Bakewell Circuit - sort of.

Out with the guidebook again for todays ride, and Dani's turn to choose. She picked a route around Bakewell from the 'White Peak Mountain Biking' book. Rather than start in Bakewell itself we dumped the Landy in a layby in Millers Dale, saved paying to park and gave us a shorter drive. The Monsal Trail took us into Bakewell and the start of the ride proper. I don't really enjoy riding old railway lines despite being a railway enthusiast (I'd much prefer it if they were still railway lines!), they can get rather too busy for my liking which means avoiding small folk on bikes, dogs on long wander leads, walkers who look upon cyclists with disdain...
On reaching Bakewell we carried on to the end of the trail then hit the first bridlepath, a farm track leading to a mudfest through a cattle field. At the other end we were scraping mud off the bikes with sticks, something which we repeated several times during the ride...

Dani at the start of the first bridlepath of the day.

At the end of the first field. Mud is heavy...

With the mud scraped off we went off to find more...

A mixture of surfaced farm tracks and fields took us through the Haddon Park estate (lots of 'Private Keep Out' signs...) and into Rowsleymoor wood and a long slippery climb (walk!) followed by good woodland riding.

A nice woodland walk...

Coming out of the woods we enjoyed a super slippery grassy downhill on tyres slick with mud, then more farm tracks and fields led to the Chatsworth Estate and a short tarmac stretch to Edensor. Dani feels this to be quite a dangerous stretch of road for cyclists, she tells me that there's normally a few near misses along there when she rides through there with the tri club, dopey drivers going 'ooh' at sheep, trees, grass, etc.

Coming out of the woods onto a slippery downhill.

Tread? What tread?

From the twee estate village of Edensor we picked up a muddy UCR (must drive it one day) leading us back towards Bakewell, getting overtaken by a couple of dirt bikes along the way. Then a short ride up steep tarmac took us to the last bridleway of the day, a slippery chute littered with fallen branches known as Golf Course Hill which is rated one of the best in the White Peak. Now the ride should really continue into Bakewell and up the A6 to pick up another bridlepath and rejoin the Monsal Trail, but time wasn't on our side so we got onto the Trail at Bakewell Station. The ride back to Millers Dale I found to be a rather dull slog along the flat into a headwind. Dani saw it as a good warm down and a chance to spin her legs out after a pretty strenuous ride.

Paul.