Off Road Tours

Transcript of article appearing in TRF magazine.

Although we've been trail riding for a couple of years now, family and work commitments mean that we rarely get out for more than three or four hours at a stretch, which pretty much limits our runs to the lanes of Warwickshire. All of that changed last weekend however, when off the back of a camping weekend with a bunch of mates and their families, Andre and I snuck our trailies along for a day's guided trail ride in the Peak District.

Sunday morning dawned bright, but cold and windy on our campsite beside the A515. Mark, our guide for the day, arrived before 9am with Karl, a fellow punter from Leeds on a lovely, 100 mile old Pegaso. Karl had just passed his test that week, and traded in his learner bike for the Aprillia, which although trail styled was more bike than I fancied wrestling with off-road. Briefing & tyre pressures sorted, we set off down the first lane, a long, straight-ish hard packed lane which we could easily have whistled along if we weren't keeping to a more respectful, rambler-friendly speed. Early nerves were more-or-less dealt with by the time we met a very familiar-looking broad, 4x4-rutted boggy stretch of a few hundred yards. Mark on his CRM250 was super-smooth, never seeming to suffer even a moment's delay. Karl was next, doing amazingly well all things considered, and then the Warks boys brought up the rear, my Michelin Rut-Finder tyres doing a good job of finding their way off the high ground and into the deepest, slipperiest ruts as usual. We were making reasonable progress until 50 yards from the end of the lane, when I looked up to see the Pegaso in intimate contact with a dry-stone wall. It had got away from him in the slime, and Sod's Law being in action even on Sundays, toppled towards the wall, causing a few cosmetic scrapes to the front of the bike. Karl decided there & then that he should bale out, which was a shame but understandable under the circumstances.

After finding tarmac again and saying goodbye to Karl, we continued on a rough clockwise circumnavigation of Ashbourne, taking in lanes of a length and variety that is rare round our way. Some great climbs, like the lane into the back of Burton Dassett but longer and much steeper, alternated with open rides across fields and enclosed lanes. Just the road sections between lanes would have been worth it for the range and beauty of the scenery. A ford just outside of Ashbourne woke me from this cosy state of bliss however. After watching Mark smooth his way through the concrete-bottomed crossing, I entered the foot of water thinking not too much of it, until the back end snapped left into a full-on speedway style slide. The concrete base must be Teflon coated! I'd just about gathered it up by the time I got to the other side, but it wasn't finished with me yet, as the back stepped out again for another lurid slide on the exit. I stopped to get my pulse down off the rev-limiter as Andre on his CRM rode serenely through.

My crossing was pretty spectacular to watch by all accounts, but I recon I aged 5 years in those few yards…

Round to the north-west of Ashbourne we progressed, where the landscape opens out and you really get a sense of riding across hill country. Mark has put a lot of time into researching his routes, resulting in some rides across terrain that you would struggle to believe is a public right of way. Most people we met along the way (many more than we normally see on a ride round here) were either friendly or at the very least didn't try to hit us with sticks, and the only time the route was blocked, with a huge pile of what cows do best, there was plenty of space to go round it.

Fuel tanks and stomachs were running low as we hit the filling station en route to our planned lunch stop at Monyash, when a casual observation lead to an hour and three-quarters of unscheduled fettling. I happened to mention to Andre that his rear tyre looked low, which was not surprising once we spotted the chunk of steel sticking out of it… 'No problem' said Mark, 'I have a puncture kit & well-equipped tool-roll on the back of my bike'. Well, he had until the zip on his tool-bag had split earlier in the day depositing the complete toolkit, unnoticed by us, into a hedge somewhere. There followed much shenanigans involving 'borrowed' limestone blocks (to help the rear spindle out & rest the bike on) and two pushbike puncture kits to fix the half-inch split and four or five other holes that the tube had suffered. By the time we had the bike back together we were more than ready for a buttie, but pleased that we were able to continue when for a while it looked like the ride was over.

To maximise the remaining riding time we woofed down a quick roll & a coffee at a great café in Monyash, manfully ignoring such temptations as all day breakfasts & puds, then hit the road north. Mark grades his routes between 1 and 4 for difficulty, 1 being routes he'd take his Africa Twin down, 4 being proper bum-puckering stuff. The morning's ride had been ones and twos, which I found had kept me on my toes, stretching me though not too far beyond my comfort zone. For the afternoon, he had some more challenging lanes for us, which considering our relative novice status, I thought could prove to be… interesting.

As the landscape South-East of Buxton became more rugged, the lanes became more challenging, first with steeper, though fair-surfaced climbs, the length of which had my forearms screaming enough, then onto the big challenge of the day, a long climb strewn with loose rocks ranging in size between a bread roll and a Mother's Pride loaf. Mark had given us the choice of ascending or descending this bad boy, and being intrepid travellers we opted for the uphill route, on the grounds that falling off going uphill hurts less than falling off going downhill. We stopped for a pee-stop & pep talk at the bottom of the valley, then set off up a lane which at first climbed reasonably steeply with a broken surface and the occasional water eroded step, before turning sharp right and climbing at an absurd angle across a surface which left any semblance of control a distant memory. Ignoring all the sound advice about maintaining momentum I felt the need to stop for a rest part way up, and was surprised to find that when I took my hand off its death-grip on the front brake to flick the kick-start out, the next second or so of action ended with me and the bike having a little lie-down. After picking us both up and stoking up the XR again, we scrabbled our way to the top in a fashion that I'm not proud of, but fortunately there was no-one around to see the mess I made of it! The others greeted my eventual appearance with a round of applause, and we stopped for a few moments for photographs, water and a coronary.

A few more miles of climbs, lanes and glorious scenery saw us pretty much out of time, with a dozen or so road miles to do back to the campsite, trailer, families and home. This is the only guided ride I've ever done, but I must say that Mark was very professional in his running of the day, with a good choice of lanes to suit most abilities and peripherals such as lunch, breakdowns etc covered too. As a bonus, he was happy to mark up our map with the lanes we covered that day, so we could use them as the basis of another day out on the future.

As a means of getting a local's eye view of a new area, this guided ride was hard to beat. Like the runs that our local TRF section organise to more distant parts of the country, a day like this gives us the chance to experience new lanes, surfaces and vistas for those times when the local lanes are starting to feel a bit familiar. Whilst it wasn't cheap, as a cost for a day's entertainment and the invaluable guiding hand of someone who knows the place thoroughly, I recon it was worth every penny.


Jon Tait.