Robin Hood’s Bay Bicycle Ride

Published at September 25, 2023

I cycle like 99.9% of the time in The Netherlands and was looking forward to my first ever England trip with excitement. How adventurous this would be? Could I tackle all those hills? Should I take just one spare tube or two at least?

Well, first surprise (apart from pouring rain and 6-point Beaufort scaled wind) was how steep the hills actually are, how narrow the roads and how bloody muddy out there it was.

Okay, adventures then.

The area itself is just gorgeous. The cliffs, the seals, the views and landscape is just fantastic.

Lucky for lazy me, there was a one (and only) bike path in the area called Cinder track. It was flat, goes through the forest, but at least safe.

At some point the views appeared.

Then I got bored and get off that path. Immediately my braking failed on a 25% wet asphalt descent. I was struggling for a while with my cantilevers on this Sensa Fermo SL and even replaced them with Shimano BR-CX 50 right before my departure. They performed definitely better, but being wet and dirty from all that picked mud could only work when I squeezed them from the drops.

Reward for getting down in one piece was a nice beach entrance.

Challenge was to get back to the cliff top, because instead of a cycle path, I now have steps. But hey, that’s not a problem at all, because my bike is actually natural born cyclocross. Put it on a shoulder and walk up. Left-right-left-right.

After some more miles and dreadful descends which usually stops at T-shaped blind-cornered crossroads, I was able to finally pick up some speed on a car roads and get back home. All dirty, not particularly tired, but very happy.

Next time it’s better to bring an MTB there. And better brakes. Have a nice ride!

PS: Hiking in an area is awesome.