A Sunday Circular Around The Howardian Hills - 23rd Jan 2022

The emails had gone out first thing Saturday morning informing everyone that John C’s ride had been cancelled.  This wasn’t a surprise as the forecast was for 4 degrees overnight but in the morning there was a hard frost in York.  Kudos to the few that missed the emails and went to Squires – I understand they still made a short ride!

Disappointed I consoled myself with going for a ride by myself on Sunday when the forecast was, again, for slightly milder weather (around 4 overnight and 5/6 during the day).  Rather than ride by myself I thought I’d post the ride on the Team 5 site and see if I got any takers – I did!  In the end there were six of us – myself, Pete T, Jude & Martin Eason, Alan Broom & Chris O picking up back marker duties.

We did a circular route through the Howardian Hills from Monks Cross to Wigginton, Stillington, up the hill at Crayke, through Oulton, Hovingham, swinging a left a Swinton to end up coming into Castle Howard from the East.  A quick stop at the loos there and then off again towards Seaways for lunch via Kirkham Abbey, Leavening, Burythorpe & Thixendale.
Mostly the roads were ok but there was a fair bit of mud around – charging into corners we were not (not that I’d charge anywhere on my bike – I’m an Advanced Rider!).

Lunch at Seaways, where there were a surprising number of other muddy bikes around, courtesy of Jude’s voucher (thanks Jude!).

Our final leg was towards Strawberry Fields and we went the back roads of the Wolds through Huggate, where the mud was considerably worse.  For fairly long stretches before Millington Woods there was no tarmac to be seen.

Great Givendale through to Newton-on-Derwent and the familiar hairpins to Weldrake took us past the golf club at Swallow Hall and, after losing the back end on some treacherous mud, we arrived at Crockey Hill and the café.

Arriving at 1.50pm to a stern “We shut at 2pm!”, teas all round (thanks Alan – the card machine wasn’t working) we sat chatting for so long that when we left we closed the big yellow barriers behind us and locked up for the chap running the café.

Great day and great company! If anyone else fancies organising a ride it’s easy to do and you can set off from anywhere you like if Squires isn’t the most convenient for your route.

Talking of routes there are two downloads below – first is the route we took which was made in Basecamp and will work straight off for a Garmin (it’ll also work in other satnavs but you’ll probably only get the waypoints so the journey between them might be slightly different).  The second is the actual track of the day that we took.  Both are in GPX format.

See you next week??  Mike W (T5WG)

Download the Basecamp Route and/or the Track (both files in GPX format)