A week up north

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BY: Melanie Alexander

Published: 29th March, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, after a weekend of racing with the second Welsh XC series on the Saturday and Goshawk challenge on the Sunday, we travelled up to Yorkshire for a week of riding with team mate Niall Frost. Niall organised a fantastic week of riding. The week started with a 75 mile road ride just south of the Yorkshire Dales. During the week Niall guided us on a couple more hilly road rides through the Yorkshire Dales. It’s not an area I have explored before on a bike but I will definitely return, the hills are steep and the scenery is stunning.


We also had a fantastic guided ride with Stuart at Dales Mountain Biking, a really good set up with great riding on their doorstep. Stuart the owner and our guide for the day was a joy to ride with and also provides good accommodation and food to suit hungry riders.



We also went for a natural mountain bike loop starting in Keswick. Unfortunately we got rained and snowed on and very cold so had to cut the ride short and find a coffee shop instead.

Mid week we had a recovery skills development day at Lee Quarry which I definitely recommend. So many man-made trails in a compact area and so much to practice on; berms, jumps, rocks, single track and a pump track. It has been really well designed and maintained by Rowan Sorrell and Dafydd Davies. We bumped into Rowan whilst we were there, maintaining the trails. It was a shame it was such a windy day making jumping and a lot of the single track more difficult but we did spend a lot of time on the pump track.

It was a brilliant week, a good mixture of mountain and road riding, eating lots and relaxing more.

Thanks to
Xcracer.com,
Gateway cycles
Accelerade
Mt Zoom
and Exposure Lights.