RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

2016

“The cyclist is a man half made of flesh and half of steel that only our century of science and iron could have spawned.” — Louis Baudry de Saunier, 19th-century French author

 

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5 In August 2016 my partner Joy and I, suffering from a self-diagnosed case of hair-raising adventure-deficiency, ditched our perfectly reasonable lives in Boston, Massachusetts for ten weeks out on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. Beginning in Banff, Canada and ending at the U.S./Mexico border, the 2,768 mile off-road cycling route traces the spine of the continent, crosses vast wilderness areas, and features a massive elevation gain of over 200,000 feet.
Then came along the ‘mountain bike’ and boy did it upset people! It wasn’t a ‘proper bike’, the riders were ‘ill disciplined’, and it was just another fad that wouldn’t catch on! Oh well someone got that one wrong eh? But anyway once things had settled down again, everyone appeared to get along fine. Everyone knew their place and on the odd occasion the ranks even crossed over each other. You know touring cyclists riding MTB’s, mountain bike riders hurtling around the track, racing cyclist putting slicks on MTB’s and using them as winter trainers! But little did they know what was to come... Okay we can blame it on Brad, blame it on Cav, blame it on Vicky, blame it on the boogie? But they’re here to stay!...THE MAMIL!!...
The overwhelming stillness at the foot of Dubh Mór mirrored myriads of lively images above the tranquil waters of Loch Coruisk. Images of a night of extremes at Camasunary. Added to these the images evoked by the stories about Boreraig, Suisnish, Torrin and the Blaven clearances and transportation in the 19th century, together with those of the war graves at Kilmarie cemetry on the shores of Loch Slapin, made me wonder what had really drawn me to these rugged parts of Skye.
Albert Winstanley paused on the narrow lane to Thorpe-in-the-Hollow. It was hot work, riding in this unaccustomed heat wave, and he settled back on a grassy bank to have a snack. The cream cakes he’d bought in Skipton had melted in the heat and had to be eaten with a spoon. Now, with shirt, shoes and socks off, he settled back and dreamt of times past…
It’s not too often you want to write about a ‘recce’ ride but....Given that Sunday’s forecast promised everything short of a biblical rain of frogs it was pretty astonishing that we turned up at all considering we were heading up over high and exposed ground on the moors behind Grassington, Yorkshire.After the Nidderdale excursion, or ‘The ice road of death’ as Ali Wood named it, where we only survived frostbite by eating vast amounts of beans on toast and lots of super strong coffee, yours truly was going to remain warm and dry come what may!
As Rob Newton has been often heard to say ‘it’s got to be done’ so that’s how I felt about a bridleway across the southern flank of Fountains Fell. So with this object in mind four of us set off from the centre of Settle on a cool and windy day. Most eastward departures from Settle involve a long steep climb and our route was no exception as we rode north-east up the bridle path that joins the even steeper tarmac road that comes up from Langcliffe. Our efforts weren’t helped by me turning uphill too early on a false trail.

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