Ride Reports

Saturday 2nd December 2017

MTB ride by Sue Taylor
Today’s route set out north from Garstang over the ford (we cheated and took the bridge) and through some ginormous icy puddles to barnacre. By popular demand we did Dandy Birks and then headed to the first two off road sectors between inglewhite and goosnargh, both with river crossings which were gamely negotiated with sadly no comedy moments. After brabiner Lane and Haighton Hall we took a track down to Haighton House, where the route turned out to be a private road, so we WALKED a section of footpath to pop out on the impressive wooded driveway of Haighton House. What looked like a track on the 1:25000 map ended up as a boggy field with a couple of locked gates where 5 fully grown men had to help lift Dave Brooks bike and still buckled under the weight.
We popped out on the Guild Wheel where Phil desperately crammed in some malt loaf. The guild wheel would have been too easy so we negotiated some urbanisation of Ribbleton to find the disused grimsargh to preston railway line. A nervous dash past the vast cemetery on Pope lane brought us out at the top of the death slide down to brockholes floating visitor centre where we cafe-ed. Everyone kindly avoided the elephant in the room that there were NO BEANS ON TOAST.

The return leg took us on the GW to the Capitol shopping center where we went south of the Ribble and up the beautiful tree-lined tramway to return back to the GW, and then we cut through the Preston docks to the end of the canal. We navigated through Haslam Park (where rick has been known to wash his bike in the duck pond) and along Cottam Lane (dirt track) to Ingol. Luckily my planned scenic route cutting south of the ingol golf course across Sharoe brook to Walker Lane was devoid of ‘no cycling’ signs so I think we got away with it.
We returned to the trusty GW to Broughton, did some more squishy stuff between Langley lane and Barton lane, and returned to The Stang via a very grassy canal and Myerscough.

Much enjoyed planning and riding this route with enthusiastic riders willing to try something new. Special mention to Dave Brook who did this on a ROAD BIKE!!!

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