Bolsover & District Cycling Club

Initially they all dropped like flies...Andy Brickles was working away , Keith Twigg had a family emergency...and Adam Galley seemed to prefer decorating to riding , even though it wasn’t raining. Like me the previous week the boy cannot be feeling well.

Still i was able to stop coughing enough to feel like getting out again this week, and the Tuesday night MTB ride from Barlborough Royal Oak pub seemed like a great opportunity to blow out the cobwebs

As the minutes around 6:30 passed , the car park “filled” with a body of fit looking young geezers , with Howard making the 50minute drive over from the Lincoln flatlands , John Grainger riding through on his way to work (with pal in tow for a trip to killamarsh) and the father and son Combo of Steve and Aaron Coupland making a nice round six of us.

The fast drop from Barlborough sparked interest early in the ride , and a suggestion was made to ride through the 450m long pitch black Spinkhill tunnel….im not sure that anyone would have been brave enough.

A mile or so of road delivered us back onto the tracks behind Westfield to drop into the TPT onto the Trans Pennine Trail and a good 15-20 minutes was spent reliving my youth by exploring the bomb holes to the rear of Rother Valley ,and the area we used to call the ferns where me and my ridng mates used to practice falling off…honestly !!

Some urban biking was a necessary evil after leaving RVCP , made exciting by the manmade obstacles of kissing gates , lampposts , road junctions and dog eggs, unfortunately Howard was to fall foul (literally) of one of these before the evening was over.

Eventually the urban stuff ended at the foot of the climb from Waterthorpe up to Owlthorpe, and by god did this make us breathe through our Arses , I personally am so grateful that we had to wait to regroup on the climb, I’m thinking my lungs would have been ejected otherwise.

After a fast hardpack descent we eventually arrived at the head of the descent into Eckington woods, and after a quick warning to a couple of the guys to remove their sunglasses , we shot down this steep funnel, making our way from the bright of the sunshine into the dark gloom of the dense woodland…I think a few of the lads were wondering what type of ride I had brought them out for but I’m sure that this section made it all worthwhile, Howards brakes were literally red hot !

Another fast descent followed shortly after with a few of us being taken by surprise by a little jump that someone had kindly built on one of the fastest sections , fortunately no-one came a cropper.

The last section of the ride proved that there really is no easy way back up to Barlborough from Spinkhill but we rode to a pace that suited everyone and arrived back at the cars just as the spots of rain started.

All in all , the ride was just over 2 ¼ hours and we did a 27km loop

I think for the next route we will skip the climb to Owlthorpe and spend more time in Eckington woods as there seem to be a load of new trails to ride since I last went there

you can see the exact route here