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It was our first real bike ride of the year, and what a windy day it was. Even though it was not cold, around 10c the wind sure did make it feel colder than it was.

We left Keighley around 10:15 and got to High Wind Bank near Kilnsey at round 10:45.
We stopped off at the same spot as we did last time (when we went to Kettlewell) which is in the middle of a field. Surprisingly this time round, there were no cows trying to mount each other.
A lot of this ride was on road and uphill the first part was from grass parking area between Kilnsey and Harkswick to Halton Gill, just under 7 miles which started off as small incline.

We turned left at a small humpback bridge and we came to a very long and steep uphill going up to the top, just past Pen-y-ghent house. This took us about 20 to 30 minutes. At this point the wind was picking up some speed and was blowing in our direction making the climb up the hill a little harder than it should have been. We stopped and had a quick 5 min rest at what we believe was the top, before we set off again. To my amazement there was still more hills to go up and the wind was now reaching around 25mph, The wind was not making it at all easy. It felt so wrong for the need to pedal down hill, and it was very frustatating for the need to drop down a gear or 2 for a hill I should have no problems with going up.

Finally we got to the top and now we where now on a twin track heading back towards Litton . Knowing that soon we will have a killer of a downhill to come that climb sure felt worth it. From here we had about 5 miles of twin track and small stream to go through. Poor Andy J had a puncture in his rear tyre, unlucky Andy

Eventually we got to the point that we all had been waiting for, the downhill.
Daft old me decides to go straight down the middle and it starts off fine but the further down I get the bigger the stones get to the point there are boulders. Maybe it’s just that lack of experience but I don’t think I could tackle boulders, Matthew had the right idea and went down on the side. 3 hours of uphill for 10 minutes of downhill. Sure was worth it.

It was typical of the sun to come out and the wind to die down heading back to the cars.

Overall it was a grand day out. We managed to get back into Keighley for around 15:15.

People Who Attended:
Antony Delaney
Andy Jackson
Andy Pengelly
Matthew Walton

Link To Image Gallery

Image Gallery

Special Thanks
Thanks to Andy Jackson For planning the taking us out on this route.