Ride Sheffield

Author: John Horscroft

  • Peaty’s Steel City Downhill – so much fun, it should be illegal…..

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    Start line nerves….

    Another Steel City downhill and, crikey, The Force was strong in this one. The Dark Lord Himself, Darth Peaty had issued an ultimatum to the weather gods and, intimidated, they’d capitulated with a month of dry weather prior to the race. Day after day, racers practiced, interrupted occasionally by the Ride Sheffield trail fairies a’fettling and a’shaping, beautifying the berms and tidying the transitions. Come the day, the pessimists of the Met Office were proved wrong yet again as the sun shone and the track stayed snuff dry all day.

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  • Sheffield Moors Partnership consultation – Mountain bikers have their say

    2012 Apr 15 003For most Sheffield MBers, the Peak District’s moorland is sacred ground for the brilliance of the riding but it’s also an internationally important eco-system and the Sheffield Moors Partnership (SMP) has been formed to ensure that it is managed as well as possible.   (more…)

  • Stanage Causeway Resurfacing Fiasco

    Stanage Causeway after the latest work - and there's more to come....
    Stanage Causeway after the latest work – and there’s more to come….

    Thanks to ever vigilant Ride Sheffield volunteer Sue Duke, a worrying situation has been brought to our attention on Stanage.  Derbyshire County Council (DCC) have begun to resurface the ancient causeway that runs down from Stanage Edge to Dennis Knoll.

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  • Seven Trails for Seven Hills?

    A happy Ride Sheffield team digging at Grenoside woods....
    A happy Ride Sheffield team digging at Grenoside woods….

    These are exciting times to be a mountain biker in Sheffield.  We have some of the best natural trails in the country and a buzzing scene too, not that I’m biased or anything.  Add to that lovingly hand-crafted trails at Grenoside Woods and Parkwood Springs, a superb new pump-track in Totley, the upcoming Steel City Downhill, venerable venues like Bolehills and Wharncliffe and it’s difficult to come up with another British city that can hold a candle to Sheffield’s all round mountain biking brilliance.

    Imagine however, if this was just the beginning.   (more…)

  • Oh what a tangled web….

    I’d been planning to pen a few words about the dangers of the worldwide web but, wouldn’t you know it, fate has stepped in to make it a necessity.  I recently posted a whimsical little piece on Ride Sheffield which gently poked fun at some of our hard-pressed public servants yet carried what I thought was a serious message.  My mistake was to forget that something written in the comfort of your own home with a cup of tea at your elbow looks different through the weird filter of the internet.  I was soon receiving emails from seriously unamused officialdom who had simply been doing their best in difficult circumstances.

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  • Peak District Cycle Summit

    Peak District Cycle Summit

    A new cycling dawn for the Peak District?
    A new cycling dawn for the Peak District?

    If evidence was required that the Peak District National Park Authority is taking cycling seriously it arrived in the form of the first ever Peak Park Cycling Summit held recently at Thornbridge Outdoors in Great Longstone.  Ride Sheffield should again take pride in the fact that we were invited to the meeting and, on a number of occasions, asked by fellow cyclists and organisations how we’d managed to get such a vibrant and effective group established so quickly to which the obvious reply was, well that’s Sheffield mountain bikers for you! (more…)

  • SHAFF Trailer…..

  • SHAFF this weekend!! Bike films galore….

    Get yourselves down to the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival this weekend for a feast of top class bike films.  There are blockbusters like Where The Trail Ends and Strength in Numbers, shorts that are guaranteed to please all tastes such as the excellent Martyn Ashton’s Road Bike Party, Rockville, a celebration of a quirky cyclocross race in Italy and the, frankly, incredibly controversial Line of Sight, a frantic celebration of illegal road racing in the States that contains some of the most outrageously gung-ho dialogue I’ve heard since Rocky 1,2 and 3.

    If you’re a climber, surfer or kayaker, then there’s more to go at including the stunning Wide Boyz celebration of Brits taking on and beating America’s toughest crack climbs, the engaging Endless Winter, an elegy to British surfing and many more.  The festival has contributed to the Ride Sheffield trail fund so put your hands in your pockets and support this growing Sheffield institution!

    http://www.shaff.co.uk/

  • Ride Sheffield Launch Crowd Funding Initiative for New Trails on Peak/Sheffield Border

    Cy Turner has been busy and is ready to announce an exciting idea which could become a model for funding new trails all over the country.

    For some years now there have been plans to build a blue/red level mountain bike circuit around Lady Cannings Plantation, a wooded area on the edge of Sheffield (location here: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=428560&Y=383385&A=Y&Z=120).

    The idea behind the project is to promote and encourage mountain bike use and provide some fun, intermediate level trails in the Peak. This will hopefully make getting into the sport in our area a little less intimidating as new, inexperienced riders will have an option to develop their skills before stepping up to the pretty full on rocks and gullies of the Peak itself. (more…)

  • Wimble Holme Make-over Continues

    Wimble Holme Make-over Continues

    Lots of new faces at the latest dig day but, unfortunately, the same old weather.  A brisk North Westerly breeze ensured there was only one way to keep warm and that was to push the barrow as fast as possible.  Thankfully, there was plenty of barrowing to be done and Ride Sheffield’s volunteers threw themselves into the fray with gusto.  Further wood buttressing was added to prevent the trail disappearing down the hill and the ribbon of resurfacing has now reached the point where only a couple of days hard barrowing and raking is required to see the project complete.  The Eastern Moors Partnership team from the RSPB/National Trust, Rachel, Danny and Kim, gave up another sunday to provide technical input and tea and were enormously grateful for the hard work Team RS put in.  Thanks to all those who turned up and, you never know, one day we might get to do some digging with the sun on our backs!