The memorable ride that was "Ribblehead" 2007. The story is penned by Charlie below, but I will set the scheme first. A few folks were asking how long the route was? But it’s the mid-summer ride, so you can ride till late and there was a full moon (somewhere). Now the weather had been damp to say the least and it was raining during the day, but not to be put off C&C turned up to egg each other on!
The story unfolds…
"It was billed as the "mid summer madness ride" and coinciding with the full moon seemed an important criteria to allow the planned route to be completed in the light. All was looking good up to about lunchtime.... then the heavens opened. A quick text during the afternoon, while in a meeting, confirmed at least that Chris intended riding, and a phone call while coming out of work confirmed my fears that most of the others had decided that it was indeed madness. Driving out of Ingleton, a text from Chris M told us that he too was bowing out on the evening. Parked up at Ribblehead the cars were being buffeted around in the wind and the rain was drumming down. The original ride that had been recce’d, after the initial climb from Ribblehead had a fantastic descent into Dentdale but on an evening like this we knew that this was too committing to be in another valley. Plan B came into action. A short ride along the road with the wind behind – not such a bad evening after all – turn left at Low Bridge and follow Black Rake Road up to where it joined the road to Dent, all very rideable, even up hill. Turn right across to Newby Head Gate where there is a newly made up bridleway. We had seen this on the recce and thought it must join up with the Cam High Road. A very good gradient all the way with one or two steeper sections. By this point the stream that it follows was starting to go into full spate, still we were relatively sheltered from the wind by the moor but we were in thick cloud with less than 20ft visibility. We crossed the wall at Gavel Gap where we were relieved to see the nicely made up track continued after the gate. Just a few hundred yards later it ended and while we could make out the vague continuation in the limestone pavement and shortly cropped grass we did have a few concerns. We peddled on, all the while becoming more exposed to the driving rain. We then could make out a wall on our right, so we sheltered behind this while we studied the map. The wall was in fact 2 walls with a grassy strip in between. At this point we worked out that the Cam High road was about 12 ft away on the other side, we just could not see it! Down hill all the way from here (we will leave out the bit that we were now straight into the gale force winds and the rain – that might put some people off). A couple of gates to negotiate to break up the flow of this fantastic down hill. We were steadily cooling down (they will think we got warm on the climb) and as we came off the tarmac top section the path had turned into a stream. Both of us were hoping that neither of us punctured on the obscured rocks and drops. The water was now deep enough that you could have floated a kayak! We reached a stream near the bottom and decided that wadding across might have easily resulted in us being swept off our feet. We found a narrow section – passed the bikes across and jumped. The main Gayle Beck is thankfully crossed by a bridge as I have never seen this as high! All that was left to do was to put our head down and paddle back to the cars. Much laughter was had and we did decide that true hypothermia was when you went beyond the shivering violently stage. I find today (Saturday) that there is water sloshing round inside my tyres – so I have had to take them off to dry – not sure where that got in. "
Next Thursday it’s Lowick for the Grizedale ride, with the downhill into High Nibthwaite.
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