Coast to Coast (Part 3)

DAY SEVEN
Friday. Greenhow B&B Glasedale, North Yorks (and later in the Glasedale pub).

A BIG day for the tour in the hills today, and all of it in the North Yorkshire Moors. This is not a place that we were really familiar with – until today. Personally I really, really enjoyed it out there today. There were loads of fabulous trails: some very hard ups, but all rideable, and the downhills were just amazing on the tracks across the tops (riggs) of the moors. Miles and miles and miles of it. Brilliant stuff. I managed to nail the toughest climb of the day, which I was chuffed about, but then fell off over the bars on a fairly technical descent. No real harm done (cuts and scrapes) but I do have a worryingly sore wrist.

Then I also became “Cock of the Day” with a comedy (show) off after a kids’ skid stop right near the end. I got stuck in my spds and tipped off sideways right in front of everyone. Cock.

Breakfast marks for Osmotherly B&B: Points lost for hard bacon and crap sausage. But, decent eggs and fried potatoes. All in all a six. Maybe 5.5.

[Trailspeak: During the duration of the trip a group vocabulary evolved out of the expletives uttered at the top of the brutal climbs. We amused each other by seeing who could come out with the most outrageously foul description to go with the outrageous effort we had put into getting up these monster hills. All this was done extremely loudly, in the great wide open, way out of earshot of anyone, for a whole week. So, you can imagine the level things dropped to towards the end. It had been pretty low at the start mind…]

The use of the ‘c’ word has become standard practice (after Ben S’s wonderful story relayed to us on Loughrigg Terrace of a friend of his who would publicly complain about he lack of “c**ting bacon” etc in ASDA) and is now commonly used in it’s adjective form before some of the more usual four letter words. For instance: “c**ting walkers”.
“Cockweasle” was another Ben S classic – initially used to decribe the bike shop people in Ambleside and their attitude towards Ben F.

Jo (the Queen of foul language) today came out with “c**ting knob cheese” at the top of one particularly difficult ascent, and there was even discussion of a “c**ting scale” (up to 10) for things which just went way over the top.
The trail language is choice. But very funny.

Jo is going to produce and market MINGE cloths. The name came first and we were then tasked with coming up with the acronym and so the Multi Integrated Natural Grease Elimination System was born. Squares of cotton for wiping things, basically.Genius idea and a great name. She’ll make millions.

A big day for punctures. We started at he B&B with three. John had a couple; the Bens both had two and I finished with one. Consequently there was a seriously high faff quotient to the day’s events.

We started at 10:20 and finished at 6:30. 35 miles with a lot of that off road. It was a hard one. Great though.

Jo (we have decided) needs some non-creamy honorary balls. The lady is a star, and was upset about not being able to be part of the arse larding ritual which occurs each day, often more than once. But she has taken a picture of us all in arse larding action. For her, err, collection.

The swapping of bike shoes so Ben S, John and myself could ride each others bikes for trial purposes has been described as “very gay”. Bollocks. How else do we try each others bikes. Bib shorts are admittedly very gay. The swapping of bike shoes is not.

Glasedale is a strangely shaped village. It’s set on a very steep hill and our B&B is right at the top (which was handy, as that’s the way we came in and we spotted the place almost straight away), and this pub is about 2 miles down the road. We don’t want to walk 2 miles back up the bloody great hill so the B&B people are coming down to pick us up at 10, “for a small contribution” – whatever that may be. 50p we reckon.

We have just been served up THE most excellent meals of the tour so far. Hands down the best food we’ve had all week. Really great home cooked stuff: my steak pie was just delicious and there was tons of it – and a pile of chips as well. And veg. The menu is unreal – what a place to eat. The food has been officially quoted by the tour as being “good shit”.

However, Ben STILL has not found a pub which serves any lamb. Lamb shank was actually offered up last night (and most of us ordered it!) but it turned out to be off the menu and we just had to settle for less. His torture is magnified by the fact that there are lambs everywhere in the fields and Ben may go and catch one to eat raw at some point soon.

Weather today: Cloudy and warm. No sun which was perfect. Also perfect was the fact that there was absolutely no wind at all on the tops of the moors which was a bit unreal to be honest. It did try to rain for half an hour or so late afternoon but it never quite got in precipitation gear – just a few drops - and we remained rain-free.

We passed by “Great Fryup” today. A place which in any other travelling situation has to be worthy of a detour to go visit.

DAY EIGHT
Saturday. Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, Robin Hoods Bay

Another pretty big day out for our last one. Lots of great trails again over more, err, moors. We started off with a monster of a road climb out of Grosmont – where there is a steam railway and it all looks very quaintly Yorkshire touristy.

Just previous to this village we’d bumped into this quite odd bloke who actually swore more than we did. He also had a real plumb in his mouth. His accent was still there but somewhat watered down and we deduced he was a proper upper class type who’d moved to the sticks (and probably bought the sticks).

Anyway, he was cycling along with two young lads when we initially passed him and they then caught us up as we were doing a map check. He was maybe in his mid thirties and nattered on about his road cycling and stuff, and then invited us to cross the road and check out the local BMX track, which just happened to be there. Pretty cool it was too and there was a lap or two completed by the tour members. Our bloke’s two mates were young lads (about 10 years old at a guess) and it looked like the kind of situation where this bloke would call round at these kids’ houses and see if they wanted to come out and play on their bikes.

We left him effing and blinding merrily away while we cracked on, and up a 1 in 3 real monster fucker (and many further expletives) rated road climb out of said railway town. But, this was a cheap way to gain serious height and get back up onto the moors. Then, funnily enough, there was a series of continual ups and downs to do – for most of the day. No change there then. I kept expecting the view to suddenly open up and reveal the coast, but there always seemed to be another moor between us and our destination.

[Ben S offed twice in the closing stages. The first one was when his front wheel was grasped by a pool of the stickiest mud ever, and he went straight over his bars. No major harm done there really. He saved his second and most serious off of the day until the absolute last bit of technical downhill. We’d had a long desecnt on an excellent chalky track which was full of deeply rutted but now dried up water channels. Mostly there was a line but sometimes drop offs were encountered and jumps were in order to get over some obstacle or other. That kind of thing. It was technical, fast, fun and dusty. Ben was at the front, unfortunately missed the very last jump and hit the dirt hard. Luckily he was protected from serious damage by his hip… Ouch.]

Eventually we were found to be climbing the very last ascent up to a mast and and to our well deserved viewpoint over Robin Hood’s Bay. And there it was – the other coast. Our destination. And after a sit and gawp at the scenery (and some shit) we were able to roll triumphantly down the old railway track right into town…. Except we missed a turning and ended up traipsing through some bloke’s field of a back garden carrying the bikes back up a steep hill, then following a footpath for a while until we found the correct track.

And THEN we were indeed able to roll triumphantly through the village past the hordes of tourists; straight out onto the beach, out across the sand (the tide was ouit) and dip wheels in the water. The Bens and John valiantly stripped off, donned swim shorts and dipped themselves into the cold North Sea. I waded a bit and Jo bravely dipped her toes in.

Pebbles from St Bees were duly dispatched in time honoured coast to coast fashion into said sea by those who had carried them across (Jo and myself that would be) .. and that was it. Job done. We had completed the Coast to Coast by mountain bike. The trek was over.

Err, not quite. There was the getting to the Boggle Hole Youth Hostel to do, but that could wait until after a couple of pints at the Wainwright’s pub on the harbour and some marvellous fish and chips. [Note should be made here that we have no end of trip team photo as the only chap to whom we gave a camera to get it, outside the pub- beers in hand, fucked it up and failed to take our picture. Twice. The twat.] We then had a rather fun traverse of the beach for a mile or so in the sand and through the odd stream to get to the youth hostel.

Boggle Hole Youth Hostel. Lovely position almost on the beach, in a beautiful part of the world. It’s an oasis of comfort. Or, it should be… they’ve put us in some side shack with an internal temperature today of about 50 degrees. There was much consternation within the team but at least Jo managed to get herself out of the boys’ dorm and into a girls’ one. Likely a lot less smelly and let’s hope the weirdo woman from Windermere with the suitcase is not in there with her. We are not really happy with this place.

Now we get ready to go out, back to the village, for some beers and hopefully some more food. Hungry again.

[That was it for the diary. That night was spent in three pubs amongst the it has to be said rather odd mix of folk who frequent Robin Hood’s Bay of a Saturday evening. Lots of walkers having finished their own coast to coast , but then there were the gypsy types for instance in one place who had two small yappy crap dogs which were encouraged to lick beer out of .. actually ‘share’ would be a better term for this… yes, the dogs shared beer glasses with their owners. Gross.

Ben rolled some serious fat ones on the balcony overlooking the sea outside one pub and we generally drank the evening away. We did manage to get some food in before they stopped serving it.

There was a mix of paths of return to the Youth Hostel with some of us braving the pitch dark and the path along the top (and dropping our phones under the wooden steps) whilst others braved the pitch dark and the water and returned along the beach. It should be noted that there was some shameful fridge raiding done by certain members of the team after we returned from the pub. How many packets of mini Jaffa cakes did those boys eat?

Christian’s car had been delivered to the youth hostel no problem and the keys left for us. Trouble is with that place though is that the car park is half a mile up the single track road which connects the hostel to civilisation, Our bags were dropped at said car park the evening before and we had to go up and wait for them..They are delivered by Packhorse to a local taxi firm who then charge for this service and then also charge to drop the bags off. Nice work if you can get it. We had to haul the bags down to the hostel and of course back up the fucking hill again the next morning, along with the bikes and full on hangovers, and no breakfast.

All this hauling of stuff, along with the awful accommodation (although it has to be said I did sleep well that night) did not endear Boggle Hole to the tour at all. Next time it’s a B&B in the village…

We eventually set off for home mid morning, stopping only for a final team meal on the A64: McDonalds. And guess what – it rained most of the way back. Ha-ha - could not have been more perfect timing.]