Hannah goes in search of time away from being on the clock, on a schedule, and hitting goals.
Words and photography Hannah Dobson
Hey, this feature looks even better when viewed via Pocketmags; you get the full graphic designed layout on your device FOR FREE (if you’re a subscriber). It’s not quite as beautiful as the paper magazine but it’s better than a basic webpage.
In the final funk of winter, I started to feel the constraint of commitment, surviving the days and weeks through the dark and cold, counting down to the next life highlight. But they were too far apart, counted in months and weeks, not days and weekends. By the time I reached the highlights, I was ready to collapse and I’d packed the time with more commitments. Friends to see, places to be. All good stuff, but not really ‘free time’. It is all too easy in our age of allocated annual leave to save up those precious days for specific outings, holidays or home projects.
And so I dreamed of taking a couple of days to meander, in the direction of the Pennine Bridleway north from where I live. Freedom from the daily, and maybe a chance to reset. Once I got past the valleys and climbs of a normal day’s ride, I would enter, pretty much, the unknown. I wondered what would be out there and whether equipped with all I needed to pedal and sleep, I could roam freely and in a fairly unstructured manner. With an easy train bailout at many points along the route, I wouldn’t have to commit myself to getting there. A set of Ortlieb bags facilitated this mission: a Flexi Pack on my bars with a Frame-Pack Toptube bag and a Fuel-Pack on the frame, and a Seat-Pack mounted beneath my saddle. Room for everything I needed, plus space left over for extra snacks or souvenirs.
Into the unknown
I set off on a cool, breezy but sunny morning. Keen to get to the unknown, I took a series of scenic back roads until finally reaching my first unknown: the Panopticon at Wycoller. As I pulled off the road my feet were freezing and a mug of steaming tea would certainly have gone down well. However, it turned out that the panoptic views afforded by the holes in the hollow pebble-like sculpture also allow for the entry of wind from any direction. I took some photos of my bike, stamped my feet to try to warm them and set off for my first section of off-road for the day.
Following the slightly compressed line of grass, like a stripe on the vicarage lawn made by a drunken gardener, I swooped down through the field in pure joy – until I hit my first gate. I had forgotten about the gates. The Pennine Bridleway (PBW henceforth) crosses much farmland and every field is bounded by gates. I rode onwards cursing every gate but enjoying the variety that the route offered. There were farm tracks – some of compressed dirt and some of concrete. There were dusty foot-wide trails scored into the grass, and others almost invisible between the marker posts on sections of scrubby farmland. The sun was shining and Lancashire was doing its best ‘God’s own country’.
A man standing outside his house having a mug of tea rushed to open a gate for me and to check for oncoming traffic. I was grateful, not just for the gate, but also to be warned of the road danger. Having ridden off-road for a while and not seen a soul I was feeling like I was really out there, and the sudden encounter with the fast road crossing was a bit of a surprise. It was a cautionary lesson and as I encountered further road crossings, I took great care. It did seem the traffic was coming at me with an alarming speed, but maybe this was just in contrast to my slow pootling progress through the field margins.
Antisocial behaviour
I had really lucked out. It had been such a dry spell that puddles were pretty much non-existent and fields were firm and as fast as they’re ever likely to be before the summer’s growth is added. I wound my way around the back of factories as I approached the first real settlement I’d seen in hours and decided it was time for a café stop and second breakfast. ‘Humble Pie’ offered up a suitably laden bacon and black pudding roll with two kinds of sauce and a slice of quiche to take away and eat later. My route onward was punctuated by people whose stories and interactions would remind me of the many forms of freedom – and constraint. In a remote layby, I met a man who was practising the bagpipes, an instrument so antisocial that he was banished to the fields to rehearse. Their drone followed me on the breeze as I pressed onwards, Mel Gibson roaring ‘Freedom!’ in my mind’s eye.
I explored a circular stand of trees, marked as a former castle on my map, with a moat of nettles just starting to show. No sign of any castle – it was now just a mound with the perfect hollow for a bivvy spot. In another few weeks, it would take a brave soul to battle through the moat of likely waist-high nettles. And today, it was too early in my journey for sleep, though I was glad to have taken the time to stop and explore. It felt like there was a tingle in the air, a sense of the past. Or perhaps I was just low on electrolytes…
Past met present as I rolled through the grounds of some stately home, apparently augmenting its income through glamping and wedding hosting. Strings of fairy lights glowed in the hedgerows, above a thick covering of wild garlic not yet in bloom. The square edges of this Georgian mansion were in contrast to the irregular lumps of drystone walls I’d seen so far. As I crossed into the Yorkshire Dales, these walls changed shape, as gritstone changed to limestone.
Right on the border, I met a cow that had clearly taken the saying that ‘the grass is always greener’ rather literally. I couldn’t see how it had got out of its field, but it chomped heartily at the roadside grass between skittish jumps as I passed. I detoured to a farm that time forgot, and the farmer set off to put an end to this cow’s bid for freedom.
All the food groups?
For a bridleway, I was surprised at the lack of horse troughs and watering points and arrived in Settle too parched to eat. A Coke, a beer, and a tub of ice cream later and I felt a little revived. I debated whether to hang out in Settle and then find a bivvy spot for the night, or whether to push on past Helwith Bridge. Sunny evening crowds made the decision for me. I didn’t fancy the wait for food alongside screaming children and sunburned drinkers. I grabbed an emergency backup meal deal in the Co-op in case I didn’t make it for last food orders in Helwith Bridge and pushed on.
Life Choices?
I’m a little bit proud to say I did pedal rather than push, but as I struggled out of Settle up a very steep road climb on the way to rejoining the PBW, my Coke/beer/ice cream combo threatened to revisit me. I realised I’d forgotten to take my water bottle into the bar to refill, but I wasn’t going back. Questioning my life choices, I made it to the top for the first fingers of sunset. A campervan couple had found their freedom by bagging the prime sunset viewing camp spot – at 4pm. A warm glow replaced my sweaty one as they were happy to provide me with a refill of water. They even told me to finish what I had so they could give me a full refill. This was a wise move and I was glad to have a spot of being told what to do. There comes a point where tiredness results in poor choices being compounded by more poor choices. Revived a little, I tried to warn myself to make better choices, resisting the urge to fly at warp speed down a glorious road descent. And again, thoughts of ‘ride sensibly’ were at the fore as I tackled a steep, rough descent down into Stainforth. I prayed I wouldn’t cook my brakes as I tried to keep the weight of my laden bike under control.
It had been a glorious day, but as the sun dropped low I decided to stick to the road and be sure to make it to Helwith Bridge. What did I want to eat? Lasagne? Chips? Pie? Definitely not a burger. I found myself in that state of knowing what I didn’t want, but not really knowing what I did. As I rolled into the busy pub car park, full of campervans, and up to the bar, I still hadn’t really figured it out. Scampi caught my eye, but in a flash of practical thought I figured that while cold lasagne for breakfast is acceptable, cold scampi is not. I wasn’t convinced I could actually eat, but needn’t have worried. Remembering to fill my water bottles before I left, I set off in the dark towards what I hoped would be a secluded bivvy spot among some trees.
Make your bed and lie in it
I’d opted to mount my light on my fork, which meant my wheel cast a long shadow slightly off to the left in front of me. Not recommended for technical riding, and I wished all the more for a head torch as I tried scouting the terrain for a spot to camp for the night. The location that had looked ideal on the map proved to be basically a giant cairn of boulders. I could not have picked lumpier and less flat ground had I tried. Eventually, I spotted a gap just under a tree that was just about perfectly body-sized and boulder-free. I cleared away a few fallen sticks and branches to make it suitable for sleeping.
The stars were out and the temperature was dropping, but I was soon quite snug in my bivvy. I felt a little smug as well as snug, with my belongings neatly unpacking in a helpful order, making the camp set-up easy and orderly, even in the dark. A long day, but a pretty perfect one, with another day of options ahead of me. I realised that, while the completer-finisher in me had pushed me along to reach this planned camp spot, the idea that I didn’t have to had given me confidence and freedom. It was OK to push on because I had all I needed just to stop, whenever. I slept a night as soundly as any I do in my bed at home.
At dawn, the skies made clear that the forecast had changed from when I’d left home. The last I’d seen was a promise of four dry days, mostly sunshine, patches of cloud at most. A cold wind and thick clouds on the horizon said otherwise, but a lack of phone signal meant I couldn’t check for a forecast update. As I rushed to dress against the cold, while shoving down my meal-deal tuna sandwich from the night before, I couldn’t help but feel that this was not as orderly as the set-up the night before. But it was no problem – everything stuffed back into my packs just as easily as it had in the comfort of my living room. I made sure to leave things I might want later – like waterproofs – at the most accessible end of my saddlebag and shoved the sleeping bag and a few clothes into my bar bag. Squeezing the air out through the valves, it all packed down and tightened up without difficulty. Which was just as well, as the second day’s terrain proved much rougher than the first.
Achievement unlocked
One of my reasons for pushing on the day before was that I wanted to have time to mooch around the village of Clapham. I have fond memories of being there with my (now deceased) best friend and having some excellent scones. It’s also home to Alan Bennett. If you don’t know his writing and plays, you probably know his voice – his is the definitive audiobook of Winnie the Pooh. He’s 90 now, and I don’t know if he still rides a bike, though certainly he did so in London long before it was fashionable. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being ahead of fashion, or even behind,’ being just the sort of line you’d read in his diaries. Very much a bicycle rider of the Philip Larkin era, I’d have been happy to remove my bicycle clips in awkward reverence had I bumped into Bennett, only in my Lycra and merino get-up I had no clips to remove. I’d just have been awkward. In any case, I was too early in the day for Alan Bennett or scones, but I still persuaded a cafe to sell me a cornflake tart and tea – appropriate breakfast fare, I think – before opening time.
As I sat on a bench eating my second breakfast, I reflected on how nice a day I’d had the day before. I’d ridden further than I had in ages, at my own pace. I’d put in some effort, but not to the point of irretrievable exhaustion. I’d woken up feeling fresh enough, and not too stiff. I wasn’t even saddle sore. All of these counted as big wins in my book. It had all been lovely. Having made it to Clapham, there was nowhere ahead that I really wanted to get to. I’d flipped some sort of switch in my head to where I was done achieving. I didn’t care if I got to the end of the PBW in Kirkby Stephen or not; I was pleased with how things had been. Anything else that came my way would be a bonus. In that moment, eating my cornflake cake, I was happy. A plant stall with an honesty box across from me beckoned. I find it very hard to resist an honesty box, or a plant stall, so this double whammy got me. I figured that carrying a plant for the rest of the day would remind me to embrace flexibility: I wasn’t on some weight-weenie mile-mashing mission. I hoped it would survive the journey and that seeing it grow in my garden would remind me later of this perfect morning moment.
Rock on
I retraced my steps up the National Cycle Network out of Clapham. This time it was steps, as the baby head boulders in dark tunnels and steep incline kept me from pedalling. On the way into Clapham, I’d ignored the many warning signs, posted without apparent irony: ‘NATIONAL CYCLE NETWORK. STEEP HILL. DARK TUNNELS. CYCLISTS ARE ADVISED TO DISMOUNT’. The NCN can be quite pleasant, but it is not transport infrastructure, as this section exemplified.
Predictably, my plant got shaken loose on the first descent and I was reminded that things that fall off your front pack may kill you, while things which fall from the rear merely get lost. I stopped to shuffle my additional luggage, deciding it was better to risk losing the plant than being killed by it.
Pedalling over the top of a grassy hill, the path indistinct in the expanse of rock-scattered grasslands, I thought how glad I was to have good visibility. Heading over this terrain in thick cloud could easily result in getting lost. Which is presumably why a very high wall had been built to one side of me. Peeping over it, I realised there was a fair-sized cliff – or ‘scar’ more properly in this area – and beyond a huge expanse of limestone pavement. Whether it was to stop travellers falling off the edge, or because farmers got sick of losing sheep in the grikes (deep fissures in the limestone rock), the long wall in the middle of nowhere made a lot of sense. The pavement beyond was as incredible a rock formation as I have seen anywhere in the world. I stopped to take a selection of wholly inadequate photos that did little to capture the scale or impressiveness of the sight.
The route continued to be rough, and often upwards, getting more and more remote as time went by. Apart from one farmer with his dog, I saw no one until running into the leaders of the Dales Divide ultra-race. Their 600km ride at race pace rather put my dawdling efforts to shame, though I tried not to dwell on this. I was having a different sort of fun. I was glad to have been up early enough to have met only the leaders, and to have had the trails to myself. Sharing my solitude with riders chasing the racing line wasn’t something I really needed, despite their cheery hellos (and one who practically got down on his knees with grateful thanks as I held a gate open for him).
Upwards and upwards I rode, the crosswind whipping at me and making it tricky to hold a line. Tucked behind a wall at the eventual summit, I put on extra layers and stuffed down trail mix as I prepared to descend. Darker clouds were gathering to the north, and once again I was running low on water. Camels might be better than horses for the PBW. Where were the trickling streams and waterfalls I had imagined? Instead, all I found were a few puddles filled with tadpoles. I felt they needed all the water they could get.
At first, the descent seemed like it might take me back to where I started, hairpinned back along the other side of the ridge I’d just climbed. But soon it peeled away from the ridge, sending me down a descent with lumps and humps like a giant flow trail or pumptrack. With loose gravel in the turns and a laden bike, I resisted the urge to let fly. On a mountain bike, flight would certainly be an option. I swear you could double some of the natural take-offs on this trail. But that would not be a game for a solo ride. Still without a signal and really out there, I was watching the sky. A crash or mechanical here would have put me in a big self-extraction operation. I was in the business of having fun, but perhaps not too much of it.
There may be trouble ahead
This mountain bike dream descent spat me out onto roadie paradise. Perfectly smooth, freshly tarred, and with a big ‘Road Closed’ sign at the junction. It got better still as the gentle climb revealed a long descent on the other side. I looked at the PBW, heading off up to skirt another ridge, and then ahead at the ribbon of descending tarmac, and then up at the gathering clouds. Checking my paper map – still no signal and conserving phone battery – I calculated that this was a commitment point. It was a big old trek around this ridge, and it would spit me out somewhere sufficiently remote that there would be no choice but to push on (or take shelter in my bivvy) whatever the weather or my physical state. I was already wearing three layers, a buff and a hood, just to stay warm in the wind. Heading up was only going to make things colder – and by the looks of the sky, things were going to turn wet. Decision made, the roadie descent won.
Again I resisted the urge to let fly, not convinced my brakes could slow me down quickly enough to make the turns between the fast stretches. Rounding a corner, under a viaduct, I was forced to come to a complete stop. I’d reached the cause of the ‘road closed’ sign, and indeed the road was closed. Not in the usual way, with a couple of big blocks to keep cars out. Instead, there were full-on building site security panels, padlocked to the walls on either side of the road.
As I stood looking at the barriers, and my map, trying to figure out how far around any alternative might be, an old man shuffled down the road. He’d come to inspect the barrier, which had apparently only gone up the day before, although the road had been closed since a landslip before Christmas. He told me he’d not had any post since Christmas, thanks to the road closure, and now this barrier meant he couldn’t even walk down to the village below. It was a ten-mile drive to the nearest settlement going back up the hill. Together we examined the barrier for weaknesses, trying to figure out if we could make a way to squeeze through. It would save me a detour, and leave him with a route through. But to no avail. He seemed disconsolate and sad, a forgotten casualty of this rural closure.
I said that I was going to try to take a small footpath from a farm, which turned out to be his house. He said he’d come with me, in case his geese were aggressive. I had intended to pedal on, but sensed that it had been some time since he’d had anyone to chat to so I got off and pushed along beside him. We exchanged tales of goose-keeping and the stupidity of ducks. Tucked away in the fold of the hill – a beautiful spot for sure, but hard scrabble living – he told me how he doesn’t really get enough sunlight to grow much in the garden. A stream trickled behind the house, the bare limestone riverbed much larger than the tiny flow of water warranted. Perhaps this was why I’d seen so little water on my ride – there was a drought? But he explained that this is how the stream looks most of the time, with it surging wildly in heavy rain before most of the water drops back through the limestone cracks into underground flows. Again I was surprised by the fact there were such wondrous rock formations practically on my doorstep. Although far, far colder, it reminded me of the ‘Cowboy Jacuzzi’ spot outside Moab, Utah. A similar flash-flow-prone creek, with an otherworldly bare rock riverbed.
The man told me he’d retired there with his wife 24 years ago because they liked how quiet it was and how scenic. I could see that now, being cut off from the village, and living alone, might be making that retirement dream into a prison. Cut off, hemmed in by hillsides, an existence restricted. As I set off across the boggy footpath, I felt sad to be leaving him to his isolation but glad to have briefly provided it with an interruption.
Where is everyone?
It was a short but technical ride and scramble back to the road – almost certainly beyond the old man’s physical capabilities – and back to a long and gentle ‘riverbed-side’ descent. Barely enough water to paddle in, but such glorious scenery on all sides that it seemed I’d dropped through a portal to another time. Where were all the bank holiday hoards? With gently sloping fields on either side of the road, it was simply begging for campsites filled with vans, overpriced ice cream shops, and a gastro pub. Instead, there was nothing but a small church offering passers-by the option of making themselves a cup of tea with the kettle provided.
Another look at the map told me that in one direction I was a fairly long road pedal from anything that looked likely to serve or sell food. In the other direction, I had a short but very steep climb to Dent train station. Still without a phone signal, I had no idea when the next train would be (a timetable would be a very useful addition to the church noticeboard). I thought, perhaps, that I had reached a natural end to my adventure. A long way onwards to anything else, but with a whole host of good times already in the bank. Smelling warm clutches and brakes from passing cars, I removed some layers before starting the ascent. A couple of narrow bends had me crossing my fingers I wouldn’t meet a car – I doubted my ability to unclip quickly, and their ability to stop. Steep as it was, I realised that at no point in my ride had I really ‘entered the red’. Neither had I ever doubted my ability to get to the top, despite my luggage. Free from the need to keep up with a group, or even a single companion, all I had to do was pedal at a pace that allowed me to keep spinning and balancing. Sort of ironic, since it was all the plate spinning and balancing of priorities that had fried me up and set me on this adventure in the first place.
As I pulled into Dent station – apparently the highest in England – the first drops of rain started to fall. I had an hour to wait for the next train. Still no signal, so I passed the time not on my phone, but in the cosy waiting room, contemplating life. I’d had two days ‘out’. I’d barely seen other people, but I’d had some really pleasant interactions with those I had met. And, in between, I realised, my mind had been quite still. No big thoughts. No earworms. No ‘I must remember to…’. Freed from a schedule, just taking in what was around me, watching the climbs tick by on my computer, and spinning and balancing. As the train clacked back home over the Ribblehead Viaduct and the rain lashed the windows, I felt like I’d tasted freedom. I’d go back for more, one day. But right now, I was ready to get back to the spinning and balancing of life. A change is indeed as good as a rest.
Luggage list
???
In association with Ortlieb
uk.ortlieb.com