March 24, 2019
Day Two
Over the top into Nidderdale
Gargrave sits on the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales, a large area of uplifted Carboniferous Limestone with a unique geomorphology: broad, shallow, scarp-lined glacial valleys topped by wild moorland plateaux. A quick burst of minor road riding and I was soon up on the network of ancient tracks that make roughstuff riding here so enjoyable.
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A quick dip into Grassington for a late breakfast, then a character building climb took me back up onto the high ground east of the village. In the Nineteenth Century this was lead mining country, a blasted landscape of spoil tips, ruined buildings, open shafts and tailing ponds. I'd intended poking round and taking a few photos but, with grey clouds gathering and a ferociously cold windchill, I had no intention of hanging about. Which I guess says all you need to know about how tough the men were who lived and worked in this environment. Pulling on my warm clothes, I cranked it north for the relative shelter of the Mossdale valley.
Limestone is an impermeable rock, but it tends to split apart in horizontal bedding planes and vertical joints under tidal and tectonic stress. Buried deep, these fissures allow highly saline, mineral-bearing fluids to percolate through the rock at high pressures and temperatures. This leads to the deposition of mineral veins, and thus the mining activity that is such a feature of the North Pennines. Closer to the surface, however, the lines of weakness are subjected to dissolution by mildly acidic groundwater, forming massive cave systems. And, in 1967, Mossdale was the scene of the world's worst sport caving disaster.
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What Lies Beneath: the Mossdale Caving Disaster – a good longform account of the 1967 tragedy.
As an enthusiastic caver in the 1980s and 90s, the shadow of this event hung over my club's activities, and Mossdale Scar is a grim place. The north-facing crag doesn't see much sunlight, even in summer, and the stream running along the bottom of the glen vanishes, gurgling, into an evil looking slot at the base of the cliff. Plastered with mud and flood debris, surrounded by shattered blocks fallen from above, it's a foreboding place.
A quick break and I moved on, taking hike-a-bike sheeptracks over the watershed into the Nidderdale valley. The weather was closing in, but I didn't fancy the one place of shelter I passed.
I wasn't in the mood for the forecast rain so, as the first spots hit, I dived off up a tributary valley and had the tent up in a discreet spot by midday. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than reading and drinking tea, listening to volleys of rain and hail lashing against the flysheet.
Height gain: 792m/2598ft
Today's ride: 32 km (20 miles)
Total: 106 km (66 miles)
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