Day Eight – The Never Ending Journey
The weather gods smiled on us again this morning, with sunshine and occasional clouds rolling across the sky, creating a patchwork of golden light and shadow on the beautiful Yorkshire dales. We had a long day’s ride planned – 130 miles – so we packed up and left early, heading on a tiny road down through the dales towards Skipton.
Narrow country lanes wound through beautiful fields with stone walls, and patches of forest, all glowing in the morning sunshine. Our biggest challenge was avoiding the plague of suicidal bunnies that kept running across our path, and the oncoming traffic on the narrow road. At one stage we had to simultaneously avoid a bunny, an oncoming truck and a jogger, who rather than stand aside while we passed insisted on trying to keep jogging towards us! Happily we can report all riders and hazards survived unscathed.
The group rode so well we arrived at Skipton 15 mins ahead of schedule, and parked the bikes to spend a little while warming up over coffee, and exploring this historic market town and castle. Then it was back on our bikes for the ride down to Holmfirth, the location for the filming of the television series "Last of the Summer Wine". Our route took us back through more developed towns, and although the riding was smooth, we missed the wild open spaces we have traveled through all week.
At Holmfirth we stopped for lunch, and were met by 20 bikers from the Manchester HOG Group – the Mad Hatters, who had come out to escort us to the Manchester Harley-Davidson dealer for afternoon tea. The HOG Chapter did a fantastic job escorting us, taking us on an alternative route to the one we had planned to avoid unexpected road works.
We rode into the dealer right on time, with the television news cameras of Channel M rolling, and with more riders and friends and family waiting to meet us. The HOG chapter had put on a fantastic morning tea for us, with more cream cakes than we could manage, and as a special highlight a cake decorated with our Amazon Heart logo. Most of the HOG riders headed off home then, as our scheduled short stop dragged on somewhat – one of the bikes had developed a coolant leak and took much longer to fix than we had expected.
We ended up leaving the dealer an hour late, right into peak hour traffic. Once again the HOG road marshalls did a wonderful job getting us across intersections, and out a back way to Buxton, where they found another beautiful road we didn’t know about to drop us off close to our destination. Between the traffic and detours, we rolled into our YHA at Hartington close to 7pm, way behind on schedule, and with an extra unexpected 20 miles under our belt, giving us the second biggest ever Amazon Heart ride – 150 miles – after the one we did earlier in Scotland.
The final section of our ride into Hartington was under beautiful clear skies, and the late afternoon sun lit up the extraordinary landscape here – open fields and rising cliffs and peaks in the distance, as well as open moor country. We are looking forward to heading on tomorrow across this amazing landscape.
Hi Mary
How are you doing, we hope to see you and all the girls in Salisbury on friday
keep going
love William, Lisa, Emma & Sarah
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Hey Liz,
Was this your chapter? it must have been such a hoot to ride with AH into your home turf!!! Go girl! love from all the girls down under! Ruth
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TV cameras? Cream cakes? Suicidal bunnies? What a fantastic trip. Great jackets! Keep going ladies...we can't wait to see you in London on Sat! I've warned the police...
Ange, are you changing gears going up hill?And Ange you are expected on the boat in Moody's on Sunday. Love Cress
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Hi everyone,
It is so fantastic to read each day how the ride is going. Glad to know that all the riders have been safe.
You have ridden some spectacular roads - feel very envious.
Special hello to Suzanna - been great to see pictures of you along the way. take care,
Love
A
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Hey girls, I'm thinking the ride just gets better, cream cakes and TV cameras!!! not to mention escorts...I hope you enjoyed your stay in the Peak district, again such a beautiful landscape and more pretty villages, did you try a Bakewell pie? You are more than half way now I think, so i hope you can continue this great adventure in such grand style! lol, Ruth
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