And another hot & hilly day

View over Lindley Wood

Another sunny day. Brilliant. Early start and another 40 miles training in. The early start was great. By 9:00am I was across Eccup and rolling through the back of the Harewood Estate. There were Red Kites flying above me, rabbits running around on the roadside (probably keeping an eye on the Red Kites!). I even had a little finch flying at the side of me for a couple of hundred yards. A perfect morning really.


 

The plan was to do yet more climbing and I had taken a guess at the route used by Mr Mee. It looked good and was effectively a loop of four reservoirs, Swinsty, Fewston, Lindley Wood and Eccup. On the map its a double loop. To Otley, 15 mile loop up through Asquith to Timble, Swinsty, Fewston, Lindley Wood and Farnley before dropping back into Otley. There is a lot of climbing on this loop. I've climbed 2850 feet on the whole run which is about 70 feet per mile, but it's 106 feet per mile for the loop out of Otley. Not Pyrenean but getting closer. I was also surprised by the number of cyclists on this route. I met one club run climbing up out of Farnley with about 15 riders. Even more surprising in some ways was the mix as there was quite a few female riders and juniors too. That has to be good. I also had a few chats with others along the road. Wearing a End to End shirt usually starts conversations off nicely.






At Swinsty

 

I was aiming at doing the whole route non stop but the legs were feeling it by the return to Otley so I stopped at Mr Dunnes Emporium for coffee and cake before the final leg home. The place was heaving in the sunshine so again had a chat with a couple of guys who will be doing the Great Yorkshire in a couple of weeks. Funny, that has fallen off my radar and it would have been good to go this year. It's only when climbing up the Chevin that you realise that this just isn't a hill in comparison to all the others you have had the pleasure of climbing up. Of course, I also had a 40 mph descent coming down to Lindley Wood. This was not as pleasant as it should have been as the road surface was a bit rough in places and there were motor cycles going up which insisted on overtaking cars even where there was limited room.

A grand day out, to quote my hero, Mr Wallace, even if I was nowhere near Wensleydale. I suppose crackers could have come into it somewhere.