Great Hograh’s hidden delights

As featured in MBR’s 20 best mountain bike UK trails, click here to view

On then, to Westerdale, home to Great Hograh; a prime stretch of moorland singletrack if ever there was one.

En route we encountered three septuagenarian ramblers, hair all white and fluffy as clouds, walking down from Kildale Moor.

“Are you going up there?” they asked, pointing to the naughty looking bridleway falling at our feet.

But without waiting for our response, we were issued with a grave warning; “it’s hell”, uttered with all the conviction of someone who’s just been released from thirty years in a Turkish prison.

Actually we weren’t, but with an endorsement like that, how could we resist.

The rest of Great Hograh Moor delighted just as it had done when we rode it back in December 2008, and with the loop measuring only a short but sweet six miles, by midday we were pulling up outside the Castleton tea rooms for lunch.