Scenic Forest of Bowland forum ride
- Thread starter ColinJ
- Start date
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potsy
Rambler
- Location
- My Armchair
Been witnessing lots of rain today over by Bolton, hope you guys had better luck. Awaiting the detailed write-up though.
Still waiting. Must be a long ride, or Colin has got them all lost
phil_hg_uk
I am not a member, I am a free man !!!!!!
Steve H
Large Member
- Location
- Brighouse in West Yorkshire
What a day! The sun did peek through early doors as we were driving up to the start line, but it was never seen again. Wet, wet and more wet was the theme for the day. It felt fine though until the cafe stop, when it began to feel pretty cold as we were all soaked through to the skin.
My previous attempts at driving the lead out train on the cafe stop was put to shame by Ajay and his mate Pete. They both had a three course meal, which put my baked potato and beans well into the shadows.
We decided to take a shorter route back as time was pressing on, by missing out a couple of the tougher climbs. The Tough of Bowland was pretty impressive even though it was still pretty wet, and there is a gorgeous fast descent once the initial climbing is out of the way.
All in, we clocked about 60 miles so still a pretty good day. Don't think we'll be sharing the average speed today though.
The route should be pretty stunning on a nicer day though. Definitely a route for repeating when a better forecast is expected.
My previous attempts at driving the lead out train on the cafe stop was put to shame by Ajay and his mate Pete. They both had a three course meal, which put my baked potato and beans well into the shadows.
We decided to take a shorter route back as time was pressing on, by missing out a couple of the tougher climbs. The Tough of Bowland was pretty impressive even though it was still pretty wet, and there is a gorgeous fast descent once the initial climbing is out of the way.
All in, we clocked about 60 miles so still a pretty good day. Don't think we'll be sharing the average speed today though.
The route should be pretty stunning on a nicer day though. Definitely a route for repeating when a better forecast is expected.
skudupnorth
Cycling Skoda lover
- Location
- Astley,Manchester
Rain or no rain i wish i was out with you all today instead at some Wacky warehouse jobbie !!! Hope you had a good ride along with the cafe stop and cake !
Hey, I only had soup and a slice of cake, don't get me confused with old Peter-Five-Bellies
Great to see you all, chuffed I made the effort despite the weather, I need to get in as many "quality" miles as poss!
Could have done without catching pneumonia though
eddie coffin
New Member
- Location
- Fylde coast
Did most of that ride yesterday in 30mph winds. However much you did today "tu salute!!"
potsy
Rambler
- Location
- My Armchair
Steve you should be ashamed of yourself, letting the side down like that
Well done all on a tough sounding day.
OP
OP
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
You never thought you'd hear it from me, but having gone to bed at 03:00, got up at 07:00 and ridden 101.5 km (63 miles) in chilly, wet and windy conditions I decided that I didn't want any beer this evening and I'm now having an early night! 
Some kind of ride report will appear tomorrow ...
Some kind of ride report will appear tomorrow ...
Steve H
Large Member
- Location
- Brighouse in West Yorkshire
Apologies Ajay! Must have been the hyperthermia that got me confused
Yes, it was very sensible of us to sit outside that lovely warm cafe so we could keep an eye on the bikes, what with all those shifty looking pensioners hanging around ;-)
Morning all.
Wasn't that fun ? In spite of the wind and rain I think we all enjoyed the day with tentative plans for similar ride when the 'scenic' bit of the title might have some meaning. Definately one not to miss.
The only thing to spoil the day for me was a long crap drive to and from the start.
Nice to meet up with a couple of new faces from here too. Pennine-Paul and Ajay, and Ajay's mate Pete. Hope you are feeling better today Paul.
Boy do my legs ache this morning. What is it with cold and wet rides that make 60 miles feel like 160 the day after?
Wasn't that fun ? In spite of the wind and rain I think we all enjoyed the day with tentative plans for similar ride when the 'scenic' bit of the title might have some meaning. Definately one not to miss.
The only thing to spoil the day for me was a long crap drive to and from the start.
Nice to meet up with a couple of new faces from here too. Pennine-Paul and Ajay, and Ajay's mate Pete. Hope you are feeling better today Paul.
Boy do my legs ache this morning. What is it with cold and wet rides that make 60 miles feel like 160 the day after?
OP
OP
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
The 'scenic' aspect of the ride didn't really have much meaning yesterday did it? We knew there was scenery out there, we just couldn't see it! Well, okay, we did occasionally get the odd glimpse of towering hills before they vanished back into the swirling mist, but that was about it as far as enjoying the views went.
If you enjoy discussing when exactly drizzle becomes showers, and showers become rain, then yesterday would have been just the day for you!
It was wet. Wet and windy. Wet, windy and cold. But ... no golf ball-sized hail stones battered us. We weren't sucked off the peaks by mini-tornadoes. Death-by-lightning was never more than a remote possibility. Black ice eluded us. Sun burn wasn't a problem. Yes folks - in many ways, the weather was actually kind to us!
Several of our formerly keen fellow forum riders seemed mysteriously less keen to join us on the day. Perhaps risking hypothermia has lost its mass appeal?
In the end, the rider list consisted of only me, Steve H, colly, Pennine Paul, Ajay and his mate Peter. We waited around for about 20 minutes at Spring Wood in case anybody else arrived late, but in the end the truth became clear - madness was in short supply and we six had cornered the market!
My route took us almost to Ribchester before we meandered back to Hurst Green and past the impressive-looking Stonyhurst College. I commented on how much the fees probably are - well, take a look folks - yes, there are definitely some wealthy Catholics about! (Annual boarding fees per pupil for years 6-9: £25,659
)
We climbed up to Longridge Fell and proceeded west along one side of it before we had to climb over the ridge. Pennine Paul and I brought up the rear. (This was to become a feature of the ride later on.)
At this point, we had a difference of opinion as to which way to go. I followed my GPS and proceeded along the advertised route westwards along the northern flank of the ridge, and Pennine Paul followed me. It turned out that the other 4 riders were not close behind us to notice which way we had gone, and Steve H was not looking at his GPS screen! They descended Jeffrey Hill and waited for us. Paul and I stuck to the planned route, descended to the road below and waited for the others. After a couple of phone calls, we decided that the easiest thing to do was to continue riding and meet up on Beacon Fell.
I made a silly mistake. My GPS sometimes takes a few seconds to orientate its display properly when the bicycle is turned. I let Paul get 100 yards ahead of me and then I realised we were heading away from the planned route. He couldn't hear me shouting so I decided to wait for him to come back to look for me. A couple of minutes later, he turned round and we headed back in the other direction.
All that faffing about and the fact that we were the slowest of the 6 riders meant that we took ages to catch up with our 4 companions on Beacon Fell. If they had known how far behind we were, they could have had hot drinks while they waited. Instead, they stood and shivered!
We got back together and headed for Oakenclough.
Paul was beginning to look like an extra from a horror B-movie. His eyes were bloodshot and even his eyelids were going red. He was having a bad day. We were spread out all over the road and the heavy showers were continuous. Fun, fun, fun!
And then Paul cracked completely. One minute, he was about 50 yards behind me, the next I couldn't see him. I went back and found him round a bend, crawling up the hill. It seemed like the dreaded 'bonk'. We'd been going about 2.5 hours, so that would be about right. He said that he hadn't eaten much before coming out ...
Steve came to the rescue with a gel. It was enough to get Paul moving again and we set off for the cafe stop. Paul and I dropped behind again, but eventually we made it to Scorton.
When we got to The Barn, we found the rest of the lads sitting at a table round the side, beside the cafe. It would have been very pleasant sitting out there in the fresh air in the sunshine, but it was chilly sat there yesterday. We had a roof over our heads but no walls to keep out the wind and drizzle. We would have gone indoors, but we wanted to keep an eye on our bikes.
The food and drink perked us up no end but eventually, it was time to saddle up and move on.
Common sense prevailed. The time was getting on, the bad weather was continuing ... We decided to skip the climbs of Jubilee Tower and Waddington Fell and cut a few miles out of the total distance.
We retraced our wheeltracks back up the hill to where we turned off for Scorton and headed round below the north side of the big fells through Yates and Marshaw. We tackled the Trough of Bowland (as planned), then headed south from Dunsop Bridge through Whitewell, turned left up the old Roman Road to Cow Ark, then descended through Bashall Eaves to return to the original route through Mitton and back to Whalley.
Yes, the ride was a bit of a washout. Yes, it was one of those that you looked forward to getting to the end of. Yes, it was hard work. But ... it was good exercise with nice people and much better than sitting at home watching TV, or looking out of the window and thinking how depressing the weather was!
I clocked 101.5 kms (63 miles) with Paul. The others took a shortcut so they would have done a few kms less than that.
Wet enough for you?
We will be doing this ride again folks, probably in July but we are going to make sure it is sunny next time! We'll have a spread of dates to choose from and only confirm the ride the evening before if the forecast is good. That route deserves to be relished on a warm, sunny day, not just survived, as was the case yesterday!
If you enjoy discussing when exactly drizzle becomes showers, and showers become rain, then yesterday would have been just the day for you!
It was wet. Wet and windy. Wet, windy and cold. But ... no golf ball-sized hail stones battered us. We weren't sucked off the peaks by mini-tornadoes. Death-by-lightning was never more than a remote possibility. Black ice eluded us. Sun burn wasn't a problem. Yes folks - in many ways, the weather was actually kind to us!
Several of our formerly keen fellow forum riders seemed mysteriously less keen to join us on the day. Perhaps risking hypothermia has lost its mass appeal?
In the end, the rider list consisted of only me, Steve H, colly, Pennine Paul, Ajay and his mate Peter. We waited around for about 20 minutes at Spring Wood in case anybody else arrived late, but in the end the truth became clear - madness was in short supply and we six had cornered the market!
My route took us almost to Ribchester before we meandered back to Hurst Green and past the impressive-looking Stonyhurst College. I commented on how much the fees probably are - well, take a look folks - yes, there are definitely some wealthy Catholics about! (Annual boarding fees per pupil for years 6-9: £25,659
)We climbed up to Longridge Fell and proceeded west along one side of it before we had to climb over the ridge. Pennine Paul and I brought up the rear. (This was to become a feature of the ride later on.)
At this point, we had a difference of opinion as to which way to go. I followed my GPS and proceeded along the advertised route westwards along the northern flank of the ridge, and Pennine Paul followed me. It turned out that the other 4 riders were not close behind us to notice which way we had gone, and Steve H was not looking at his GPS screen! They descended Jeffrey Hill and waited for us. Paul and I stuck to the planned route, descended to the road below and waited for the others. After a couple of phone calls, we decided that the easiest thing to do was to continue riding and meet up on Beacon Fell.
I made a silly mistake. My GPS sometimes takes a few seconds to orientate its display properly when the bicycle is turned. I let Paul get 100 yards ahead of me and then I realised we were heading away from the planned route. He couldn't hear me shouting so I decided to wait for him to come back to look for me. A couple of minutes later, he turned round and we headed back in the other direction.
All that faffing about and the fact that we were the slowest of the 6 riders meant that we took ages to catch up with our 4 companions on Beacon Fell. If they had known how far behind we were, they could have had hot drinks while they waited. Instead, they stood and shivered!
We got back together and headed for Oakenclough.
Paul was beginning to look like an extra from a horror B-movie. His eyes were bloodshot and even his eyelids were going red. He was having a bad day. We were spread out all over the road and the heavy showers were continuous. Fun, fun, fun!
And then Paul cracked completely. One minute, he was about 50 yards behind me, the next I couldn't see him. I went back and found him round a bend, crawling up the hill. It seemed like the dreaded 'bonk'. We'd been going about 2.5 hours, so that would be about right. He said that he hadn't eaten much before coming out ...
Steve came to the rescue with a gel. It was enough to get Paul moving again and we set off for the cafe stop. Paul and I dropped behind again, but eventually we made it to Scorton.
When we got to The Barn, we found the rest of the lads sitting at a table round the side, beside the cafe. It would have been very pleasant sitting out there in the fresh air in the sunshine, but it was chilly sat there yesterday. We had a roof over our heads but no walls to keep out the wind and drizzle. We would have gone indoors, but we wanted to keep an eye on our bikes.
The food and drink perked us up no end but eventually, it was time to saddle up and move on.
Common sense prevailed. The time was getting on, the bad weather was continuing ... We decided to skip the climbs of Jubilee Tower and Waddington Fell and cut a few miles out of the total distance.
We retraced our wheeltracks back up the hill to where we turned off for Scorton and headed round below the north side of the big fells through Yates and Marshaw. We tackled the Trough of Bowland (as planned), then headed south from Dunsop Bridge through Whitewell, turned left up the old Roman Road to Cow Ark, then descended through Bashall Eaves to return to the original route through Mitton and back to Whalley.
Yes, the ride was a bit of a washout. Yes, it was one of those that you looked forward to getting to the end of. Yes, it was hard work. But ... it was good exercise with nice people and much better than sitting at home watching TV, or looking out of the window and thinking how depressing the weather was!
I clocked 101.5 kms (63 miles) with Paul. The others took a shortcut so they would have done a few kms less than that.
Wet enough for you?
We will be doing this ride again folks, probably in July but we are going to make sure it is sunny next time! We'll have a spread of dates to choose from and only confirm the ride the evening before if the forecast is good. That route deserves to be relished on a warm, sunny day, not just survived, as was the case yesterday!
Well summer returned, for a day at least, and the 100 mile views from the Lakeland fells to north Wales were back as I sneaked out for a couple of hours after work on my local section of the route, what a stunner!!
Any proposed dates for a rerun? I'm looking at mid July for a free weekend at the mo.
Off to France next Friday to do a channel to med route, wish me luck;-)
Any proposed dates for a rerun? I'm looking at mid July for a free weekend at the mo.
Off to France next Friday to do a channel to med route, wish me luck;-)
