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Day 7 Ashbourne – Strines Moor
Weather – Windy and cold
Dr Pepper – Good availability wide range of prices
Terrain – Hilly to extremely hilly
Campsite – A field (with permission this time)
After a good day yesterday, once again bike troubles today forced us a second day behind schedule. In the morning we were organised leaving the campsite at 7.30 only to get a puncture on Martin’s back tyre 200 yards down the road right at the top of a windy hill. So, initiate puncture procedure for the first time in a couple of days – Martin gets the kit out and pumps up a spare tube while Rich and I use the horrible multitools to get the wheel off and the tyre and tube off the wheel. While we checked the tyre and fitted the new tube, Martin found the hole in the tube, this time quite a large split, and yet again with a smaller hole next to it. Again we found nothing sticking into the tyre and pumped it up successfully, but then noticed a significant hole in the sidewall of the tyre. We knew a new tyre was the only option but set off anyway knowing that it was that or walking, and walking it was since a few yards later the new tube exploded with a loud bang.
Rich and I cycled on to Ashbourne about four miles on and hit trouble when after asking around it seemed like there was no bike shop in the town. Finally someone directed us to a garage that also sold some bike parts and checked out their limited supply of tyres. Of the three that would fit the bike we chose the most road-like available and bought a tube for it since it was significantly wider than the others. The tyre was ‘made in Indonesia’ and also had a bright orange sidewall compared to our others which were white, but to its credit it stayed up for the duration as did, as far as I can remember, all the others till the end of the trip.
Now seems as good a time as any to name and shame the tyres, which overall we were less than impressed with. They were Schwalbe ‘City Jets’ and were the only modification we made to the bikes at all. They were brand new and unused on day one of the trip and proudly claim a ‘puncture protection system’ on them. We also had the recommended brand new inner tubes to match and whether with any other tyres it would have worked out different we don’t know, but what we do know is that in the first week of their use we had a total of about 15 punctures, although most were two holes at once for a reason we never explained. The punctures we could have put up with but then this tyre simply broke with a hole in the side of it when cycling normally on a tarmac road, costing us a lot of time, as well as our faith in the rest of the tyres to stay up for the duration and beyond. Fortunately as I say the others did stay up but now Martin has two tyres which don’t match even though paying for a proper set.
In any case, we lost an hour and a half at Ashbourne because finding a shop took so long, although we did have some good timing as Martin turned up just at the right moment so we didn’t have to wait there. Then it was time to hit the Peak District and head to Bakewell, which based on yesterday didn’t seem a problem but the land suddenly became incredibly hilly and hard work, although there were some good downhills in between. Spectacular scenery all round but it was slow going and by the time we got to the touristy Bakewell it was 11.30, and lunchtime. At around this time my gloves, bought for me by my favourite brother, had expired and we had a quick look round and bought some new ones and went to the Spar to get some lunch.
At Bakewell it was lycra central as suddenly there were serious – looking cyclists everywhere. It was packed because it was Easter Saturday and people were out walking and cycling in force and Bakewell seemed to be the base of this activity. After spending far too long in Bakewell we moved on and passed cyclists left right and centre, and also a group of walkers we identified as the Rambler’s Association by their sticks and exceptionally cheesed off looks.
Lister was really struggling today with his knee and at soon after Bakewell we made one of the worst decisions yet – and I can’t even remember why. For some reason it was decided that Martin should head on to the campsite to book us in while we continued as fast as we could. Looking back this was a stupid thing to do and I don’t know why I didn’t go with Martin. Still he took the map and headed off up the hills with his low gears (Lister still didn’t have any) while we scribbled down directions form the map on paper and followed.
This was destined for failure and before long Lister and I took a wrong turn at the pleasant village of Hathersage. I had written down ‘left onto A625’ which is the obvious thing if you look at the map but when we got there, there was a funny junction in the village centre with a signpost which with hindsight was pointing right, to the (A625) in brackets. Knowing this means that the road is not actually the A625 but leads to it we followed the sign which took us out of the town and up the largest hill this side of the Alps. After a while, probably not more than a mile in distance but it was such hard work it took a long time, we realised that we were going wrong as we were headed almost back the way we came (again our compass would have helped us out here!). Not wishing to go back down the hill in case we were wrong and had to come up again, we came across a pub and asked a departing family for directions. They weren’t from the area but produced a map, and we instantly saw the situation, we needed to go back down into Hathersage and turn left instead of right where the sign had been very misleading.
Just as we were thanking the cheerful bloke with the map, Martin called and informed us that he was lost. He seemed to think that despite the fact that he had the map and we didn’t we could tell him where he was and where to go. Amazingly this was the case because he turned out to be further up the hill than we were! He had been confused by the same sign and some dodgy map reading later had decided he had gone wrong but didn’t know where, with no compass either he didn’t know which road he was on and so we went in the pub for a drink while we waited for him to come back down the rest of the hill. Ten minutes later he turned up and we discussed what we had done with part amusement part anger. The annoying thing about all of this is that looking on the map now it all seems so obvious, if you saw it yourself you might think ‘how can they get that wrong?’!
Knowing that there was now an even slimmer chance of making the campsite that night, we continued slowly over some of the biggest hills we had encountered so far together so we could find a field to camp in, and continued on the route. In fact after an exhausting and disappointing day we only made less than half the distance we had planned and ended up at Strines reservoir on a tiny and mountainous road with virtually no other traffic. These ‘white roads’ (because they are white on the map) became one of our less favourite features of the next few days as instead of going around the hills like the main roads do they go straight over the top. Crossing into South Yorkshire there was no sign on this small road.
Having bought no food today we went in an excellent pub in the middle of nowhere, first asking if they knew of any local campsites. The barmaid told us that although there wasn’t, her dad owned all the land for miles around and showed us a place we could camp, and also gave us a telephone number if anyone queried us. In the morning we left the tent and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of sheep that we hadn’t seen the night before. The food in the pub was fantastic and so “The Strines Inn” is added to our return to list.