(By Paul McGurk)
When I originally signed up for the Calder Divide Trail 2022 I was imagining 2 days of tough ish – albeit not rushed, off-road riding around picturesque West Yorkshire and Kirklees, with multiple café stops on both days, a hot shower and pub meal followed by pints beside the fire. Basically the format for most Centreville tours.
That is not what happened. Why did I find myself nearly broken and hallucinating, tearing across rocky, misty moors in the darkness, cursing myself as I time-trialed my way back to Mytholmroyd? Read on dear reader, read on…
I was to ride with Kirsty, a rider with much better endurance and off-road palmares than I. Kirsty had recently completed the Highland 550 Trail and LEL in very respectable times, as well as a few 200 and 300km audaxes. I had done a relatively flat 100 miler to Glasson Dock and back on my best bike. I am generally the quicker rider but I tend to get fed up at around the time Kirsty really starts enjoying herself. I had always found that trait of riders enjoying suffering particularly sadistic, even if I secretly admired it. We would need a bit of tortoise and hare energy for this event so it made sense to ride as a pair. Kirsty only needs about 100ml of water every 50 miles, so she’d also come in handy when I ran out.
She had it in her head that we could do it in 24 hours. That’s a 6.3mph average. That means maybe 8mph or more of actual riding speed. That seems incredibly fast for off-road around Yorkshire. No chance I said, 30 hours more realistic. Somehow I had gone from wanting a relaxed ride to seriously challenging myself. So we were gonna give it a go and see what happened. With the new bank holiday looming, a sleepless night had never looked so good.
Of the 150-odd starters roughly 2/3 were on MTBs, the rest on gravel setups. We were on gravel. I was underprepared but overconfident with a lowest gear of 34:32, happy with 42mm knobblies and 45PSI. We set off from Mytholmroyd just after 7am. Don’t overdo it! I kept telling myself, as we bimbled down to Hebden Bridge on the canal path towards our first climb of the day: Mytholm Steeps. Well actually we branched off just after the church and headed up a rocky and grassy bridleway towards Colden, before continuing up towards Widdop res. The ascents were lumpy, bumpy and rocky (what they call ‘technical’) but I was not any slower than MTBers at this point. We turned eastwards and rode on farmers’ tracks and minor roads to Cock Hill then Pecket Well, before finding our first unrideable climb. Well it seemed so at least, no doubt some of the MTBers could get up it but we found it not much less slow to walk.
The back of Midgley Moor was ridiculous: a steep, twisting and overgrown downhill path with massive rocks everywhere. Pretty much unrideable for all but the hardiest MTBers. However we were soon rewarded with a long sweeping descent from Wainstalls into Ogden, incredibly fun and difficult to keep momentum and stay off the brakes, constantly jumping side to side to dodge rocks and other obstacles. I came off but luckily landed on the grass. It was my first and least painful off that day. The MTBs flew past at an incredible pace, their fat tyres and suspension completely soaking up the terrain.
The weather was absolutely perfect – dry and sunny with a (westerly) tailwind. And it would need to be; I wondered how anyone could complete this route in the wet.
We were making good progress over some tough terrain, averaging 7mph. I figured this would get much faster for the eastern portion of the route, however I was continually riding in front of Kirsty and urging her to up the pace. We would need it later on I said. It was to no avail, Kirsty rides at her own pace. Once we got to Wyke there was much more tarmac, then by Deswbury we were on a flat and (relatively) fast Greenway for miles and miles. Finally we started leaving MTBers in the dust, our gravel bikes more like road bikes than their heavy cross country machines. By 4pm we had done about 80 miles, an average of 9mph. If we could reach 100 miles by 7pm, we’d have 12 hours to do the last 50 miles. A piece of cake!
To be continued…
https://www.calderdividetrail.co.uk
Brilliant. I can feel the thrill of riding those rough, eroded old highways we nowadays call ‘off road’ tracks. Kirsty sounds like a tough wise companion. Maybe a female Gandalf to your Frodo-ish adventure seeking vibe? When is the next instalment?