Well, that's a recce run of the York to Pock bit done. Spotted a stoat in his winter coat in Bishop Wilton, and I got up Givendale with only 2 "stop to pick up lungs" pauses this time. Arch apparently hit 33 mph down Grimthorpe, and as I was gaining on her quite a lot of the way I guess I was doing a bit more than that! There's a very pleasant tea rooms in Millington which had loads of (mostly unlocked) bikes outside (beans on toast £3.50, cakes all under 2 quid, excellent cream scones), and even on a grey gloomy day the long steady haul up through Millington Pastures is very pretty, although I was quite glad that a couple of oncoming cars gave us a good excuse to stop and pull over
The road from Huggate to Warter is glorious - a couple of short sharp-ish ups where I had to pedal a bit, but otherwise that whole stretch can just about be coasted. There's a couple of (in my terms) bastard hills out of Warter, but the looooooooong descent down kilnwick percy hill into Pock compensates more than adequately - it was only spoilt by the dimwit in a motor who overtook me only in order to instantly indicate left, and pull into a farmtrack, and by the three loony free-range dogs chasing a rabbit near the bottom who tried to run out in front of me twice. As a result I didn't keep up with Arch. Mind, she apparently flew down most of it at around 38mph, which is at the top end of what I'd dare to do anyway!
We went for the short-ish flat-ish route back, with no Wowbadgers on Northgate lane this time, and totalled 55 miles from the Den and back to Arch's Seekrit Bunker.
Possible very early elevenses stop just before Stamford Bridge at the Balloon Tree if the weather's grim and we expect to cut the ride short. But, weather permitting, I'd rather do what we did today and stop in the village for a loo and shop stop and press on a bit, if knees and lungs are agreeable. There's a potential pub lunch in Bishop Wilton if we decide to chop out the majority hills but straight to Millington, even at our leisurely pace today, got us to the cafe for a half 1-ish lunch so about 3 hours in. There's a couple of alternate routes back from Millington that avoid Huggate and Warter and cut out a couple of wee climbs if we feel the need, but the way we went today York - Pocklington is around 35 miles, didn't involve any walking (even for me) and includes the best part of 10 miles of freewheeling knee-respite.
Lovely ride out really - and I was warm enough in a vest and a ls jersey (OMG, I was actually out in public IN DAYLIGHT in lycra and the world hasn't ended) with mitts - only really started to feel cold in the feet and the fingers for the last few miles once the sun went down and the wind got up.
