Mostly Mountain Biking

The shin splints linger on (but we won't dwell on that topic) and so the mountain bike has been getting a bit of a hammering in the last few weeks.

Hilary and I had an absolutely splendid ride north of Chesterfield about 3 weekends ago.  It was the Linacre North circuit in the White Peak Mountain Biking guide by Vertebrate Graphics.  I don't have any photos sadly but the route comprises a open and wooded trails with some fine singletrack.  If you are into mountain biking (and what right minded person isn't?), then I can highly recommend this little treasure of a route.  It wasn't without some personal cost however.  I broke another spoke and got a slow puncture but close enough to the end that I could get away with stopping and pumping up the tyre every mile or so.  I also got into conversation with a woman about her full suspension bike and she let me try it out.  Apart from the frame being too small, I stepped through a door into another world of fun but more of that later.  (15.5 miles and 2300')


Two weekends ago we took the campervan up to the NY Moors and did a route out from Goathland, over Lilla Howe, round the back of Fylingdales, down to Levisham for a brew at the eponymous station on the NY Moors Railway (and in time to see the Foxcote Manor pull in) before heading up over Howl Moor to cross the Lyke Wake Walk at Simon Howe and then a fast descent back down into Goathland.

Cross on Lilla Howe - visited many times on Lyke Walk Walk crossings

Fylingdales early warning station

 This is another superb route (The Goathland Circuit in the N Y Moors Mountain Biking guide also published by Vertebrate) and a real mix of wide trails, single track and some exciting downhill with the added frisson of the obligatory run-in with the Fylingdales security police.  The bridleway passes inside the outer perimeter fence and they really aren't keen on this.  The first time, about 5 years ago, I got stopped and encouraged to leave by the nearest gate! 

Another puncture

Malo Cross

The Foxcote Manor pulling into Levisham Station

 Once again there was a minor bike failure, with the new inner tube developing a small hole on the inside seam.  I think I may have been jinxed by a woman we met earlier in the day who was repairing a puncture and who had had 4 others the previous weekend.  That feels like bad juju to me.

We stopped for a brew and cake at Levisham Station and did some mild train spotting before heading north up Newtondale, through the forest, pausing to harvest sloes destined to become an intoxicating liquor in Hilary's kitchen (aka gin palace).  The singletrack to Simon Howe (crossed by the Lyke Wake Walk) and on to Two Howes Rigg is superb and the ride culminated with a mad descent over grass back down intio Goathland.  23 miles (of which 20 was off road) and 2,300'.

Finally, for a birthday treat I decided to hire a full sus bike from Eighteen Bikes in Hope last week and took it for a 25 mile,  4000' test ride round the edge of the Hope Valley, going over Shatton Moor and then down through the cement works, up Pin Dale, then Dirtlow to round the back of Mam Tor and on to Hollins Cross, down into Edale for a brew and then back up over Win Hill.  I came off Shatton down the wrong track and ended up in Abney and off the map, forcing a bit of an extended ride to get to Bradwell and back on route and I was starting to think I was never going to get anywhere where I could put the bike through its paces.  However, once I got up Pin Dale, things started to look up and I plugged the iPod into my head and started singing away to Lindisfarne and Hayseed Dixie like a demented thing, as I flew down steep rocky singletrack into Edale that I had hitherto shown several degrees of circumspection towards.  It was a day of fun and mud in equal measure and turned out to be rather expensive.  I bought the bike and am collecting it on Thursday!

Shatton Moor

The track off Mam Tor, looking towards Hollins Cross

Hope Cross, looking up Edale

Caving Stuff

Well, the Craven Pothole Club's Gaping Gill winch meet has come and gone for another year.  It always feels like the end of summer when I get back down to Clapham on Bank Holiday Monday.  A few interesting changes down in the Main Chamber this year.  The mud banks at the west end have eroded significantly from when I was last there, two years ago and a small depression has formed in the floor at the east end, a couple of metres from East Pot.  It appeared at the start of the meet and was deeper by the end.  I wonder what that will look like by next year.

I did 5 guiding sessions in Main Chamber over the two weekends.  When I got back to Sheffield after the first weekend I could hardly talk.  It had been very noisy down there on the Sunday after the previous night's heavy rain.  Perhaps I need a voice coach before next year.  We had one person who didn't like it and wanted to go straight back out.  She said to me, "I bet you get a lot of people like me" and I didn't have the heart to say, "Well no, you're the first in the 20 years since I started guiding down here.

Straws in Stream Passage

My friend Hilary came up for the first weekend and I took her out to Stream Chamber.  I tried to go there with the Pieman two years ago but had forgotten the way round Mud Pot.  It turned out to be round the lip of the intimidating big, dark hole we stopped at.  Anyway, we went about as far as you can along Stream Passage and I also had a quick look up North West Extension but I was there years ago and I recalled that it gets 'orribly muddy, so I turned back after a short distance.  We also went out to SE Pot and to the bottom of the 110' pitch in Bar Pot.  The climb up from SE Aven into Bar seems to get more polished and scarier every year (or maybe I've just lost my bottle).

At the bottom of the 110' in Bar Pot

I found this video of a cave rescue from 1964 on the web earlier in the week.  Given it's probably one of the first caving films made for TV, the quality fo the photography is stunningly good.

http://www.yfaonline.com/assetDetails.cfm?film=2248

Highlights from Font and N Wales

I've got very lazy about this blogging malarky of late.  I have however not been so lazy in other areas.  There's been a lot of work stuff occupying my time and there's been some walking and rather more cycling to work, which the dedicated reader will recall involves crossing Stanage before descending down into Hathersage.  In the last couple of weeks, families of grouse have been in evidence above Stanage Edge, running about like refugees fleeing a war zone, as if they knew that the glorious twelfth was about to seal their fate.

At the end of last month, I took my son Joe and two of his mates over to Fontainebleau, just south of Paris, to do some bouldering.  Font (as it's known to English climbers and Bleau by the French ones) has long been a climber's Mecca but I'd never been to the area before.  I knew it was a series of boulders in the forest but hadn't realised just how many boulders and how big the forest.  There are in fact a couple of dozen areas spread over something like 50 sq kms.  The boulders are typically 3m to 4m high and are of rounded sandstone (so the rock feels a bit like crags in Northumberland) and too hard for me but the boys had a good time.

The lads on a boulder problem

Cul du Chien (head of the dog)

One of the 'beaches' at Font

We visited the Trois Pignons area, which has half a dozen groups of boulders in close proximity.  I spent my time cycling on some of the sandy trails through the trees and getting lost.  I'd set the GPS onto a datum suitable for France but the IGN map I'd bought in the local InterMarche wasn't a good scale for navigation on forest trails.  On the last afternoon, I found a detailed map on a notice board in the car park.  Doh!  Technically, the cycling isn't hard (unlike the bouldering) but I managed to break a spoke.

Typical sandy track through the trees

The useful map I found just before we left!

From Font we drove to the Lleyn peninusla in N Wales and stopped in a  field of sheep above the cliffs at Tudweiliog.  The parents of one of Joe's mates have been going there for years and were already set up by the time we arrived.  I'd only planned to drop Joe off there and then come back to Sheffield but in the end I stayed on for a week.  I got some more cycling in, during which the front gear changer spontaneously fell apart, leaving me with low gears only, which at least meant I could go up hills even if my top speed was limited to 14 mph. 

Our campsite at Tudweiliog

Joe and I did a couple of multi-pitch trad rock routes over in Snowdonia, taking alternate leads and doing the sort of climbing I was more in tune with.  Our first route was Faith, a popular VDiff on Idwal Slabs, off the Ogwen Valley.  The climbing is easy but it gave us a chance to sort out our multi-pitch technique. Joe is new to this and I haven't done much climbing since 1992 .  It all went like clockwork and the scariest thing was the desecnt route down by the east wall of the slabs, which technically speaking, was probably harder and certainly more exposed than Faith.

On the first stance of Faith

The track back to the Ogwen Valley.  Pen yr Ole Wen behind me.

Our second route was at Tremadog, just outside Portmadog, which traditionally is the place to climb when it is too wet in Snowdonia.  I'd never climbed here before - usually, when it was too wet, I had either gone walking or done some low grade route in big boots.  Tremadog climbing focusses around Eric Jone's cafe.  Eric Jones is something of a 'rock' legend, who along with the likes of Joe Brown and others did a number of bold first ascents in the sixties as well as making the first British solo ascent of the Eiger North Wall, a balloon flight over Everest and a base jump off Angel Falls.  When we called in for a brew, Eric was sitting in the corner looking uncompromisingly fit for a man in his mid-seventies.

We picked at route called Poor Man's Peutery, which is graded severe but has different descriptions in different guidebooks.  In the end, we started up a route called Borchgrevink, a small gully with a couple of trees in, which parallels the first two pitches of PMP before joining it.  Joe led off, which was good as I found the first pitch quite energetic.  Joe also led the bold move onto a nose of rock, protected by a large iron piton and, while he set up the belay, I watched an Osprey from the local RSPB site, come out of the trees and circle below me.  I led the final pitch, which was a thought provoking crack climb up a steep slab.

So that's about it.  I've been back at work for two weeks and resumed the commute across Stanage on the mountain bike, while the weather holds up.  I must be getting fitter.  Three months ago it took me an hour fifteen to get from home to the office.  I'm now down to fifty minutes.  The last big obstacle is working out a line through the steep rocky section off Stanage Causeway.