I didn’t plan for my trip to the Peaks to be a day trip, but that’s how panned out...
I’d booked a Friday off from work, weeks before, with the intention to do something, but as it drew closer I had no clearer idea of what I was going to do – stay local or travel, drive or train, bike, hike, camp, kayak, multi day or several day activities?
With so many options I found it hard to choose.
In the end, I settled on driving up to the Peak District and riding the Dark + White Peak Peek route, from bikepacking.com.
My plan was to ride the route between Friday and Sunday and just see what happened.
I would have preferred to drive up on the Thursday night, for an early start on the bike on Friday morning. As it was, I’d booked an organised walk on the Thursday evening, and chose not to miss it, so ended up not getting up to the Peak District until about midday on Friday.
I set off from Hathersage under an unexpectedly blue sky. It wasn’t long before the drive felt worth it, as I rolled along the road below Stanage Edge – the steep climb out of Hathersage a provided a good warm up and a shout of encouragement from some walkers provided a nice morale boost on the way up.
For a while I covered ground I was mostly familiar with, from a previous walking trip – albeit not the same route. The route skirted along the bottom of Stanage Edge, before doing a big lazy hairpin and doubling back, ascending up on chunky gravel to reach the top of the Edge.
The sky was blue and the views were clear – and plenty of other people were out enjoying some time outside.
I enjoyed swooping around a small and picturesque reservoir, the sun high in the sky. I breathed deep and smiled as I picked up speed on the tarmac descent.
My Garmin told me to turn off the tarmac but had I kept going for even a couple more minutes, freewheeling down the road, I would have found myself in the outskirts of Sheffield. I hadn’t realised quite how much the Peak District and Sheffield really are right next to each other.
The route really made full use of the eastern edge of the park here, butting right up against it, before taking a quiet country lane back towards the centre.
It was along this stretch of beautiful lane, that I felt like I’d come round the ‘back’ of the park. I felt like I had the whole area to myself and I thought to myself about how long distance routes like this often take you away from the ‘main’ areas, to see more of a place – this isn’t to say my way of experiencing the outdoors is better than anyone else’s, but I do find that a bike is a great way to experience things.
It wasn’t long before I found the crowds again though as I came deeper into the park again – I whizzed along a road descent, past a layby packed with cars, aware of a coach behind me as I kept an eye on my Garmin, ready to turn off the tarmac.
A lovely few kilometres of trail followed, a mix of natural paths and gravel, with a short section of surprisingly neatly laid rock slabs on the descent down towards Ladybower Reservoir – which provided great views for most of this section.
The route followed the edge of Ladybower Reservoir for a while, on smooth gravel – it was nice to be able to pick up a bit of easy speed for a while on the relatively flat path around the reservoir.
This ease was brought to an end by one of the hardest hike a bike climbs I’ve done so far. The hill wasn’t huge, nor was it particularly steep, but the path was littered with huge rocks and rocky steps, making it an absolute pain the arse to push a loaded bike up – I didn’t have a hope in hell of riding it.
Once I’d finally slogged to the top I was rewarded with a lovely view over Lose Hill, on the eastern end of the Great Ride (with Mam Tor at the other). I paused here and refilled bottles, enjoying the rest and the open view in the late afternoon sun.
As I soaked up some sun and regained feeling in my legs, “are you training for something?” one half of a seriously kitted out running couple asked, “no, this is just my idea of fun” I replied. I’d had quite a few interactions with people so far on this ride – maybe the sun was making people happy & talkative.
It was only 10 minutes later that I really found myself questioning the things I choose to do for fun. Having assumed the bigger path on the ground was the one I was meant to follow, it was few hundred metres beyond where I should have taken the higher fork at a junction that I realised I’d completely ignored my Garmin and was now about 100 vertical metres below where I should be.
Pushing back up the trail I’d come down, littered as it was with rocks, didn’t seem enticing. So instead I decided to take a ‘short cut’, straight up the hill.
What followed was about twenty minutes of huffing and puffing up a hill so steep I had to push by bike an arm’s length at a time, planting my feet and pushing, then holding the brakes and walking up to my bike – and repeating this over and over for 300 metres until, mercifully, I finally connected with the path I should have been on and my world returned to a sensible angle.
The next 5km was basically all downhill, into Bamford. I passed a couple of campsites that looked pretty busy – wanting somewhere to stop for the night, but not wanting to be kept awake by people with different priorities from their camping.
I rolled through Bamford, once again having been rubbish at remembering to get and drink enough water for the last couple of hours.
A steep tarmac climb south of Bamford gave me time to think about my options for the night. I was about 6 hours into the ride, with about 50km ridden.
I winched my way to the top of the climb and looked out over the beautifully lit valley in front of me.
And I decided I’d had enough.
I came to accept that I’d had a really good day of riding, in weather beyond what I’d expected, on a route that I definitely wanted to come back to, but, for today, I was done.
I wasn’t even that tired and no where near my limit – I’d had (and enjoyed) much harder days on the bike.
But when I thought about setting up camp and riding again the next day I just couldn’t be bothered.
It caught me by surprise. Here I was, on the first day of a long weekend, not even a third of the way into a nice route and I was ready to give up.
I’d enjoyed wall to wall sun all day and the forecast for Saturday and Sunday looked significantly cooler, so that burst some of my enthusiasm. But again, I’ve enjoyed rides (and walks) in much worse conditions.
The biggest contributor was slightly less tangible.
A big part of most of my ‘epic’ rides, or multi day trips has been the feeling of getting away and having some time to myself. But having found myself newly single at the end of last year and adjusting to living by myself gave me lots of time to myself, without needing to traipse for hours into the middle of nowhere.
So I decided that I would allow myself this unexpected curtailment of my ride and take a shortcut back to Hathersage (which due to the nature of this route ended up being less than 20 minutes away, having set off from there over 6 hours ago).
So, 7 hours after I set off and two days earlier than planned, I was back at my car, packing my bike away in a little bit of a daze.
My drive home was uneventful and I woke up the next morning slightly confused to be at home and wondering what to do with the rest of my weekend.
I had some thinking to do about my motivations for going out on all day, or multi day rides & walks. To reassess why I go and what I get out of it. Basically, why bother? When I could sit at home and be by myself anyway.