Route Guide: Guisborough Gamble.
Distance: 17 Miles - All off-road.
Difficulty: Hard.
Time: About 2 and a half hours.

Starting at Pinchinthorpe visitors centre, and with the visitors centre on our left, head 
off up the track passing the ponds on your left. We follow this track through the woods and 
up a moderately steep climb with good views of Highcliffe Nab to our left. We keep following 
this track for some distance through the forest with a number of steep climbs until we come to 
a gate with a bench nearby from which we get a good view of Eston Moor to our left and 
Highcliffe Nab now infront of us. Going through the gate and beginning to climb up towards 
Highcliffe Nab, we then take a path on our right through the trees which is actually part of 
the Cleveland Way. After a short distance this brings us to another gate out onto the open moor. 
Its a bit tricky to get your bike through this gate as really this is a footpath and the gate 
is ment for walkers but this track is just too good to miss. From here we follow the path across
the open moor and descend down to a tarmac farm road near Sleddale farm. We follow this track up 
to the road at the top of Percy Cross Rigg. Turning right here we follow the road to its end at 
a gate and turn left and descend through what was once Lonsdale plantation. We again reach 
another tarmac track which we follow through Lonsdale farm and after a steep climb we come to 
an even steeper descent through Bankside farm. Shortly after the farm as the road passes through 
an open field the road takes a sharp left away from the forest on our right, we leave the road 
here and go through the gate into the forest. We follow the bridleway skirting the base of the 
forest and come back out onto open moor below Captain Cooks Monument. After a short distance 
across the moor we re enter the foest for a veru short distance coming soon to a tarmac surface 
which brings us out onto the main road just above Great Ayton Station. Crossing this road we go 
straight on following the road up to Ariyholme farm. Through the farm we keep on the bridlepath 
heading towards Roseberry topping, as the bridlepath intersects the Cleveland Way we turn left 
and using the bridlepaths skirt the base of Roseberry topping itself coming back on our original 
bridlepath only a few hundred yards from were we left it. Carrying on we go through a gate and 
the going is quite muddy here and re enter Guisborough forest and continue for a few hundred 
yards to arrive back on one of the paths we were using at the beginning of the ride, turning 
left we follow this track back to the visitors centre.

This route was downloaded from:
Mountain Bike Extreme - http://www.mtbe.co.uk