At this point it was obvious that our route would be mostly into the wind, oh well.
We were quite excited about the hailstones sticking around on the summit of the moor. Little did we know ...
The descent down to Rylstone chilled us but the climb out of Hetton warmed us up a bit.
The climb up to Weets Top was a race against the oncoming dark. It was also pretty hard work with the sodden ground meaning slow going. Lights went on just before the very top. At this point we were meant to head to Mastiles Lane then work our way over to Settle and the pub. However an executive decision saw us descending to Goredale then Malham and tea in the Listers Arms, we'd then head to the bivy spot.
Some of the customers (and bar staff) were a bit shocked at us heading out again. The Cove Road was a bit of a grind, it's rare I'm in bottom gear, the road was also starting to get icy. The track over the top was, hmm, interesting in places with frozen sleet on limestone rocks. Descending the other side and the team were getting a bit twitchy in the increasing wind and sleet showers. "Just a couple of hundred metres after the next gate" I promised. Except I'd forgotten a bit of the track so it was a bit longer. Eventually the relevant gate appeared and we descended to the barn.
Eric was going to pitch his Trailstar but once under shelter he changed his mind
We got settled in but during the night Eric had to move as he was in a draught from the door that led through to the barn. With rising light it was time to get up and ...
There'd been over 15cm of snowfall overnight! Getting back was going to be interesting. We got packed and were away by 9am.
Our bivy in the background (the good shippon is on the far side, the barn and the shippon on this side have collapsed roofs)
What had been straight forward last night was now 15-20cm of snow covered track and hard work! I didn't even brake on this descent as the snow slowed me enough.
The next couple of km to the summit of the track were a mixture of pushing with a bit of riding where we could. Any slight incline was usually a matter of time before you were off and walking.
Eventually we got to the top and parked our bikes.
So we had the descent. A couple of hundred metres downwards and we were pushing, the snow even deeper as it was on the lee slope and had drifted. I'd earlier been moaning about walkers not taking the same path through snow so as to make things easier for everyone, you'd see lines of post holes spread across 20 metres of "trail". Then we came across a trail made by the local cattle, at least they know what to do. Easy going got us to within 200m of the road.
We had planned to go around Malham Tarn, on to Weets Top then down to the café at Airton but it had taken us two hours to do just 5km so there was no way we'd be doing that! Another executive decision. Carefully back down the Cove Road to a late breakfast in the café in Malham. Lots of slush on the road to Airton. It was then that things went from the sublime to the ridiculous as the BW from Airton to Bell Busk was as wet and muddy as I've ever seen it and any chance of dry feet went out of the window as we had to wade through ice cold water to get to one gate. One more BW to get to Gargrave then it was road back to Skipton.
More coffee (and cake) then we all made our way home.
A cracking weekend. Thanks to Eric and Zippy for the company.
)
and it was grim going up there...