I arrived at a hot and dusty Castleton fairly late as I’d been to pick up an ebay purchased toolbox for the man-cave on the way there. I know the area around Castleton, Hope and Edale well from years of visits on foot and on bike and was looking forward to a cracking nights riding.
I decided to get the climb out of the way early on and headed out via Hope and up on to Dirtlow Rake. I seemed to be riding well and felt reasonably strong (strange as I have been mainly running recently) on the climbs. I got up on the top with a route planned and then for some reason made a stupid decision to go and grab a little 10 pointer as an in and out on the way down Winnats pass – bonkers, what was I doing, it was almost at the bottom. I’d lost all my height gain… Well what to do – go in and hour early or climb back up. I did neither, I took the even more stupid decision to go all the way down and then back up the old road to Mam Tor…. Looking at my watch I’d realised I’d blown it and decided to just enjoy a ride and views along the top to Hollins Cross and then just trundle in. Stupidly again I thought – ooo there’s a 15 pointer just down the track into Edale – the riding was quite technical to get down which I enjoyed but it was slow going and again I lost far too much climb and ended up struggling back up even more losing time.
The drop back down into Castleton took longer than expected too and I ended up 7 mins late….. – not a great day at the office. Still the views were spectacular and it was great to be back in one of my favorite places in the Peaks.
