What a difference two degrees F make! The average today was 34.7 F. Positively balmy although the only riders I saw today were hard men all in black on serious bikes. The sort that do track stands at temporary traffic lights with me waiting behind until they falter so I can say "Good try!"
Bacially a trip to Grassington(37 miles 3500 feet) and passing many fell race venues.In Stirton I went up Bog Road which is the very steep start to Brett Weeden's Stirton race up to Rough Haw on Flasby Fell. It is just as steep on a bike but my slow progress did allow me to reflect that Brett(+ Sue) is simply one of the best RO. So chilled as to be horizontal (well apart from that time when a novice runner got lost on Gt. Whernside in driving snow in a night race
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I like the Skipton - Threshfield road. One the right is a huge ridge (Cracoe Fell, Rylstone Fell) adorned with towers and crosses and other detritus and on the left is the valley with the railway line serving Swinden Quarry, near Cracoe. This line used to go from Skipton to Threshfield (for Grassington),with in Victorian times aspirations to finish in the far north east, but after closure by BR the section to Cracoe was bought by the quarry owners (then Tilcon)to move thousands of tons of product every week. The quarry "shunting engine" needs to move 2500 ton trains up a 1:100 from a dead start every time a hopper wagon has been filled and weighs 150 tons with six powered axles. This is heavier than the US built General Motors diesels that have taken over main line freight traffic haulage in the UK and carry away the filled hoppers.
After the quarry bumpers and the road crossing the track bed is still clear over farm land for the several miles to Threshfield where you meet the housing estate built on the site of the old station. Now a private house.
If you turn off the Grassington - Pately Bridge road at Hebden there is lovely high level, back-road that eventually looks down on Burnsall and the more familar side of the River Wharfe. Hardly anybody uses the road and people walk along the full width holding hands. This route can then take you, after Appletreewick, (start of more fell races)to another high and scarely visited (grass down the middle and a ford)back road with 20% climbs and lots of gravel looking down on Bolton Abbey, the Wharfe and tourists before Storiths near the Skipton-Harrogate road. But no need to join the HGVs for long because shortly after is the road to Beamsley and then Langbar, sitting below Beamsley Beacon (more fell races), and another 20% or so climb. Still what goes up must come down and 40mph is easily achieved if bouncing over the potholes through Middleton does not deter. Middleton/Curly Hill is the posh part of Ilkley but the Bentley drivers are rich,old and quite intimidated by an idiot in lycra descending with no concern for their paint work.
And then there would be all the paper work to sort out.