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You've heard of Jason and the Argonauts. On Sunday 8th May it was Jason and the Armournots who made the short hop south to the Helmsley/Sutton Bank area of North Yorkshire after the rest of the squad gradually dropped out. Their loss.

"What's an Armournot?" I hear you ask. It's a Rock Gollum with an aversion to rocks. And a Rock Gollum who leaves his new Brand-X armour in the car. And a Rock Gollum  who then suffers another almighty injury! This particular Rock Gollum has proved consistently that he does not ROCK! Short story:-

We should have been off to Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland, but with so many dropouts/unavailables the two remaining men decided to keep it closer to home and not do any leaping about. Jason had seen "Killer Loop", a regular article in MBR magazine, the May 2005 edition. He fancied trying it so off we went.

The village of Ampleforth was the start point for this ride, sent in to MBR by a reader. The instructions right from the start were seriously flawed, and we ended up on private land straight away, and with nowhere to go. So we back-tracked and (silly-billys) not having a proper map as this was a spur-of-the-moment change to the plans, pointed ourselves at the first name in the ride article that we could see on Golly's GPS (a VERY handy tool, incidentally - must learn how to use it).

Within 10 minutes we agreed with the word "killer" in the description. Up, up, forever up. Still, it was a pleasant morning for a walk. Eventually we dived off the minor road we had landed on heading for Scawton and into the forest of Wass Moor. That was a muddy, short-lived piece of fun leading onto a fireroad and spitting us back out just south of the A170 at Tom Smith's Cross. So far, our route's better than the "proper" version. Incidentally, on my map GR 559810 is quite a way from where the article says it is!

We ended up on a very fast mile-or-so of rough, steep fireroad descent through Sproxton Moor until, with the incredible Rievaulx Abbey visible through the trees on our right, Jason the Jester asked "can we not go down there?". "Down there" was Suicide Street. A very small part of North Yorks as yet undiscovered by Man. Jungle. Gollum Country. So I followed him as he dived off the side of the trail into the blackness.

  What a very interesting experience. After attempting to ride through trees a few feet apart with bushes between, we got to the top of a small ravine with no way down to the river a hundred feet below.   But we found a way, using the bikes sideways-on as a brake. Fools.  However, that simply put us on the left bank of the River Rye which is not passable,   and our target was the stone bridge at the junction of the road to the Abbey. This was where The Gollum came unstuck. He slipped into a stream and another fall on the terribly injured elbow hurt in the "Bus Shelter Bash" two weeks before slowed our progress for a few minutes until he stopped crying. Well, can YOU lick your own elbow? 

Carrying the bikes over, through and around trees and undergrowth we eventually reached the bridge, Jason scaling the wall and hauling both bikes up to the road. We rested here, and had our first bite of the day, a pair of headless liquified bananas from Golly's crushed Camelback after his fall.

Go East, Young Man

This was the East side of the bridge. Post-banana, we mounted up and travelled what, 25 metres? Before we stopped again.

West Side Story

- on the West side - why? Jason got his third b****y puncture in a week. Now this is where boring drivel suddenly becomes exciting! We discovered we had no patches! "Oh, God!" we both proclaimed. Great minds think alike, so Jay thought about killing himself while I thought about my armour in the car. Then, like synchronised swimmers (you know, them with their pinched noses and identical, ugly little faces) we both turned to face Rievaulx Abbey and there was a flash of lightning across the sky. Suddenly, we heard the sound of pumping. Were the bananas off? When we turned around, this is what we found - Yep, a fully-inflated inner tube dangling from On High. Saved! Jason grabbed it before it disappeared and shoved it into his rear wheel. We set off along the half mile to the Abbey and stopped to pay homage for the Miracle of the Tube - henceforth known as the Miracle of the Tube (although the Gollum claimed it was the Return of the Ring). Did I say short story? Onward we proceeded, stopping to ask a local if he knew where we were (he did!) and sniff his pot of creosote. So we continued on following his immaculate directions, high as kites and heavily mud-splattered. Not too much rain got on us but the ground was sodden almost everywhere. We passed over the Rye again via a bridge shown in the Killer Loop article, so we were still using some bits of the proper ride, but more by accident than design.   Once again we searched frantically for off-road routes to tie in with the published route, but it was hard going in the very boggy conditions. Crossing two farms threw our sense of direction a little, but we came across this little fella    who put us right once Jason had caught him, lucky baa baa. Back onto a mixture of rough trails, the Cleveland Way and minor roads until we found ourselves catching a squad of horsy-types on what looked like a Bridleway. After the last four-legged monster in the chain reared and threw it's rider into the ditch (was that Jason's rapid approach?  n-e-i-g-h!) we were confronted by the charming young lady leading the group on their guided tour. Expecting to be lambasted for lack of care and attention, she turned out to be quite human and very pleasant. Very pleasant (did I say that twice?). She told us her idea of the best way back to Ampleforth, unfortunately all by road. Anyway, not content with causing further harm to the Gollum hours earlier, Jason once again headed straight off the side of the road into even darker places, proclaiming bravely "we can get down here!"   Naturally, I followed him - again, but this time he was forced to concede as we had no machetes,   so we did as we'd been told by the delightful young lady in the jodhpurs (am I mentioning her too often?) and took to the road (it was Jason who first mentioned her jodhpurs, I hadn't noticed them, being enchanted by her face and the shiny zip on her jacket - like all good Gollums I'm attracted by shiny things). I thought he'd hurt his neck when actually he was blatantly burning a hole through the jodhpurs with his X-ray vision.

By some quirk of fate we arrived at the village of Hawnby, reached by a scary 40mph minor road drop. Scary because the road was soaked, our tyres were chocker with mud and clay, and we couldn't see through mud-spattered eyes and lenses. Travelling too fast to stop safely at the junction to Helmsley,   we screamed past it down the hill and then had to crawl (literally for Golly) half way back up the climb and take off briskly on the tarmac as we decided enough was enough, the sky was black, we had no waterproofs, we had no lights, and it would soon be December. Gormless. We continued our retreat towards Helmsley on the B1257, taking a lucky right about a mile past the turn-off for Rievaulx Abbey that we'd emerged from hours earlier, signposted Byland Abbey. We had hoped to miss the climb on the far side of Rievaulx Village but this road  brought us unexpectedly back to the scene of The Miracle. However, this time we didn't fall into the trap of taking the woodland trails, and stayed on the minor roads.

On the way down in the car Jason had pointed to a road off to the left (the road we were now on) just after scaling Sutton Bank, and recalled that he had done some wiring in a pub somewhere down there about ten years ago! Behold, there it was, in the village of Scawton!   Here's the old bike he left as it had no suspension in 1995. Unlike his present Kona Coiler Dee Lux, this one was a Groaner Boiler Nee Guts.   And here he is heading towards the pub's back garden to make sure the earth plate was nice and wet.   We carried  on (walking a fair bit) past woodland on the left and noticed something interesting at the side of the road. If you're in the Army and your name is Woods, stay well away from this place!   Onward with BLUE SKY above - the longest dry spell of the day - until our road joined the terrifying A170. Turning left here, and keeping a steady inch between Jason's rear and my front wheel, we hammered along it hoping we didn't get skewered by a car or sieved by a truck. We took the first turn off to the right signposted Ampleforth and Home! Unusually for us, the final part of a ride provided some payback with a fast descent, unfortunately on tarmac again, back down to Ampleforth and our car park at the Abbey at the end of a very hard but as usual, very enjoyable 30 miler.   Delightful wet, brown underwear was quickly swapped for clean dry items and Golly was chauffeured home in the rain to allow the elbow to recover. Thanks, Killer Loop writer, but No Thanks. Did I mention the lovely young lady we encountered? As a memento for this ride I'll call her Ample Forth, because she was, and she had.

Reeth Lead Mines (aka MidAir Mining Disaster) 9th April 2006

Bowes ride - Reivers minus MidAirCrisis! Easter Sunday 2006