Lovely easy cycling today under blue skies, on two longish car-free cycle paths. Once they were steamy with locomotives; today they were steamy with cyclist breath on a bright but very chilly day.
I cycled past frosty-looking sheep to get on to the Tissington a couple of miles from the hostel. It was early and few people were out on the trail.
Unlike many railtrails, which are Stygian affairs of mud and grass shrouded by trees, the Tiss is a splendid moortop affair with spacious views on both sides for much of its length from embankments in between dramatic cuttings.
It’s slightly, but noticeably, downhill heading south to Ashbourne. As a man of 64 I’m used to things going slightly, but noticeably, downhill over time.
Entry to the town is heralded by a long tunnel, rescued by Sustrans in the early 2000s. Sometimes it has a sound installation, triggered by cycling through the tunnel, though it was silent today.
I warmed my frozen fingers on a coffee from a cafe on Ashbourne’s High Street, which otherwise mostly consisted of antique shops.
From here I headed west, across eventful hills, towards the start of the Manifold Trail at Waterhouses.
It was all thrilling stuff in such gloriously scenic weather, and in Thorpe I was delighted to come across a repurposed old red phone box. Not a village library or defibrillator hut, but an Honesty Cake Shop. I was very honest. Twice.
This is lovely cycling. I did a side-trip up the Dove Valley as far as I could, accompanied by lots of day-tripper walkers, before the lane became a footpath.
Back on the route west, I had lunch in Ilam, home of a splendid old hall and about two million coaches whose occupants were nowhere to be seen.
I headed towards the start of the Manifold a longish way round, on the back lane past Throwley Hall, a dramatic ruined manor house. On this beautiful day the views over the Staffordshire farm valleys were uplifting. As was the road, which went up to well over 300m. I’m glad I have mountain bike gears on my mountain bike.
The Manifold Trail is a bit of a curio: an eight-mile car-free (mostly) railtrail from Waterhouses to Hulme End that is all paved: a ‘bicycle road’ indeed. Until the 1930s it was a narrow-gauge railway that never made profit; it was decommissioned and turned into a pioneering ‘National Pedestrian Way’, with bicycles being formally allowed to use it in the 1980s.
Which, er, is when some of the tarmac seems to have last been maintained. There’s a lot of very shabby, bumpy bits.
Views are pretty good, getting better as you go north, where you wind along the riverside between grand hills either side. For a railway, it meanders quite a lot, and there are plenty of small bridges en route.
The Manifold felt longer than eight miles, somehow, and that was without stopping to clamber up the rocksides to Thor’s Cave (which I did the last time I cycled the Manifold, in 2021).
I was pleased to get to its northern terminus at Hulme End, where refreshment awaited in the shape of a beer. The shape being a pint glass, at the Manifold Inn.