(Gallery link at the bottom for those in a hurry)
Last Sunday 2 Muni riders, 1 mountain biker, 1 walker and my dog took a trip too Rivington Pike (UK) for an early morning ride.
We were only the 3rd car in the carpark when we arrived at 9.15am (perhaps the poor forcast had scared some people off) and after gearing up set off.
Now I had never ridden with a biker (David) before while on the Muni, and what with the dog (Sefton) and a walker (Paula) I thought it could prove to be an interesting experiment in how fast and how slow the Muni riders (Neil & Craig) could go.
The route we choose was a 9 mile loop which had the first 1/4 on country roads. This proved to be not such a great idea with (what seemed) every motorbike in the North using the lanes for TT training. The dog suffered the worse amongst us (didn’t like the noises) It’s amazing however, how slow a bike will go when you point a camera at it :).
After the road it became much for fun with some nice hills leading up to the Pike (summit). One thing I did find was there was a limit to how slow I could go (staying with Paula who was walking) when going up rutty hills as it made UPD’s more likely.
Up to now we had only meet one other person (on a mountain bike) but with the sun shinning and the climb to the Pike lots more people were about. A few ‘other wheel comments’ were exchanged with some walkers, quite a few ‘good efforts’ from the mountain bikers and one ‘it’s very silly’ comment from an elderly lady :D.
The climb up to the Pike provided some very interesting rock stone steps that were just begging to be tried on the way down.
After some food at the top and some comical looks we started the journey back. The steps were tackled with at least 20 on lookers. See the gallery vid for the attempt (note attempt!).
The journey back was excellent with flowing hills and some challenging technical bits. We were following by two horse riders nearly the whole way, who kept catching us up every time we stopped to let Paula catch us up.
By the time we reached the car park it was completely full ensuring lots more comments about ‘mono-cycles’!. The café there provided much needed tea and cake and a place to rest my sore butt.
All in all a top day Muning, even managed to tire out the dog for the car ride home.
For photos / videos & comments see
http://www.norry.co.uk/Gallery/Rivington-Pike/rivingtonpike.htm
Note all except the steps video are in divx format while the step video is in wmv format. All about 5-7 meg each. Video’s labeled as such in comments.
Defo fancy a ride sometime in the peak district so will give a shout next time.