Went exploring in the north eastern part of the Dales. Maybe not my best idea
Parked up a bit to the west of Masham and took one of those lanes marked up with red dots. Within fifty metres of setting off and just out of sight there was a twenty metre wide ford. Ah well, not too deep. The track was OK and led out on to the moorland. A "no vehicles" sign indicating the start of the death zone.
Competition time: spot the bridleway! It's marked on the map so it must be there, mustn't it?
The valley has lots of old small scale coal mines or diggings, you can see some of the waste in the above shot.
Onwards and ever upwards until I came to the end of the track. A fine bit of moorland singletrack awaits. What Phil (htrider) would call "nadgery". It took me all the way to the skyline.
This was where things started to go wrong. The OS map has a bridleway heading back north
http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=408593 ... &A=Y&Z=120, could I find it? Could I ****! So back down the nice moorland singletrack to pick up the next bridleway to the east. This started out OK ...
but looks can be deceiving, the above was as good as it got and by the first beck crossing any semblance of a track or bridleway or path had long since decided to relocate elsewhere and so began an hour of pushing and carrying the bike through heather up to waist height trying to link up freshly burnt or cut areas.
These boundary stones were just in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately that meant so was I!
Eventually I reached the skyline and a fence. about 100m beyond this there was a track which my original route intended to join. It gave a great descent down to West Scrafton.
A bit of road then it was a climb back on to the moor.
At the top of this I wandered around a bit, my intended route was this bridleway
http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=410263 ... &A=Y&Z=120 but after about 100m of it, this had been cleared by strimmer to get to shooting butts, I had my doubts so turned round and took the track to the south. The drop down to Darnley Beck was great fun, then it got a bit frustrating.
The track was in a deep groove filled with thigh high heather. Under all this was a slot with a firm base and about 8" wide which was great until the slot deepened and you came to a sudden halt with the pedals sat on the ground either side of the slot with both wheels off the ground!
Several times I looked across the valley trying to spot the line of the bridleway I had wanted to take but there was no obvious line through the heather and bracken. Maybe something to check out in spring when there's less growth. Slowly things got better and more "moorland like" until eventually I popped out on to a farm road. Virtually a freewheel down this all the way back to the car.
Four and a bit hours to do 30Km of riding!
Edit: Riding through heather doesn't half clean your chain
20190716_164617 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_164418 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_141326 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_134740 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_132108 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_131100 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_124027 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
20190716_131637 by Jeff Price, on Flickr
