Riding free

So, after the moorland bleakness, I'm back on a short stretch of unadopted road which is the kind of descending you could probably do with your eyes closed.  My legs, eyes and brain all relax briefly ... until the next junction when the map and compass are once again eagerly employed.  Past a cottage it says then turn right on a waymarked bridleway crossing a stream.  Immediately I am suspicious.  This guide book has form on stream identification.  And indeed the stream is a later cause of some confusion.  The waymarked bridleway though is a dream to find ... even if the signage turns out a little too accurate in terms of incline and direction ...

Eventually after some worry about where the stream actually is, I do arrive at it, after a long slog upwards on pleasantly bumpy and firm earth.  The book makes brief reference to the ground being a little boggy and I eye it with suspicion and anticipate sinking to my neck in marshland.  In the event it is in fact perfectly possible ... to carry the bike over.

Keep the stream on your right says the book.  So I try.  The path here is winding, tight, ascending and bumpy and I'm no longer out for a bike ride but indeed a walk with the bike acting as a handy thing to lean on as I traverse the path.  Then the stream fades out, the path fades out but I pick my way along the nearest thing I have to a path.  A couple of miles further on, and the instructions are no longer making sense.  Referral to a sweet section of single track for example has me scratching my head as this is what I survey ahead of me ...

No.  There is no way this can be right.  However, I think I can see where I ought to be and I keep trudging onwards.  Ending up at the top of a cliff.  Below me I see the watery thing I am meant to be aiming for.  I check the map, the compass, the shape of the water, the shape of the land, the presence / non-presence of roadways alongside the water.  Let's face it, I'm lost.  3pm in the afternoon and I'm on the top of a hill in open featureless moorland.  From where I am and from the map there is no way down to that water other than descending a cliff.  Frankly way beyond my skill set.  So I admit it, I'm going to need to backtrack.  I'm half way through the ride on distance with more hills to ascend.  I've been out here for 4 hours, I've drunk 2 litres of water and the ride was only scheduled for 3 - 4 hours.  I study the map for an escape route so I don't have to do the whole route back, and I turn around.  And I don't cry.  Well, not more than a welling up of my eyes and a lump in the throat anyway. I am a woman after all.

There is no shame in a turnaround.  There is, however, confusion.  It's more by luck than judgement I spotted one of the boundary posts or I would have managed to get myself even more lost.  The escape route is down a beautiful B road and then leads me onto a family trail ... which perhaps I should have stuck to in the first place.  But there is then icecream.  And cake.  And mixed olives to go with my campfire tea.