BIG BEAR BIKES

Benjamin Franklin famously once said that “nothing in the world is certain but death and taxes”. Wise words indeed, yet had he ever ridden a mountain bike in November out of Newton in Rawcliffe I’m sure he would have added “mud and hills” to his list. The inaugural Big Bear Bikes Saturday morning ride started with only a minor hiccup – namely me turning up 15 minutes late thanks to some parking “challenges” which had to be resolved by the boys in blue. Note to the man in the Peugeot 206 - never cross a bear when he is in a hurry to ride his bike! Especially when the sun is shining.

The ride started on time thanks to Dave and Wayne getting everyone rolling whilst Mike hung back to wait for me. We had been joined on the ride by Hannah, an experienced climber with York Mountaineering Club and Rob, an 11year veteran of BMX’ing who was now branching out into mountain biking as a way to get fitter and take advantage of the Moors on his doorstep. I arrived in Newton like a man possessed and within 3 minutes had the bike built, thrown on the helmet and shoes and away we went on our two man chain gang to catch everyone else up.

Now I should point out at this stage that I am not a navigator. Satellite Navigation was invented for people like me, so as well as leading the ride I was also having an “on the job” lesson from Wayne on map reading. More on that later though. Mike and I caught up with the lead group after about 15 minutes and en masse we pushed on. Now forgive me if I sound vague about where we went. There are two reasons for this – firstly as I said I don’t read maps so would struggle to say, however were I able to (and I will be able to very soon!) I wouldn’t tell you all because these rides we will be doing on Saturdays are secret and special to us. For the next 30mins we made our way downhill through spectacularly eerie woods , technical in places but not too technical that those who needed to push, couldn’t, and fast and flowy in other parts guaranteed to have us all smiling (cue Hannah “I want to do that again!”).

So back briefly to the map reading lesson. It had been agreed that on exiting the woods that I would endeavour to find our location on the map, which was duly handed to me by Wayne. After several moments of pondering I semi confidently pointed to a spot on the map saying “well I’m pretty sure we should be about here? But if that were right then there should be a big road on our left hand side, and there isn’t?” It took a couple of seconds, in between fits laughter for Wayne to point out that “the road” I was referring to was actually drawn on the map in felt tip pen and was the route we were following. Like I said – I am not a navigator.

The rest of the ride went very well, climby in places, gloopy in others, and some more fast downhill sections where you could really let the bike roll. In all we covered about 13 miles, climbed 1700ft and were out for 2hrs 15min. Not a bad ride at all and a big thanks to Hannah and Rob who finished tired but with big smiles on their faces. Having parked up earlier outside a Tea Room it would have been rude not to rest our weary legs and partake in some tea and cakes (crumpets and scones actually) and what a revelation – in a world where everyone seems content on charging the earth for things there is a little tea room in the beautiful village of Newton on Rawcliffe that sees fit to charge two whole English pounds for a pot of tea and two crumpets. Bargain!

See you all next week for a Hole of Horcum special!

Simon.