UKC

There's a long history of great rock climbers being 'lost' to the addictive pain and dodgy lycra of road biking, but I've not heard of that many trading in quickdraws, cams and Ronhills for '140 mm of suspension up front', full face helmets and flappy clothing baggy enough to get over body armour.

Toby Archer shares a tale of a cycle-climb adventure between crags in the Peak District. 

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Good article - I enjoyed that!

Cheers! Glad you enjoyed it and I hope the article gives a bit of inspiration to other folk to try some similar silly day out in their local area.

I wonder where else might work like around here in the Peak? I've definitely looked seriously myself at doing a similar sport climb and mountain bike ride in the Yorkshire Dales - but maybe you could do something similar in the South Wales Valleys maybe? Around Portland perhaps? Find the Goldilocks formula of bridleway and crag density seems to be the thing.

Sounds like a fun day out. A few years ago a friend and I had a similar day out (as part of the Mynydd's 'Western Gritstone Challenge') - we climbed one route on as many crags as possible in the Roaches area, linked by mountain bike. We limited it to routes up to Severe, which meant we only had to take a couple of friends and a half rack of nuts. It was a great day out, with some excellent riding, lots of easy routes and 2 cream tea stops - highly recommended!

Interesting - can you get pretty close to many of the crags on bridleways? i.e. not too much carrying your bike/"cheeky" riding?

If anyone has the inside-knowledge and can recommend which grit crags are cyclable from Sheffield without too much of a climb, I'd welcome suggestions! Getting to Stanage looks savage; I'm not sure I'd be able to climb anything after that. 

It sort of depends what you are used to but Stanage is the obvious one as a bridleway takes you to the top and either down through Plantation, or down near High Neb. The ride out of Sheffield is nice up that way as you can go on the cycle route all the way from Endcliffe Park up the valley. If you want to ride on roads you can come out through the edge of Dronfield Woodhouse and Holmesfield and then go out to Curbar/Baslow/Birchen that way which is a wee bit nicer than going up Abbeydale road the whole way to Owler Bar. 

Nice work Toby! I was also caught out by the bird ban at Moss Rake earlier in the year, luckily we had travelled by car so were able to relocate easily.

I do like the idea of biking between crags as you can probably take more gear and certainly travel further distance than by foot/solo. Although I am tempted by some form of cycle/climb/swim/run adventure, I may however wait until the warmer water temps next summer!

In my Sheffield days, I would ride out from crookes/Walkley past the hospital and Redmires to stanage. Shoes, chalk bag and Joshua Tetley bouldering mat in a bum bag. 

Good article.  I dabbled at mountain biking a few years ago and always fancied doing something like this.  I never got round to it and gave up on the mountain biking as it was getting too hard on the uphills.  As I am now 73 I considered it acceptable to invest in an electric mountain bike and now find that I am throwing myself down the more hardcore downhill trails.  The EMTB combined with the development of trail centres near to me now make this my favoured activity but this article has inspired me to give this a go.  Thank you.

Al

The descents aren't particularly hardcore but fun and I'm sure I'd enjoy the uphills much more on an E bike too! I'd love it if the article gives someone the inspiration to get out and do the same or similar. I can probably extract the gpx file and email it to anyone if they are in this area and want to do the same loop.