The Belvoir Loop is a nice ride – as said above, it is farmland hacking mostly, but with some nice trails – especially in the bits nearer the castle. It’s a ‘scenery / wildlife / nice day out’ ride – nothing even remotely technical, but then that’s not always the point, is it?
I’ve ridden it a couple of times and also ridden lots of bit of it doing a few of the Viking Challenges.
If you are feeling your way back into fitness/riding, don’t do what I did about three months after getting my first vaguely capable mountain bike. After three months of rattling round the local woods once a week for max 10 miles at a time, I saw the Hollins/Rushup/Roych/Jacobs route on mountainbikerides and saw the comment ‘rite of passage’.
I tooled myself up (March 06)with what I thought was ‘the kit’. Trackie bottoms, free rucksack from WHSmith with a camelback bladder in (tied onto the strap with string), an OS map, compass, and a few spares. Lunch at the chippy in Hayfield, I thought. It was a marginally windy, but mostly misty and rainy day.
It was a rude wake-up call. There were many fallings off, including into a particuallry nasty bog on the top of Rushup and a nearly getting lost incident at Kinderlow End. Granted I did get all the way down Jacobs at the end without dabbing, but it was at a truly glacial pace. I must have looked like a Vietnam Vet as I arrived back at Edale after about 7 hours.
From a sensible ‘not becoming a statistic’ point of view I wouldn’t recommend it in trackie bottoms, but it is one of the most memorable rides I have ever done!