe seemed even more vicious than usual, determined to send you off in directions you didn't want to go as you switched sides to keep away from the worst of the rocks. Part way down we hit an unexpected hazard - snow. A shady gully harboured a patch of soft, deep snow that came up to your nadgers and meant that cleaning The Pipeline was out of the question today.

After a bit of a lark about in what is hopefully the last snow we'll see this year, we set off again. I got an action sequence of Neil taking on one of the tricker, rockier sections of trail, one of those bits where you just know that any sort of fall is going to hurt. A lot. I love the way his facial expressions seems to change from coolness to concentration to panic in the space of a few seconds.

Coolness

Concentration

Panic

He admitted later that "he was a bit scared". The Eston Mountain Man, scared of a few sharp rocks! Off we went to complete the lower section of the descent, nothing sharp in the way anymore, just a nice, fairly speed heather singletrack with a few hidden boulders. The whole thing was big fun, I love The Pipeline.

Nothing left now but the road back to Reeth, starting with the almost 40mph tarmac downhill to Grinton. If not for the narrow bends and the danger of cars coming the other way this could be one of the fastest downhill sections anywhere.

A quick change back at the car then for me & Tony it's off to The Dales Bike Centre for scones and a latte. For Neil it's off to work, no rest for the wicked. First scones of the year for The Bike Centre, and a damn fine effort.

Reeth - Apedale - Harkerside:
14.1 Miles, 2262' of up/down, 3 hours dead.

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Just The Two Of Us

Only two of us today - where have all the Muddybums gone? It's been ages since we had a good turnout.

I feared the worst when I saw the route we were doing - it was "the wrong direction", meaning that a lot of what are normally good downhills would become tough uphills. And so it proved.

Starting from Reeth we set off on the road to Helaugh. This was a lot faster and easier than the usual drag back from there to Reeth, usually done on tired legs, and we were there in no time.

Passing a couple of hundred m beyond the village we turned off up the private road to Thiernswood Hall (no mention at the gate of any right of way, but there is!), the pebble paved drive eventually giving way to some woodland then open moor. This was a new bit of track for us and would make an excellent downhill (the first of several excellent downhills we went up today), the steep grassy slope making it a difficult climb!

Eventually it levelled out and we followed the track on to Cringley Bottom where we were forced to make a detour. The bridleway went through a very narrow opening in a wall (bikes would have to be lifted over, impossible for horses to negotiate) and beyond that was an unrideable drop down to the stream. That probably explains the obstruction - you really wouldn't want to take a horse that way.

We cycled round it, rather than do the down and up push that would have been required, following the track north west to cross the stream by a ford, and then heading south on the road to rejoin our intended route.

Turning right at Surrender Bridge we climbed up to the Old Gang Smelting Mills where we stopped for a few photos and a bit of exploration. It was nice not to feel rushed by having other members with us today.

After 15 minutes or so we set off back up the track to Level House Bridge. Left here, over to Old Gang Mines and then on towards Bunton Hush. Last time we did this we went straight down the middle, but the actual bridleway on the map goes down the left hand side. We attempted to do that today but found that eventually it just seems to run out into an unrideable drop. We carried our bikes across huge boulders back into the centre of the hush and road the last section of it. With hindsight it's better to just go down the middle, but we had to have a look at the other route.

Left at the bottom of the hush, riding parallel to Gunnerside Gill down to our right. Eventually this bears left and climbs diagonally across the contours up to Winterings.This is quite an interesting (and not too difficult) climb that has quite a drop off to your right if you mis-place a wheel! We continued past Winterings on the track to Barf End, beyond which our intended route prived to be too boggy to be worth following, so we detoured for the second time, dropping through the gate to the right and following the wide, grassy track down to eventually drop sharp right down the concrete road to Low Row.

Right on the main road, then first left to cross the Swale and then turn left again towards Low Houses. Past the farm, where the road ends, a track starts to climb away at 45 degrees to the right. This is a right bugger! Steep, loose and damp it proved impossible to ride (firmer, dryer sections giving you false hope as they died out again after just a few meters).

Eventually we got to the top, coming out at a road where we turned right and rode as far as the next bend where we went offroad once more, sharp left through a gate taking us into a series of fields, all with gates between them. In the next 10 minutes I never wanted to see another gate! Eventually we ended up in a field full of thistles and had to track across to the far corner, a slog once more up soft ground that was akin to riding with the brakes on. The slog didn't end there, but thankfully the gates did, and we continued on up a quite indistinct moorland track (that would be a lovely, fast downhill) that eventually joined the main track up to Harker Hill.

Left here and on up to the top of Hight Harker Hill, where we began our search for the hidden bridleway that descends off to the left from there - this was the sole reason for doing this route backwards, so it had better be worth it!

There's absolutely nothing on the ground, so we did a bit of heather bashing until we eventually saw where the track must go. Heading off in that direction it eventually opened up before us, a lovely narrow singletrack over a couple of sets of crags that drops away towards the valley floor in a gully that's shared with a narrow bore pipeline that gives this route its colloquial name.

Some technically difficult sections are thankfully bordered by some lovely soft heather and all of our falling off was onto a nice soft blanket. Rumour has it that one fall was captured on video, though the evidence has yet to surface.

Eventually the steepness gives way to a more gentle traverse of the contours as the track heads towards the road to Grinton. Once at the road its a brisk blast back to Reeth, though en-route we stopped off at the Dales Bike Centre to check out their scones. They had none!

They did however promise to warm up some frozen ones for us (which didn't sound too appealing) so we decided to return there after packing away our bikes in Reeth.

The scones were decent enough, considering they'd been ice 10 minutes earlier, and the guy who runs the place is a nice bloke, and a keen biker who knows his stuff, especially about routes in the area. He seemed slightly miffed that we'd found "The Pipeline", perhaps he likes to think of it as his own little secret ;-)

Reeth - The Hush - The PipeLine:
19.5 miles in 4 hours 40, 1 hour 40 of which was spent exploring old smelting mills, snacking on go bars, rolling around in heather and sussing out scones. A tough but very enjoyable route with some lung-busting climbs, compensated for by some great views and a couple of decent downhills, especially the "secret" one at the end.