Keld - Danby Wiske                      63.4 km (39.4 miles)

 

        Day 4 was another grim morning and yet again rain was forecast for most of the day. We were up and out for 9 ish. A quick bit of

           spray maintenance was needed after our late finish yesterday. We were all showing a few scars from the previous days but were

           still keen to crack on. At 9:15 we left Keld Lodge and set off down into keld to Ivelet Moor.

   

   

           The track was good to ride, but it didn't take long again before we were soaked due to all the surface water around. The Track was

           picturesque running parallel with the river Swale. This eventually led us to Satron where we took a bridleway again running parallel

           with the Swale but on the opposite side. The ground was very wet, muddy with large puddles. We were a couple of hours into the

           day when we took shelter under some trees for a snack. Again we were pretty much soaked already.

   

        The bridleway led us to Low House farm, where we asked the farmer about the condition of the tracks up and over Whitaside moor.

        He assured us they were quite passable, so we  took a very steep climb up to the start of the Moor. The Track was well established but

        was too steep and loose to ride.  The rain and wind was pounding now, the higher we got the poorer visibility got. We didn't hang about

        and carried on down towards Apedale. We were all very wet and cold at this point and took shelter in an old farm building for 5.

        We checked our soggy phones and were spurred on by the encouraging texts we were getting from friends & family for our effort.  My

       Camera didn't come out much due to the extreme conditions. We hit a crossroads on the track and took the longer but safer option of

       staying forward to Redmire moor to the road, as opposed to going over Greets hill as visibility was poor and the bridleway unknown.

       We were now back on track and followed the steep road down into Grinton. It was 2pm now & Ray made the good call of saying we

       needed some warming grub, so we stopped off at the pub for a cuppa and a steak sandwich. Terry was close by so called in to see us.

        The weather was taking its toll on us all now and we took some warming up, a few trips to the dryer in the gents helped a little.

        Our planned route to Danby Wiske was mainly small roads now due to lack of bridleways going our way. We made steady progress

        through Marske to Richmond but were battered all the way by wind and rain. We had another short break in Richmond before

        making our way through Brompton-on-swale, Bolton-on-swale & Streetlam to our destination in Danby Wiske at approx 17:30.

        Morale was pretty low at this point, after washing  our bikes in the rain, we discovered a few maintenance defects. The weather

        and terrain were hard on the bikes, both Lee and Ian needed to change disk brake pads, and Cookies V rubbers needed replacing.

        The disk brakes were not as straight forward as normal, with both bikes loosing hydraulic oil for some reason. As we didn't have a

        bleed kit with us, it was to be a trip to cowley cycles in Northallerton first thing tomorrow. Another 40 miles done.

        After a much needed shower and meal, we were all warmed through. We decided to have a relaxing night to get our spirits back up

        and had a few beers in the bar and had a good laugh playing darts. Lee was feeling the after effect of being 'Stabbed' by his cycle seat.

Thankfully day 4 was done and we had tomorrow to look forward to!