Ideally ending at Monsal head

bump

Get a map, choose a route, ride it.

It’s not like mountain biking in the trail centre that is the Peak district, its about going out and doing it.

Sorry, re-reading that makes it sound a bit terse. I meant that going out exploring and putting a route together is part of the learning process, experiment!

Just finished nights, with a bad dose of gentlemans influenza in my defence..

if terse = knobber then yes

You really are spoilt for choice around there. If you fancy a good long (for the area) climb then head 1/2 mile towards Baslow then turn left up towards Curbar Gap. Once up on the tops there are loads of great lanes and if it were me I’d probably head off towards Beeley Moor above Chatsworth. There are some great views down to Bakewell. Drop back down and then explore some of the back lanes around Alport/Birchover before heading back to Calver via Monsal Head and Great Longstone. Seriously, just stay off the A roads as much as possible and you’ll have a great ride.

Yeah seconded – thirded? – get out your OS map and join up the B-roads and back lanes. You get bonus points for including chevron and double-chevron climbs. It’s your locale, right, so you’ll probably know which are the really dodgy A-roads – anything slightly too narrow, fast and twisty with poor visibility and lots of HGVs is well worth avoiding. The nice thing is that there are loads of back lanes that’ll thread their way through the area.