26 December 2013 – “Millennium Wood”

December 2013 will be remembered (by some at least, and by me for sure) as the month when the wind hardly ever let up. That has made getting out for a cycle difficult to say the least. With a keen eye on the weather forecast, I noticed that Boxing Day was due to give us a brief respite from the wind, and so I made sure not to overindulge on Christmas Day evening so we could get up nice and early the following day.

We set off at around 9am, well after dawn for sure but before the sun had risen above the hills on our skyline. The route we were going to take hadn’t been fully worked out; the only thing I was sure about when we set off was that it needed to be over 17 miles long. The reason for this was that my 2013 distance tally, according to MapMyRide, was sitting at 2483 miles, and I liked the sound of getting past 2500 for the year.

To start with, we headed out across the A7 and up past Middleton Limeworks for a change, as we thought the lorries would be having the day off. The road was remarkably free of mud as if had been cleaned specially for Christmas, but there was quite a bit of frost, as the temperature was only just above freezing.

As I approached the first hill, I tried changing to a lower gear, but my front gear mechanism refused to budge, forcing me to stop and investigate. I had put some time into cleaning it up recently so this was disappointing. With a bit of encouragement, I was able to get it shifting again, and I guessed that I must have let some moisture get into the works during the cleaning, which then froze while the bike was in the shed, leading to it being, well, frozen when I brought it out this cold morning.

I quickly caught up Colette and we crunched through some big frozen puddles to the top part of the quarry, where we discovered another little Christmas present. The part of the road where the lorries have been crossing back and forth incessantly over recent months, and which had degenerated into a pair of deep, mud-filled ruts, we found to be newly resurfaced. So here’s a big “Thank you!” from us.

By this time, we were decided to head for Gladhouse Reservoir, so we followed our usual route along the quiet roads, even quieter than usual in fact, with not a vehicle to be seen all the way there. The road remained frosty but at least the sun had now appeared from above the hilly horizon. My decision to wear lots of breathable layers rather than anything windproof seemed a bit of a mistake at this stage, as there was still a noticeable wind chill and the low sun was not yet imparting any useful warmth.

As we approached Gladhouse Reservoir, we came across quite a few ice sheets spanning the road. These were in places where water normally trickles across, but being as cold as it was, the water turned to ice as it hit the road, growing into an ice layer up to a centimetre thick. The way we chose to deal with these was to let our bikes roll straight across, not too fast and not too slow.

Once we passed the reservoir, at Toxside we decided to turn left and rode southwest along the lovely stretch of smooth tarmac that was laid less than a year ago. My tyres buzzed quietly as I cycled along, and soon I discovered that I had warmed up properly at last. I stopped at a layby on the right, where a fly tipper had disposed of a spare toilet bowl. Normally finding fly-tipping, which is quite a common occurrence in this area, makes me quite sad, but this installation, without any accompanying detritus, just made me laugh. Colette made it clear that she was not going to take my photo sitting on the loo, so I busied myself instead by lifting the bikes over the fence. We were going to take a brief off-road excursion, but unhelpfully, the gate leading to our chosen track was broken and tied shut.

A loo with a view

We cycled through Tweeddale Burn Wood, which is a picturesque avenue of mature trees, but it soon ended at a deer fence that surrounds a recent plantation. The first time we cycled through this place, we spoke to an elderly gent who told us that it was planted as part of the Millennium project. I’m not sure if this is actually true or not, but the timing would seem about right judging on the size of the trees, and so we have called it the “Millennium Wood” ever since. If anyone knows the correct name, please let us know!

Cycling along the frosty track

We entered the plantation and rode along the land rover tracks, quickly coming to a stretch of deep ruts that are normally filled up to about 6″ with water and run for about 20 yards. Today, they were frozen over and were great fun to cycle through. If either of us had fallen or had to stop and put a foot down, the fun would have been quite a lot less.

After a slight incline, it was pretty much downhill for quite a while, which I whizzed along having a great time. I then turned back to meet Colette who was taking photos of the frozen pond. We then cycled on to the end of the wood, which came all too soon, and turned right onto tarmac again. There we met a passing jogger who warned us that it was pretty icy up ahead.

Dark waters covered in a thin coating of ice

There was indeed sheet ice ahead, but what made it more tricky was that we were going uphill as we crossed, so it was necessary to keep pedalling as we went across. That made the rear end tend to slip, and staying upright was quite tricky. Colette had the smart idea of getting off and walking the bike along the grass verge. We both managed to make it across unscathed, and reached Mount Lothian farm, where we turned right onto the B6372. This road then twists and descends in a way that is normally a lot of fun, but today we played it safe and rolled along sedately before climbing up on the other side and turning right at the next junction till we got to Toxside again.

From there, we retraced our steps with the wind now at our backs and with the sun now treating us to some gently warming rays. We also felt a warm glow of satisfaction once we got back home, for having managed to get back on our bikes at last, and the fact that we went carefully for much of the way meant that we weren’t totally exhausted either.