Easter Sunday Crowd Avoidance

Embsay and its environs do tend to get a bit horrendous at Easter - Thomas the Tank visits the steam railway leaving people carriers parked on every spare bit of tarmac containing innumerable small boys, many with odd haircuts and earrings and names like "Kylon".  Skipton itself becomes even more crammed with the "tea and wee" brigade as every coach trip in the land entitled "Bronte Country", The Beauty of the Dales" or "Magical Mystery Tour" basically does the same thing and parks behind the Town Hall and disgorges hordes of pensioners to have fish and chips at Bizzie Lizzies and walk very, very slowly up, down and (particularly) across the High Street.  Best to bugger off elsewhere - but where?

This weekend last year I took my bicycle for a trip over Fleet Moss (beautiful) then back via Ribblehead (utterly terrifying due to the myriad nobheads on racing motorcycles - did you know that if you die on a motorbike in the UK there's an 85% chance you will be over 35 and live in the north west of England?  And there's a 65% chance you're called Derek, are a fat assistant manager from Burnley and have always found it quite hard to get a girlfriend?  Actually I made the second one up but the first one's apparently true).  So - not the Dales then...

At times of extreme busy-ness and when you want to get some lumpy miles in there's nowhere else to go other than the Forest of Bowland - so me, l'Herb and Rick set off from our favourite car park in Clitheroe and set off to go on our own Magical Mystery Tour - only with less incontinence and chips.

First off was Waddington Fell, then Cross o' Greet - both ridden recently but not into the beast of a headwind that dogged us for about 35 miles today.  Cross 'o Greet in particular felt long and tough, but having looked at the photo I took of Rick with it looming ahead it looks pretty tough.

If you look carefully you can see the stripe of road muck up Rick's arse too - a man who's taken his mudguards off too early...

After the descent we turned left towards the Lune valley instead of our more normal route - fast, but still windy, roads led to Wray, then we crossed the Lune at Gressingham and made our way to Crook o' Lune via a slightly odd route, which appeared from the GPS track to have involved a 3 mile long hill - not surprising I was ready for my butty.  Now one is used to a bit of a wait at Woodies, as it's busy - but 45 minutes to make sausage and egg butties?  Too long, Woodie - you're off the list.

Cold and desperate to get the wind behind us we shot off down towards Quernmore and the turn for home - and for once the "Curse of the Wobbly Wind" didn't get us and we did indeed have a helpful breeze shoving us up past Jubilee Tower and the spectacular views of Morecambe Bay, and onwards to the Trough of Bowland.

All done, thought the Herb and I - but there was a sting in the tail so stingy it could have won first prize in the Portuguese Man o' War Stinging Competition for Particularly Stingy Jellyfish.  We pootled gently down to Whitewell and then turned left up an absolute monster of a climb - only a mile or so, but nearly 450' of ascent and absolutely no respite - every foot of it is uphill and makes you earn it.

A nice steady descent and a blast back along the route of the Ribble Valley 10k brought us back to Clitheroe with just short of 58 miles under our wheels, at a pedestrian 13mph but with around 6,500' of climbing.  I'm sure 4 1/2 hours of effort will do me good in Mallorca, but I think I need a couple of days of taking it easy to make sure I've plenty in there for next Sunday.