Monday 21st May

Well, it appears it's taking me longer to write this up than it took to ride the bloody route.

Well, where was I? The New Inn at Appltreewick, lovely morning, sun was shining and it was going to be a hot one. Below is a couple of views looking out from the front of the pub followed by a couple of piccies of the pub itself.







John's got the livery at the back of the pub and is well worth having a chat with.

The vodafone signal is non-existent here so bring plenty of change for the phone box over the road.

From Appltreewick I headed off to Linton and then Linton Moor coming out just past Cracoe and then taking the path to Hetton Common via the side of the reservoir.




You can see the path back from the first picture above, the edge of the reservoir is just visible and you can see from the path that it was an easy, hard surface. The view to the west was also great. This looked like it was going to be an easy and enjoyable day. Fool that I was.

From the top of the Weets you can see the great scenery:





And below is the worlds stupidest animal, more about them later, (believe me, lots more) :


So from the Weets I trotted off to Street Gate. A simple and easy enough ride then a right turn over High Cote Moor. At this point I should have guessed what my day was going to be like. It was more of the soft, steep, grassy terrain I'd seen the day before, hard work riding, slow work pushing and a good few kilometres of climb before I got to the top and I had my lunch on a set of rocks at the top.

As I was writing this I was trying to remember what I had for lunch and then I remembered. Now here's a tip for you. At breakfast I asked the owners of the New Inn if they could make me up some ham butties, they were good, nice think pieces of proper ham all squashed at the bottom of my bag, heaven.

Over this whole distance I'd met only two other people, two blokes, on the mobile phone, just in front of me eating their lunch. Can't get away from the things. Mind, around there you have take advantage of the high points when ever you can.





The decent was better than the climb thankfully and off I went to Arncliffe to head over Moor End Fell. What a climb, no chance of riding this, slogging it up to the top over peaty, boggy ground before descending into Starbottom and another climb up to Walden Moor. Here I met a bloke who had just walked down from Buckden Pike and was gobsmacked I was taking a bike up there, should have had the alarm bells ringing really shouldn't it..

It was a long push up to the top of Walden Moor but the views were worth it:





Now the first picture shows the way marker so I knew where I was, then...and off I went.

I followed the track as well as I could make out and from that point it was all down hill to the road in the valley but it was a little boggy in places and broken up. Eventually I came across a well laid out farm track and took this to be the bridleway, well you would wouldn't you with no other obvious tracks around. Off I set and this is where those bloody sheep got on my wick. They have a really clever trick for getting away from you. They stand in the field where you're obviously not going to go, wait for you get close and then run onto the bridleway, lolloping off shitting themselves and if you stop, so do they, you just hope they have a bloody heart attack so you can get on with the ride.

Anyway, this track meanders around the hill side and eventually drops down to the road but I've come out near Hill Top Farm, about a mile further up the road than I was expecting to and the track I've just ridden on isn't on the map, bizarre. And to make matters worse Hill Top Farm has a Jack Russel and an open gate so as I ride past the drive the little sod comes running up trying to nip my feet, oh for an engine and a reverse gear...

The rest of the days ride was on the road and the bunkhouse at Thoralby was fine. There was one other person in the place and, luckily, he knew which way the pub was so we set off at about seven for something to eat. Lovely sun, nice day. I'd put my clothes in the wash before we left and hung them to dry and suddenly realised I'd washed all my notes so I've been blagging it so far, no notes to work on and the note pad wouldn't work from this point on. Mice and men, mice and men.

I did make one decision, after the days struggles, it had taken me over eight hours to do sixty kilometres, I was leaving early the next day, I was getting caught out in the dark on the eighty kilometre days.

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