Another amazing day cycling over the north Yorkshire moors. We did the biggest climb of the whole coast to coast route out of Settle first thing.
I forgot to take any photos of the pretty little town while we were in it, but what we enjoyed most about it was the plant pot figures that were scattered around the place. So I managed to capture a few of them right at the start of the day.
The climb was very steep, but we were strong, and the batteries made it almost a pleasure.
The countryside was beautiful but very bleak. Calm and warm today although I could easily imagine what a nightmare it could be in winter. Right at the top we found a herd of Highland cattle sitting by the side of the road.
On we rode, and we knew that we needed to do nearly 1,400 vertical metres of climbing today. We also knew that our batteries wouldn't last that long, so we set about using them as little as possible and just saving them for the steepest sections.
By lunchtime we had reached the eastern side of the moors and the steepest descent of the whole route.
It went on for a long way and was full of twists and turns. There must have been some big crashes in the past because there was lots of signs on the way down telling cyclists to keep it slow.
Eventually we rolled into Pateley Bridge at the bottom and found a very busy place full of tourists and cafes. We took a tiny detour to a very underwhelming sculpture of local people.
After that we had a couple of slightly embarrassing chats with fellow tourists.
For the first one I was cycling just behind Darren and suddenly I heard another bee buzzing on me. As the sting from two days ago still hurt I panicked and yelled to Darren, but again he didn't hear me and cycled on. Once more I ripped my helmet off and threw it on the ground. The buzzing continued so I ripped my tee shirt off and desperately shook it. Then I heard a car coming round the corner so I tried to get my tee-shirt back on but it was all tangled up, although I got there in the end. The poor man in the car stopped to ask if I was okay although I am not sure if he thought I was a bit mad. Fortunately no bee sting this time.
The second chat was with a nice Belgian couple who were doing the route in the opposite direction. They were having a great time and loving England and I told them that we loved Belgium too. Also in August we going on a cycling holiday to Holland and Belgium. Of course they asked where, so I looked at Darren and he looked at me. I didn't know where, so Darren said a couple of places and we all went on our way. Daz then said that I had dropped him in it as we weren't going to Belgium at all and he to had had to lie to avoid offending them.
By mid afternoon our batteries were completely exhausted, but by then there was a lot of downhills and we cycled through the grounds of Fountains Abbey to Ripon.
No comments:
Post a Comment