31. … to the car-free Tissington Trail

If the Ashbourne to Buxton railway was still here, those big trucks full of stone might not be needed, and Ashbourne might breathe free. But it’s been converted into a leisure route for walking and, most especially, cycling. It’s become the Tissington Trail, Britain’s oldest, and among its most popular, off-road cycle routes.

Next to Sainsbury, a pub sits at the start of the trail. ‘The Station Hotel’ is carved in stone above its door. But it’s been renamed ‘The Beresford Arms’. Perhaps one day it’ll be ‘The Cyclist’s Legs’. A signpost in the car park opposite tells me it’s 24 miles to Buxton, if you’re following the Tissington Trail, which cars of course cannot. I’m aiming to get there for lunch.

The first part of the trail is cool, literally. The long, damp Ashbourne tunnel takes me out of town, to the cycle centre. It’s one of three run by the Peak District National Park Authority. You can hire cycles to suit most needs, not just mountain bikes, but also kids’ bikes, trailers and trailer-bikes, child seats, tandems, trikes and hand-cranked trikes. They also do bike repairs, and for a quid they’ll even wash your bike.

The centres are open daily from March to October. The guys at Ashbourne reckon it’s shaping up to be a good year. They had a “cracking two weeks over Easter, one hundred bikes a day hired out”. And they’re looking forward to a really busy May Day Bank Holiday weekend.

Who comes to ride the trail?

“Families, older people, all sorts. Out of school holidays, we get lots of school groups. June’s a good month for school groups. It’s cheaper for them, they get preferential deals”.

The trail is a real hit with the kids, especially those from inner-city schools. “They’re wowed out by how close they get to nature, the cows and sheep”.

“But you’re lucky today”, one of the guys tells me, “it’s nice and quiet. There won’t be lots of kids falling off bikes and dogs darting around, getting in your way, holding you up”.

The trail climbs steadily, almost imperceptibly, from Ashbourne. At Parsley Hay, 13 miles to the north, you’re 200 or so metres higher. On a day like today, after battling the wind and gradient to Parsley Hey, someone hiring a bike and returning to Ashbourne could probably pretty much freewheel the wind-assisted downhill return leg of the journey.

After three and a half miles I reach Tissington. Whether travelling by train or bike, this has always been a popular stop, not least because of Tissington’s well dressing fame. Beginning on Ascension Day, people decorate wells and springs with flowers, seeds and leaves. It’s in celebration of water, which is often scarce on this limestone plateau. I get a cup of tea at the refreshment kiosk.

I have another cuppa at the beautifully restored signal box at Hartington, eight miles further up the track. Through the first half of the twentieth century this was one of the busiest stations on the line. It made a good starting point for a day’s walk. I can see why people came, and still come, here. It’s beautiful. Real joy comes with getting away from roads and the noisy, grimy world of motorised traffic.

Along sheltered stretches, the trees are close. Not yet fully in leaf, their greens are spring vivid. Wildflowers throng the verges. The air is filled with birdsong. Emerging out onto exposed sections of track, I’m hit by wind and views. White dry limestone walls, farmhouses scattered across the hillsides. The compensation of the strong headwind is the great views last longer. I pass a field chock-a-block with dandelions, a sea of countless dancing yellow heads. There are lambs and new-born calves in the fields. A weak sun glimmers through the haze. Above the noise of the wind rushing past my ears, I can hear skylarks sing as they hang high in the air above. A few walkers and cyclists are out on the track, but not many.

A red post office van wends its stop-start way along meandering lanes, the agreeable face of rural motoring. To the cyclist, it’s a familiar and reassuring presence in the countryside, an indicator that you’ve reached the back lanes, and that the motorised madness which reigns elsewhere has been, if only for a while, left behind. I’m at my happiest when riding a bike along roads where post office vans, farm tractors and quad bikes together outnumber all other vehicles.

The post van’s journey stitches the separate farmhouses into a rural community. That’s something which cycling has the capacity to do, bringing places scattered across a city together, producing compact urban form, rekindling urban community; rekindling that warm glow which, despite the car’s best efforts, is not extinguished yet.

In dribs and drabs a group of kids riding specialist cycles sail past the other way, down hill and the wind behind them. Some of them are riding trikes. If they have problems balancing a bike, they look very happy on these machines. There are maybe 20 riders in all. A great day out. It looks easy, fun. I hope they cope with the tougher return journey.

The junction of two rail lines, Parsley Hay played its part in Britain’s industrial and transport history. The Ashbourne to Buxton line closed in 1963, the Cromford High Peak Line in 1967. It’s now a junction of two cycle routes. Just south of here, the High Peak and Tissington trails merge. From Parsley Hay you can ride to the end of one of the trails, then cut across country to join the end of the other trail, by which to return. There’s another cycle centre here, and a big car park. There’s also a shop stocked with cycling bits and bobs, and a café. It feels more of a proper visitor centre than the smaller Ashbourne outpost.

The two guys who work here are having lunch. They’re happy to chat. How, I wonder, did this cycle centre, quite remote in the Derbyshire hills, come about?

“It was about ‘74. They got the railways after Beeching shut them in ’67, and it was what to do with them, ‘cos they already had the car parks and the old stations. So the idea was to get people to walk and cycle on the old railway lines. The state they’re in now is much better than what they were originally. I think they were pretty rough”.

“The National Park decided to put them to good use. They were quite forward thinking”.

“There are more people using them now than ever did when the trains were running”.

“We do 13,000 hires a year, and Ashbourne does the same. In the summer holidays we’re putting 100-plus bikes a day out onto the trails. And we averaged a hundred a day at Easter. On a really good day it can be 150, 160, 170-plus”

I ask their capacity.

“We’ve a hundred bikes, plus a few of last years, about 15 of last years. And then we’ve got kids’ bikes and specials”.

“I suppose the biggest number we’ll get, we’ve got a school group coming in, in a bit, and they’re going to have 90 bikes in the morning and 90 in the afternoon, so you’re clocking 180 bikes on a day”.

That’s a lot of work for them, I say.

“You can only check them briefly when they come in. Then we stack them up ready for them to go back out again. It’s quite quick”.

Many people bring their own bikes. Bike-laden cars converge here from all directions, clogging the local lanes and filling the car parks.

“On busy days in summer, we have people parking down the lane, and we have to use the camping field as overspill sometimes”.

Where do people ride to?

“Tissington is the main destination, because it’s a nice little village and there are refreshments down there. Then they turn round and come back again, usually late, because it’s uphill, and you can have a strong wind against you”.

I ask their impressions of people’s experiences of going for a bike ride along the trails. There’s a gentle and understandable humour to be had in talking about people who don’t normally ride bikes giving cycling a go, inevitable talk of sore bums and aching legs. But the guys are adamant that the bulk of people coming here have a fantastic time.

“Have a look at the Visitors’ Book”.

“I mean, initially they’ll say their bum hurts!”.

“They’ll come in and say ‘I’ve not ridden a bike for 15 years’, and then they’ll go all the way down to Ashbourne and back, that’s 27 miles, and they’ll get a headwind coming back, uphill”.

I wonder whether hiring bikes to people who don’t often ride bikes causes problems? Watching people wobble off, do they worry for their safety?’

“A lot of kids struggle with the gears; they can’t figure them out. Punctures I suppose are the most common thing, odd bits and bobs, but not that much, kids and gears mainly”.

But with so many novice cyclists on a relatively narrow track, there are risks in taking to the trail.

“I wouldn’t go out there on a bank holiday”.

“We tell people to take a helmet. They say ‘oh, I don’t want one, I’m not going on any roads’. But they’re far more likely to get knocked off by a child or a dog than they are on the roads”.

Do people ever come back vowing never to touch a bike again, they’ve had such a rubbish experience?

“Occasionally, but it’s rare. Most of the time they’ve enjoyed themselves. Sometimes they’ll say ‘never again’, but they’ll probably come back the following year, do it again the following year. Most people enjoy themselves.”

The cycle centres don’t make money. They aim just to break even. These days more people have their own bikes, which they bring on their cars. While the bike hire side of the enterprise is pretty steady, it’s the shop at Parsley Hay, selling a basic range of cycling gear, which makes any money. “People arrive, get on their bike for the first time in ages, and find something wrong. They don’t realise how bad their bikes are; new tyres and tubes, that kind of thing”.

We talk about my trip. One of the guys has ridden the End to End, three weeks cycle camping. Did he enjoy it?

“Yeah, I can’t wait to do it again, but I can’t get the time off during the summer. I could do it in the winter, but I don’t fancy camping in the winter”.

He fancies riding from Land’s End, across the bottom of Wales to Fishguard and the ferry to southern Ireland, up to Northern Ireland, across to Scotland and up to John O’Groats. That adds another country. The End to End via Ireland.

This is how cycle-touring works. A serendipitous conversation with a stranger fires the imagination, starts the dreams, motivates a stretch for the maps. Another adventure born.

I take their advice and flick at the Visitors’ Book on my way out.

“Great, but my legs ache, 10 out of 10”.

“It makes you feel very pleased with yourself since you’ve just done 20 miles. Thanks”.

“Sore bottoms but happy”.

“Bum sore but heart happy”.

“Rode bike today for first time in 30 years. Brill, but very sore bum”.

A sore bum, it seems, is widely recognised as a small price to pay for the rewards of a day spent cycling.

Outside, I chat to a couple out for a ride on their beautiful, shiny, high-spec Airnimal folding bikes. The woman doesn’t seem to consider herself a particularly strong or committed cyclist. Yet she’s certainly had some adventures. They’ve ridden in Mongolia and Vietnam, where, to her own amazement, on one day she rode 100 miles.

Just as I’m leaving, a girl, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, pedals up ahead of her family. She’s ecstatic, exclaiming to no-one in particular ‘I made it! I made it!’. That’s some sense of achievement. I hope I’ll be as pleased with myself if I reach John O’Groats.

It’s not difficult to understand why people come here, people who would don’t normally ride a bike – no cars, gorgeous scenery, picnic spots, birds, physical activity, fresh air, sharing an adventure with others. Especially if the sun’s shining, I can’t imagine a more idyllic day out.

On the Tissington Trail, you traverse one of England’s hilliest and most scenic areas without really climbing a hill. The steady incline from Ashbourne to Parsley Hay was designed for nineteenth century steam trains, and is barely discernible to a cyclist, even a novice. Now for me, this feels a bit like cheating, riding through the hills without riding those hills. The trail holds a contour along the valley side as fields rise on one side and fall away on the other. But then I can, if I choose, take to the hilly lanes, with their ups, downs and swooping bends, where I’ll need to be vigilant of fast approaching vehicles. It’s horses for courses.

Being off-road is the route’s big appeal, yet most of life is of course on roads. So the trail misses things like pubs, cafés and villages. Unless freedom from cars is your overriding aim, the Tissington trail could feel slightly dull. The guys at the cycle centre told me that most people travel to Parsley Hay because they want to ride car-free trails, but some of them quickly recognise the limitations of the experience, and broaden their horizons. “They get a bit bored, want to do a bit more, go a bit further afield”.

The Tissington and High Peak Trails get thousands of young and old, novice and returning bums on saddles every year. These slithers of land snaking their way through the Peak District National Park pioneered off-road leisure cycling in the UK.

But the paradox of leisure facilities such as the Tissington Trail, it strikes me, is that they make cycling accessible to some whilst making it inaccessible to many. Every day at weekends and during the school holidays in the warmer months, hundreds of people give cycling a go along this route. The absence of cars, the beautiful surroundings, and the provision of cafés, toilets and, crucially, car parks lure people onto bikes and the discovery of cycling’s pleasures.

Yet this is a sequestered cycling corridor. It’s idyllic partly because it’s hard to reach, inaccessible to most people. It’s unlikely to form part of anyone’s commuter route. To get here, people drive, in their droves. In the peak season, the car parks and the country lanes leading to them suffocate under cars. Yes, it’s good for the local economy, and yes it gets people onto bikes who might otherwise never get on a bike. But environmentally, you might see it as a bit of a disaster. The National Park Authority could operate a bike bus, but for now driving is simply too easy for people to bother looking for more sustainable alternatives to using the car.

Riding the Tissington Trail has warmed me to Sustrans’ vision. I imagine the trailblazers here inspired John Grimshaw, and the other people behind what later became Sustrans. I’d always seen Sustrans as a pioneer, but like everything, it of course has predecessors.

But it strikes me that what Sustrans is doing is striving to render the Peak District model more accessible, to bring it to people’s doorsteps. People embrace off-road cycling, but out here in the Derbyshire dales it’s unlikely to transform people’s everyday lives. Sustrans saw the need to take this kind of cycling experience to where people live. Sustrans is not satisfied with getting people onto bikes once a year, on their holidays; it wants to transform society, to give cycling pride of place all day, every day. And people like it. The popularity of Sustrans’ vision is evident by its winning £50 million from the People’s Lottery at the end of 2007. So there should soon be a bit more of this sort of thing, coming to a place near you.

Before the end of the trail I catch myself yawning. Lack of stimulation? Back on the roads, I move north, hungry for lunch.

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