The Diary of a mountain bike route researcher and guidebook writer – Part 1
THE YORKSHIRE DALES
It’s amazing how quickly you forget things. Simple things like what to take on a 2-day route research trip, what goes where in the van, and even which batteries need charging for which camera/flashgun/GPS. We really were all over the place as we prepraed for our first dedicated routes trip of the year – a lightening-fast 2-day tour of the Yorkshire Dales.
But once we’d got our heads around it all, and fought our way through the Cheshire/Greater Manchester traffic, we quickly got back in the swing of things and cruised easily up to Burnsall at the southern end of the Dales.
The first day turned into a bit of an unplanned epic – it seems I’d also forgotten how to read the box on the mapping software that displays the total distance, so my 35km Medium turned into a much tougher 50km Hard – oh well… But the weather was great – perhaps the first real warm day of this spring – it was great to be back working again. And it was also good to be in the Dales.
The riding was fun without ever being too tough – the highlights included some great moor top singletrack on Barden Moor. And the pub for dinner was top-notch – aren’t Yorkshire pubs usually?
The second day’s outing was a feisty little one-up and one-down loop out of Kettlewell. Sadly the whole thing was engulfed in clag, making pictures a challenge. But the riding was absolutely superb – a brutal climb from dale floor to fell top followed by a pretty full-on descent.
We were on the road by lunch time and sad to be leaving so soon. But at least we’d opened the 2015 account now.
