With an apparently closing weather window it looked like the northern Pennines would stay driest for longest so I planned a route around Cross Fell and Great Dun Fell (the one that goes all Spinal Tap in Simon Warren’s 100 climbs book).
We thought that the route followed the zig-zag line up the fellside in front but it sneaks off to the left.
The first half was rideable but most of the upper half was pushing. You can just see Cath at the foot of the shot. We met more people on this bit than on the rest of the ride as it’s the standard way for walkers up Cross Fell. The track climbs nearly 600m in just 4km!
More pushing! You could ride some sections from here to the top.
The track reappeared again once you were close to the top. Not quite at 800m.
Heading to a bit of northern hills I really don’t know at all well.
Outside Greg’s Hut. Note the stones on the table to stop it blowing away! You are at 700m altitude here
Greg’s Hut was once a lead mine blacksmith’s smithy, being at a mine it had an access road. The upper bit of this is pretty rough but it improves lower down. You stay around the 600m mark for most of the way until the final drop to Garrigill.
Great Dun Fell, Little Dun Fell & Cross Fell. We’d be riding along that ridge in a few hours.
While there’s a pub in Garrigill we didn’t visit as it had taken a good while to get there and there was a section of the route I wasn’t sure if it would be hike-a-bike or not. We ended up having a chat with a local, turned out he’d grew up at one of the farms higher up the dale. He mentioned a stone marking the source of the South Tyne river but that they put it on a plinth so short people couldn’t see through it. Didn’t make a lot of sense so we headed on up.
The end of the road.
There’s a lot of old mining scars around. Not sure what the wooden structure on the spoil heap was for.
We finally got to the head of the valley and sure enough there’s a stone by the side of the track, on a plinth. The little stone to the left simply states “The source of the South Tyne”
I took the shot from a small stone platform on the other side of the track. Through the hole in it you can just make out the spring that is the actual source - you don’t need to stand on the plinth at all!
Once over the watershed we dropped into our third river system - the Tees (we’d started in the Eden Valley), this area is a nature reserve - yep, a whole load of nothing! Actually it’s a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the first in Britain to be so designated.
So, you’re in the middle of nowhere, no public vehicular access, what do you do? Yep, install some bike racks so people can lock their bikes up!
A pretty set of falls at the point at which we left the track. The track eventually leads to Moor House which must be one of the remotest properties in England.
After a kilometre or so the track finally petered out and there was just faint singletrack to follow. Mostly it was rideable with the occasional dismount for ditches
But occasionally the beck had washed away short sections so detours were in order.
Eventually we left the beck and more continuous riding was possible, still relentlessly uphill.
That last shot was taken from the Dun Fell access road. The only other time I’d been here you struggled to see the width of the road! The white area above Cath is yet another old mine working.
By now time was getting on so we decided to just head down the access road. This is the highest paved road in Britain and it’s closed to cars! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dun_Fell so you can just blast it with only the sheep to worry about.
. Wasn’t a max effort, and wasn’t trying for the KOM, just a nice hard push to getting a feeling for how the SL7 behaves at ~30mph in lighter winds. Had to brake for a full stack of cars waiting at the traffic light.
while skiing! 