Funny how a comfort zone ride left me grinning on
Sunday. Well, actually it didn’t just
leave me grinning post ride; I rather
think I grinned the entire way.
Back to the same old, same old, Rivington but as ever, with a
difference. Ringing the changes with
doing it in the direction I tend to think of as in reverse, but doing a bit of
the loop I normally skip and skipping a bit I normally ride. It was one busy old place this weekend, with
some long lost sunshine making an appearance and bringing out, well everyone
really – walkers, road cyclists, mountain bikers, horse riders, Go Ape
whoopers, cafe goers, 4x4 drivers. It
was one busy place, truly.
The mountain bike felt curiously light and somehow playful
despite simple maths and scales telling me that actually the new wheels were
slightly heavier than the loan ones I just returned. The bike was skipping and so indeed was
I.
Giggling as I made choices that perhaps in a long forgotten
time I wouldn’t have made. Opted for the
longest road climbs I knew, all for the joy of a piece of bridleway I love for
no obvious reason. Well, to me there is an obvious reason. The Belmont Road is proper cobbled, and not
in any slick pretty Coronation Street fashion, more in the way you imagine a
drovers track created for horses to gain access across the hills, the kind of
horses you imagine carrying goods or dragging carts. It’s a wide
bridleway. It’s mostly on the level,
perhaps a little upwards towards the Tower, and it skirts along what feels like
a ridge line. All the way you can marvel
at the industrial North West’s views.
Particularly on a day like Sunday with clear blue skies and bright
sunshine on the cold moors. Snow lay
fairly thick on the ground, slushy in places, hard packed in others, fluffy and
drifted in others. Some of it I could
ride, others it was a bit like a kid on a balance bike, feet scooting along the
ground, other bits I dug the bike into the groove of a 4x4 drive vehicle tyre
track and made my way along. Insanely
glorious. Pedal, pedal, pedal.
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