A couple of times a year Cycleshack East Grinstead organise a weekend in Bike Park Wales and I was keen to go again, but found I had a few days to play with beforehand – so decided to go up to the Yorkshire Dales and continue my list of great days out on electric mountain bikes.
Last year saw some fantastic adventures – a day across Scotland from the North Sea to the Atlantic, riding up Snowdon and also a Dales tour. So looking for more inspiration, I came across a great website at Pedalnorth which described some great rides. The Dales have some brilliant riding country, with bridleways going high up over the hills to give panoramic views of the stunning scenery. And with great cafes, lovely villages, lots of stream crossings and not so many crowds as the Lakes, this is heaven for cross country mountain biking.
I chose a few rides from their website – first Grinton Moor, which turned out to be a fast, swooping ride on some great gravel roads with views of Swaledale. Not a long ride, but real fast fun. Then Barbondale which took me to a little known corner of the Dales where I saw no-one for the day – definitely recommended. And the last day I did some of the long trail covering much of the Dales called ‘Heart of the Dales‘ but converted it into a tour of Pen y Ghent as the previous week’s rain had left such wet ground.
Overall the Dales is a fantastic place for exactly the sort of riding you need if you have an electric mountain bike – what a wonderful part of the world.
