Sun 14th – Day 5 A cold beautiful day dawned and it looked like the ride would end how it started. After a freezing start from the camping barn the hills were long, steep and immediately cooked me into a sweat.
Once I was at the top of the moors again I turned off the road and followed the double track along the ridge marvelling at the amazing scenery basked in the morning sunshine.
The North York Moors proved the most scenic and enjoyable single track part of the whole ride. I rode past an abandoned iron works (which I shouldn’t have) as I was enjoying the scenery so much I missed the turning.
After descending down the wrong way and checking the GPS I finally found the correct single track which was actually hidden in the moor scrub. Quite a lot of the track was rock slabs to provide a non boggy path across the moors. Unfortunately when the rock slabs finished this brought danger as I found myself catapulted over the handlebars as the front wheel dug into a rather deep boggy section. This resulted in a bit of a chuckle and a stinky mud logged glove.
After a long and bumpy downhill I left the moors and passed though several village and encountered a 33% gradient hill which climbed me up to sleighs moor. There had been a lot of big steep hills today which had surprised me somewhat.
Unfortunately the bridleway marked on the map didn’t exist so I finally found an alternative route down into the forest and managed to take a few wrong turns to find my way back to the road again.
It had clouded over again and it was all road riding as I screamed down the hill into robin hoods bay and the end of the ride. Cold, tired, relieved but missing a feeling of satisfaction I waited for Steve to kindly pick me up in the “chasing trails” work van.
This ride hadn’t given me the same buzz as the west country way. I don’t know why. It had been longer and harder and the scenery more dramatic. But it had only been around 2/3rds of the original route and about 30k’s of the ride had to be skipped.
But it certainly had been an adventure, cycling through the storm, making a decision to turn around on the first day, and finding alternative routes to complete the ride.
Daily Stats
Distance : 56km
Elevation gain : 1025m
Elevation loss : 1200m
Max Elevation : 400m
Min Elevation : 10m
Start Time : 10:00 AM
End Time : 3:50 PM
Total Time : 05:50
Riding Time : 04:16
Average speed : 13.1km/ph
Max speed : 72km/ph
Notes : 10k extra getting lost. Crossed out of north york moors
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