Having done the CTC’s Ron Kitching ride for the past 5 or 6 years, I found that I couldn’t make the date this year (Saturday 21 June). I still fancied doing something similar on the Sunday, so I got in touch with my occasional riding partner, Steve GT, and asked him if he fancied doing a ride over the North York Moors on Sunday 22 June. He agreed, so I devised a circular route, starting and finishing in Easingwold, and taking in White Horse Bank and Blakey Bank, plus the climb up Little Fryup Dale from Danby up to Danby Head. The route as planned was 92 miles with 2330 metres of climbing (I like my distances in miles and my climbing in metres – a bit of a contradiction, but it suits me).
Watching the rain falling heavily on the Saturday afternoon, I was glad that I wasn’t doing the Ron Kitching ride, and I felt quite pleased that we would be riding on the Sunday instead. The forecast for the Sunday mentioned strong winds for the northern half of the UK, but I fondly imagined that this was just the Met Office’s usual over-cautiousness, and that any gales would probably be confined to the far north of Scotland.
So Steve and I met up at 8.45am in Easingwold, where it was dry, reasonably warm and fairly breezy. We set off in good spirits and made good time through Oulston, Coxwold and Kilburn to the foot of White Horse Bank. It’s a few years since I’ve been up this one, and it felt harder than I remembered it. Perhaps it was made harder by the damp road surface, which meant that out-of-the-saddle efforts tended to be rewarded with wheelspin. Anyway, we got the top OK and we pushed on through Old Byland and Rievaulx to Helmsley. The tailwind on this section didn’t seem all that strong, though we perhaps should have taken more notice of the fact that we hardly had to turn a pedal on the very gentle easterly descent to Old Byland.
From Helmsley we avoided all but a short stretch of the A170 by diverting south through Harome, Wombleton and Welburn, before crossing north over the A170 and going via Fadmoor and Gillamoor to Farndale and Low Mill. Turning right in Low Mill, and then left past the delightfully named Bitch-a-Green farm, we came to the foot of Blakey Bank. This beast has about half a mile of fairly unrelenting steepness (I can’t remember whether the steepest bit is 20% or 25 %), but I always find it a bit of a struggle. It was still hard, even with a stiff breeze behind us, but when we got to the exposed moor at the top of the bank, the stiff breeze had become a very strong wind.
On our next leg, north to Castleton and Danby, the wind was still mostly behind us, seeming to come more or less from the South West. We stopped at the visitor centre in Danby for refreshment and a toilet stop, then turned to ride South West up Little Fryup Dale (what a lovely name). The wind by now had gone really wild and was blowing right in our faces. Even on the gentler lower slopes of the climb, I was in my lowest gear and unable to go faster than 6 mph. As the climb steepened, my speed dropped to 4 mph, and it was all we could do to keep the wheels and pedals turning. It took what seemed an eternity to complete the 5 miles which brought us to the top of the climb at Danby Head.
What’s more, our troubles were not over at that point. For the next 5 miles or so down to Rosedale Abbey, we were riding across an exposed moorland, with a vicious gusting crosswind, which was doing its best to blow us off the road and into the ditch on the near side. A steady crosswind is manageable – you just lean into it, but this one was mean and unpredictable - quite scary at times. I was conscious that I was descending a bit faster than Steve, but I’m afraid my instinct was to get down to the shelter of the valley as fast as I could, so I didn’t slow or wait until I got to Rosedale Abbey.
From Rosedale Abbey we declined the opportunity to climb the 33% Rosedale Chimney Bank (some other time, maybe!), and carried on down the valley before turning off right to Appleton le Moors, then across the A170 to Marton and Normanby. By this time the wind was blowing strongly even at low levels, and the whole of the rest of our ride was a constant struggle against the force of the wind. We followed the route of the Ron Kitching ride through Great Barugh, Amotherby and Coneysthorpe, and past the edge of the Castle Howard estate, before turning off west through Bulmer, Sheriff Hutton and Stillington, and finally back to Easingwold. The final 15 miles or so should have been a comparatively flat and easy pootle back to our starting point, but it turned out instead to be an exhausting battle against the wind. Our legs by this time had almost run out of energy and even the slightest hill had me reaching for the granny ring.
We finally got back to Easingwold at about 4.15 pm, absolutely shattered, and my computer told me that our average riding speed for the 92 miles was a measly 13.59mph.
I’m not sure whether Steve was glad he had agreed to join me on this ride. We were both too exhausted to say much as we loaded our bikes into our cars. I don’t think I realised at the time just how bad the weather had been. It was only when I got home and saw news items about trees blown over etc. that I realised how bad it was, and possibly how lucky we were to have completed the ride without getting blown off the road.
That’s the second gale force ride I’ve been on recently – is it just me, or has 2008 been an especially windy year so far?