Having a trip down to see family before Christmas, I thought I'd tie it in with a ride over the moors... Another venue I'd been looking at all year, so a quick note onto the Northumbrian TRF FB pages, saw a reply from Joe, (yes the one from 'The Green Lane Relay film') & a meet up arranged with a +1 too... The little old DR was in fine company with Joe's 2013 KTM 350 EXCF & Gavin's 2009 WR250F... both nice bikes...
We met up just south of Great Ayton on a nice morning, warm with patches of blue sky, (who'd have thought it was December in the UK??). A quick introduction, then some chat about bikes & routes & we were off to Battersby Plantation for a rough ascent up what tuned out to be one of the toughest lanes of the day...
I quickly found out that I should have replaced my back tyre before this trip out, it basically just spun up in the mud & got worse as the day went on!! Ooops...
Deep ruts, mud, rocks, sweating & swearing ensued with a bit of laughing too, mainly at me as the other two had easily cruised up picking better lines & having nice grippy new back tyres!!
Eventually at the top we carried on in a clockwise direction heading over towards Whitby. We included lots of muddy ascents, some with ruts, some for bikes only, some with barely a mark on them, the views were lovely, the Moors the same as they have ever been, wild, almost remote & we appeared to have them to ourselves for the most part.
Rutland Rigg was on the route, which is a great 9 mile long green lane, it's long & can be ridden pretty fast, the ascent & descents have little technical bits on them which were cool & added a bit of spice... for us we never saw anyone on any of the lanes except for two really chatty guys walking their dogs.
For myself, I found out I'm still crap at riding ruts, the rocky up hills were no problems but the back end would spin out at the touch of any wet grass & I usually ended up on my arse somehow!!
Hey ho the fun of riding off road...
I dutifully blamed the knackered tyre & my old bike, trying to salvage some pride but the reality is that this kind of riding is totally different to riding in the Lakes, as was the day out in Northumbria a couple of weeks ago, & that it's always better to keep riding different routes & venues to help yourself & your riding to develop.
Another great day out though, I met some nice folk who were both very capable riders despite both of them being fairly new to motorbikes & have managed to explore some more new lanes & another venue in the UK, always a good thing!! :-)
We finished the day with a properly technical ascent up some rocky steps near Pamperdale, or the boys did, I just took some GoPro footage for posterity, great fun & the boys took different lines but both got up, trials skills necessary here I reckon!!
So now it's back to family visits, before Christmas descends... not a bad life really!! ;-).
(Thanks to Joe for several of the pics for this blog...)
Here are some GoPro vids from the day...
Rutland Rigg Descent
Joe goes Rock Climbing
Rock Step Descent
Danby Rigg Traverse
We met up just south of Great Ayton on a nice morning, warm with patches of blue sky, (who'd have thought it was December in the UK??). A quick introduction, then some chat about bikes & routes & we were off to Battersby Plantation for a rough ascent up what tuned out to be one of the toughest lanes of the day...
I quickly found out that I should have replaced my back tyre before this trip out, it basically just spun up in the mud & got worse as the day went on!! Ooops...
Deep ruts, mud, rocks, sweating & swearing ensued with a bit of laughing too, mainly at me as the other two had easily cruised up picking better lines & having nice grippy new back tyres!!
Eventually at the top we carried on in a clockwise direction heading over towards Whitby. We included lots of muddy ascents, some with ruts, some for bikes only, some with barely a mark on them, the views were lovely, the Moors the same as they have ever been, wild, almost remote & we appeared to have them to ourselves for the most part.
Rutland Rigg was on the route, which is a great 9 mile long green lane, it's long & can be ridden pretty fast, the ascent & descents have little technical bits on them which were cool & added a bit of spice... for us we never saw anyone on any of the lanes except for two really chatty guys walking their dogs.
For myself, I found out I'm still crap at riding ruts, the rocky up hills were no problems but the back end would spin out at the touch of any wet grass & I usually ended up on my arse somehow!!
Hey ho the fun of riding off road...
I dutifully blamed the knackered tyre & my old bike, trying to salvage some pride but the reality is that this kind of riding is totally different to riding in the Lakes, as was the day out in Northumbria a couple of weeks ago, & that it's always better to keep riding different routes & venues to help yourself & your riding to develop.
Another great day out though, I met some nice folk who were both very capable riders despite both of them being fairly new to motorbikes & have managed to explore some more new lanes & another venue in the UK, always a good thing!! :-)
We finished the day with a properly technical ascent up some rocky steps near Pamperdale, or the boys did, I just took some GoPro footage for posterity, great fun & the boys took different lines but both got up, trials skills necessary here I reckon!!
So now it's back to family visits, before Christmas descends... not a bad life really!! ;-).
(Thanks to Joe for several of the pics for this blog...)
Here are some GoPro vids from the day...
Rutland Rigg Descent
Joe goes Rock Climbing
Rock Step Descent
Danby Rigg Traverse
