I was in the mood for riding Saturday morning, and upon going on Facebook I had message from Gav of the Mountain Biking in The Peak District Group saying they’d be riding in Edale.

It was only in the car with James (Wilkinson) on the way over I found out it was more of an XC loop, with a mega hill climb out of Edale up to Rushup Edge (the name is ironic). It was a bad sign that we crossed the river right before the start of the climb, cos it meant we couldn’t start from much lower in the valley. Its 215m accent over about 2km to the top of the road, I was leading the attack at a fare pace, but just couldn’t maintain the effort for such a long climb and stopped to push at halfway, a wise choice I thought when I realised I’d only got halfway.
The ridge of Rushup Edge wasn’t easy going either with peat troughs every 10m or so to negotiate, but it wasn’t that wet and there was little wind. The track became more interesting when it rejoined with the footpath and got a bit rockier, however after it dropped into the gully it was a bit too rocky with loose stones everywhere sapping precious speed. The next “green-lane” section was good, quite fast and easy with a few bits to get some small air off.

Gav had his mini radios with him and I went ahead on the DH into Roych Clough, down a steep bed rock section, to set up for taking pictures. James (W) was the fastest down and the fastest to dismount from his bike at the corner.

James (W) and I made the right choice in letting Gav and Greg go first down the next section as they opened the gate giving us a clear run down to the fords. I spotted how good the water spray from the ford looked in the sunshine so Gav and James went back up the slope so I could get some pics. It paid off. With the bright sunlight I could use a fast shutter speed and captured the spray so sharply. Just wish I’d asked them to do it again so I could get a landscape version too.

Unfortunately this rather good DH meant another big long uphill taking us towards Hayfield. 160 metres up and we reached the summit, the next section was quite fun and fast. Then down a long easy decent, which was a bit boring for my liking and didn’t make up for the big climb on the other side back up to Jacob’s Ladder. On the long push up it really felt like summer with plenty of sun and very mild temperature and virtually no wind (except for a certain group member ).

Unfortunately we arrived at the top of Jacob’s Ladder as all the walkers were heading down for the day, but this give us time for a self timer and some other pictures.

The ride won’t have been complete without some sort of bike problem and on the decent down to the right hand corner on Jacob’s Ladder James’ mech messed up so they spent a while fixing that while I took pictures and did a run down to the next corner and pushed back up, ‘too many cooks’ and all that.

All in all it was a great days riding and it was good to ride something new with a change of scenery. It was also good to get out in such great weather, especially considering only last weekend there was snow on the ground. Will we see any more snow this year, or will it be a warm spring and wet summer like last year… who can say?

08-02-09 RushupEdge+Hayfield+JacobsLadder, 20 Pictures