Right in some exciting news Jeff has bought himself and new HD Video Camera, so videos from now on will be in much better quality. So a couple of weeks ago myself, Jeff, Josh, Nicky, and Jonny headed out to test it out. It had been a while since we had all been out riding together and was probably going to be the last time in a while. But the weather turn out to be alight, just a bit on the windy side!

Hope X was the first port of call. I was surprised how dry it was so we all pushed up for the first run of the day, down the main straight. Which I really enjoyed on the new bike. Although Nicky was having lots of problems with his Gears skipping due to a worn out drive train. But we came up with a longer run in so he could get enough speed to make things interesting.

First ride in my new troy lee gear, got a bit of stick off everyone about it I decided that it was time to get some popper all weather riding gear so I went for the Grand Prix air Jersey and Pants. After some trial and error Nicky got his gears to work, but only in granny ring which I thought was quite ironic! As I think doing to the coast to coast might have worn them out. Half way up Hagg Tor we stopped off for a break from pushing and had a look around for some different lines to hit. We all spotted a gap/drop just off to the side of the main bridleway, it is something I had looked at before but was put off by the line. This didn’t seam to put Jonny off, saying “I don’t see how it’s actually possible to mess this up”, watch the video to see what happened…

Hagg Tor was good as always, but a little less wind would have been nice! Josh and I did a couple of fun runs down the upper sections while Jonny and Nicky messed around further up. Jonny was his normal creative self finding different lines to ride and mess around on. That boy’s got skills, unfortunately Jeff missed Jonny’s other crash of the day. So I will try to describe it to you instead; after an impressive huck down the near vertical bank on Hagg Tor, Jonny then went flying off the small jump/drop in the run-out, but due to the wind the back of his bike was blown out from underneath him. It almost looked like he was doing a tail whip and he landed with his hands still on the handle bars but the rest of his body completely separated from the rest of his bike. An impressive crash!

Jeff didn’t take his stills camera, guess he expected to be having too much fun with his new video camera. So the only pictures we have are ones that he took on the video camera, but I think the video makes up for it!

We’ve uploaded the video in HD (1280×720) onto Vimeo. You can watch it in full resolution by clicking Vimeo to view it in the Vimeo page then toggle HD on and go into Full Screen.

A video from 2008, filmed in May and August on HopeX DH, with James W, Irwin, Shane, Nicky & Jeff. The lesson to be learnt here is when Jeff rides sparks fly.

Using Shane’s fancy helmet camera me and Jeff filmed Hope Cross a couple of weeks ago. The plan is to do a runs down all the tracks on the tracks page. We have created a new sub-page in the videos section. So for more information and to download the video go here.

08-05-10 HopeX DH Head Cam MID

I’ve been out riding various DH routes recently, but not really had much time to write about them (or made the effort), so heres a round up of the last four rides featuring the current four ‘usual suspects’.

21st April, Chapel Gate
Nicky and I parked at the back of Mam Tor and sessioned the bridleway there for a while before riding along Rushup Edge to reach Chapel Gate, somewhere I’d never ridden (although Nicky had probably ridden it once years ago, like everywhere else), I knew it was rocky but I was still surprised how rocky, it was still good fun tho and we got some nice shots.

08-04-21 Chapel Gate NB+JK, 13 Pictures

6th May, Jacob’s Ladder, Edale
I got a lift over to Edale with Ben and we parked at Shane’s pub, before a fair distance of road (and ‘road’) riding to get to Jacob’s Ladder, we decided to walk and carry our bikes up the steeper but shorter footpath to the main corner. The name ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ originates from the Bible where a guy called Jacob saw in a dream a stairway (or ladder) leading from Earth up to Heaven. It certainly felt like it was going to Heaven by the time we’d got near the top, especially with all my camera gear. On the subject of which I later realised I hadn’t brought any discs for my camcorder, nuts! So this let concentrating on pictures, which worked out quite well.

Ben was on his first outing on his ‘new’ Kona Stab which had all sorts of randomly sourced parts on it, having previously been on a much lighter XC full-sus Rocky Mountain, he soon found the joys of riding the more tech rocky lines rather than taking the smoothest line. We pushed all the way to the top and got a few pictures on the first straight, and then Shane found a drop off a drainage feature. We did a helmet cam train on the way down, and all had fairly good runs. Then back to Shane’s pub (The Nag’s Head, Edale) and enjoyed a pint and review of the footage and pictures before heading home.

08-05-06 Jacobs Ladder Shane+Ben+JK, 30 Pictures

12th May, WinHill
Nicky, Ben and I met up for some riding on WinHill, we spent the whole time riding as the tracks were riding that well, so we only took a few pictures on our last descent, and after processing they have been rationed to one per person. On the way home I had the weird experience of a bat brushing across my shoulder!, I kept my head down after that.

13th May, HopeX-DH
I met Shane as I ascended the bridleway out of Aston as he’d had time and energy to spare and rode down to meet me. We pushed up, then rode down the ridge and then into the woods at the top of HopeX-DH, no sooner than we closed the gate Nicky appeared pushing up, “I love it when a plan comes together” . We sectioned the track filming each other, moving fast to keep the light, and got pretty much the whole track. Nicky then left us and Shane and I pushed back up to the first corner where I pulled the stills camera out, and inevitably the flash too as it was too dark for natural light, and we mastered a line with a nice rock jump at the end of it. As it got dark we returned up the ridge and then down the Aston bridleway. I nearly hit a rabbit on the road down from Aston, good job it moved otherwise I would have had to bunny hop it! ( …and I can’t bunny hop ).

08-05-13 HopeX-DH Shane+JK, 7 Pictures

Hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, and if you ever think we’re being lazy and not putting up any content remember to check out the gallery cos we’re probably put up pictures and not written any words to go with them (the story of my education…). Anyway I’m riding tomorrow night, o and Friday night, so I need some sleep now.

In conclusion, the tracks and weather are great for evening rides at the moment, so get out there and ride!!!

What makes an epic ride? We have all been on enough of them. For me it is about getting out on my bike and riding as many of my favourite spots as I can. But rather than just riding between each downhill it is about connecting them into an interesting loop. I often think we all forget how lucky we are to have so many great riding spots on our doorstep. People drive from miles around to come and ride in the Dark Peak. I know that we all wish we had a Bridgewood or a Hopton woods, but I think that many of our local bridleways have a lot more to offer than either of these places. I think this is even truer at this time of the year when the trails freeze and ruts start to form.

So despite the cold weather Nicky and I headed out on a epic ride but this one was a little different. First of all we decided to make things a little more interesting by getting the train up to Edale and starting the ride there. So after stopping off at Francis house for a bacon sandwich We started the short ride along the road to the first bridleway. Nicky was keen to show me how fast he could ride along the flat on his new Enduro. He even had a race with a couple of roadies which must have lasted a good mile. By the time I caught up/Nicky stopped we were at the turn off. Seeing as Nicky was eager to ride all the hills I decided to join in and in no time we were up at Jaggers Clough. This short decent was very interesting as large sections were covered in ice. After crossing the river we pushed /rode up to Hope cross. We decided to head straight down and luckily the woods had provided enough shelter to stop the track from freezing. This was lucky as this downhill is tricky enough at the best of times. I quickly pulled the camera out and took a picture as Nicky as continued down.

We decided to take the alternative route on the lower section of track as the main track was very wet. For those that have not been down the alternative route it is quite similar to normal track, but the rocks tend to be a little smaller and the track is straighter and quite a bit faster. With a fallen log half way down making for an interesting feature to clear. We stopped down at the bridge crossing for our lunch, before crossing over the bridge and heading up to Hagg Tor. As they are still repairing the bridge there was a small dumper truck parked at the top of the bridleway close to the A57 crossing. We thought it would make an interesting picture.

After pushing up Hagg Tor in record time we headed up even further onto the very top of hill and over to Alport Castles. A lot of this route has been covered by slabs which made interesting riding, as many of them were covered in sheets of ice. This must have been the coldest point in the day as both mine and Nickys gear cables froze. Although we were alright as we had come prepared with many layers including thick gloves. Why go all the way up to Alport Castles you may ask, well running down from the Castles is a new decent that we spotted which runs all the way down the edge of Howden Reservoir. The top section is fast, rocky and rutted and the bottom section is even faster, and very straight. It is a decent length as well at about 3mins. It was that bad both sets of our brakes overheated; luckily there is a river nearby.

To make things more interesting we headed back around the longer way via Slippy stones. And we stopped off at Abney clough we were planning on pushing all the way to the top but got distracted by a huge pile of leafs. It was like jumping into a foam pit. After messing around here for a bit we made our way back down through the woods freeride style which was fun. After the short ride back to Fairhomes which was quite eventful as, Nicky raced someone else on his bike. We stopped to refuel and I managed to get another half price mars bar. We then had the final boring ride back to Bamford along the road. The total ride came to around 20 miles which i think me a Nicky were pleased with. The addition of the Alport Castles > Ditch clough added to the distance but the decent was great something different is always good, but I think next time it might be easier/more fun to ride the road side back from the bottom of Ditch clough to Fairhomes. I didn’t take that many pictures are we were pushed for time with the days eing as short as they are.

07-12-16 Epic Ride Edale Derwent JI+NB, 26 Pictures