And so, what surely must be the most protracted ride report in the history of YACF lurches a step forwards.
Day 6 - Crowden to BlackwellThe day began early for me, woken in the wee small hours absolutely freezing cold. Several cycles of clothes on, snooze a bit until I give in and find more clothes to put on. Eventually I gave up totally still freezing cold. My bag is rated down to 11 degrees, surely it cannot have been that cold in flippin August? So I get up and very nearly fall straight over again. My ankle is seized pretty much solid and it takes me a
goodpainful 5 minutes to hobble the 50 yards to the bog block to try and warm up a bit in the drying room.
After half an hour or so I head outside and start hobbling about extremely unsure I'm going to be able to continue. I have to get back on the bike even if it's only to get to a station so the daily routine begins. Mr Bond emerges and asks for a slow start as his knees are suffering and so that he can do some maintenance such as fitting his new brake pads. Phew! In the end it takes 2 hours for me to cover the jobs that usually take a bit more than half that. After those two hours though I'm mobile to the extent I can walk slowly rather than just step-swear-pause step-swear-pause.
While the pair of us are munching our granola we chat with a German couple also touring on bikes. Apparanly it was 5 degrees
inside their tent that night. No wonder I suffered.
10:12 we tentatively head off and I'm pleasantly surprised to find the pain is pretty light when cycling. Therefore we head towards Glossop where there's a Halfords that should provide a replacement for my poorly chain. At least the weather is nice:
In Glossop Halfords provides:
And I'm becoming the painted man:
Chain fitted and not feeling too bad in the ankle we carry on though a tedious number of stops are needed to dial the new chain in.
Soon we're on a hilltop again soaking up the view:
The way ahead looks fun too:
And it was.
There had been much discussion over the days about the history under our wheels, these roads in many cases must be centuries old. The effort, the investment in sweat that these roads represent for mile after mile after mile. It makes an impression on you after many hours of quiet contemplation. But much of the discussion was about what the roads were like way back when. Mr Bond pointed out that they are too elaborate to be just year round access to grazing, a much narrower path would provide that. Therefore they must have once been fit for carts and therefore again they must have been far smoother than their current condition. At the foot of the drop from the hills above Hayfield we found a short stretch that perhaps gives a clue:
This point marked the end of a very pleasant descent of 160m or so, over in 9 minutes though compared to the 50 it took to climb. The Sett Valley Trail, another disused railway bed, delivered us to Hayfield and the
Roundhouse provided a hearty feed and gallons of tea. We passed on the cake this time as the hot course was much larger than some of the stain-on-a-slate photos in their gallery would lead you to expect. That and the cake servings passing by to brave customers were huge. Vast even or perhaps epic. Just the cream layer in the middle of the victoria sponge was an inch thick. You'd need crampons, ice axes and possibly oxygen to tackle one.
We dragged ourselves away nervous of what lay ahead as we knew that even by the standards of the Pennine Bridleway the climb ahead was a bit of a monster. A gentle climb on road out of town led towards, at gone 4 in the afternoon, where we originally planned to camp the previous night. The climb rapidly became what was by some way the toughest, silliest bitch of a climb of the week. I don't know what the gradient was on the early stretch, I couldn't keep moving long enough to get a reading off my GPS. It has to have been 45 degrees in places, we were lifting the bikes as much as pushing them. This photo looking back just doesn't do it justice:
Higher up the going is like this:
The view, once this berk gets out of the way, will be pretty special. And thats only one third of the way up.
The climb seemed endless, particularly the parts I had to walk. Near the top:
At the top we took a break as it was nice and sheltered. A local looked on:
After taking an hour twenty to haul ourselves up the better part of 300 meters we had our second pleasingly long downhill stretch of the day, 160m in 11 minutes. At the foot of which was yet another stream to ford marking the start of yet another climb:
The nice path through the stream didn't last:
40 minutes of climbing recovered most of the 160m. At the top of this we crossed the Sheffield Road and found this sign:
As usual for us time was making better progress than we were so we could not investigate.
Ahead, as we caught our breath and took the above photo, lay a long tarmaced descent. Great, fun times. Except that I knew I was well on the way to spent so there was much checking of maps as once down I had my doubts about getting back up. The printed route plan I was carrying suggested quite a long respite but we were by no means done climbing for the day. We checked and satisfied tipped our wheels over the edge of the perversely named Rushup Road which we fair rushed down. After a long stretch on road which tended to downhill the inevitable climb when it came still on road wasn't as bad as I feared.
After passing through the small village of Wheston a section of pretty unpleasant cowshit covered farm tracks followed. Passing through one utter craphole of a farmyard I picked up a net of some kind in my chain which by the time I stopped had become a solid tangled mass around my cassette. I feared the worst, a bent dropout. Fatigue brought me close to a sense of humor failure, I was not in a good place. Mr Bond broke out the old fashioned penknife he is never caught without and got hacking and in a few minutes work freed my steed and found no damage done.
Slogging on, and I really was slogging by now, we skirted the Buxton quarries. That seemed to go on forever not helped by some of the weaker signage of the day needing quite a lot of map check stops. Eventually we came to the vista of the Monsal Vale:
As I turned from taking this I fell flat on my arse, just fatigue causing coordination fail.
The descent into the valley was not for the feint of heart due to the drops but by now, even knackered, our handling of our unwieldy rides was up to the job. Mr Bond experienced his first drivetrain event, a jumped chain wedged well in behind the granny ring.
We were crossing the vale so had yet another silly climb out. By now I'm at the
talkinggibbering to myself stage. That climb seemed to take an age but the gpx shows it as only 12 minutes. Once out we had a short run to
Beech Croft Farm.
At 20:40 as we rode into the farm I confirmed to Mr Bond what he surely must have known hours ago, I was utterly spent and it was his turn to do the thinking. As he headed into the shop he missed me having a clipless moment, I just just lay there giggling until able to extricate myself.
There was a good range of comestibles on sale in the site shop from which we selected a fair pile. As it was so late the till had been cashed up leaving the the owner to add up our sizeable list with pen and paper. Many many minutes later on the 4th attempt he came up with a total he was satisfied with. I'm not complaining at all, it's just one of those amusing situations in life, all we wanted to do was get on, get pitched before the light failed totally then showered and fed. Halfway through the maths marathon we both wanted to just thrust beer tokens his way and run. Lovely people though and a truly gorgeous site.
We were directed to the Duke of Edinburghs area of the site well away from anyone else and which we would have to ourselves, perhaps our aroma prompted this.
We pitched during which I ate a gazillion calorie flapjack that helped no end. We showered. We ate. We looked at maps and began to realise that there was comparatively little left to do tomorrow. Sure there was a hill to climb in the morning but nothing remotely like we'd experienced 'till now. Are we actually going to get there?
Route planned:
http://cycle.travel/map/journey/14125Route taken:
https://www.strava.com/activities/433959363
