A Reyt Good Time Bikepacking in the Dales

Amanda discovers that bikepacking isn’t all beards, flannel shirts, and far-flung adventures.

Words & Photography Amanda

Bikepacking is one of those things I really like the idea of but when it comes down to it, I’ll almost always book a cheap hotel because the bed is already made. I’m not afraid of mild discomfort; I know how to pack for a cold night out, and I don’t have any particular needs when it comes to facilities, but if I don’t want to do something and I don’t need to do it, I won’t. So how on earth did the Reyt Good Bike Club get me sleeping outside with nothing more than a bivvy and tarp during a torrential rain storm? More to the point, how did that become one of my favourite rides of 2022?

The Reyt Good Bike Club formed around summer 2021. The founder, Emma Whitaker, has an impressive résumé to show for her twenty-seven years. Having raced on the national circuit in her teens, she’s an incredibly capable mountain biker. She took those skills around Europe in a van (featured in past issues), and returned to the UK rather abruptly due to the pandemic. Since her return, she has joined the team at Stif in North Yorkshire and worked her way up to Marketing and Web Manager in no time.

Somewhere along the way, Emma has found a soft spot for gravel riding. Or, should I say, mountain biking on the ‘wrong’ bike, given what she likes to hurl herself down. With gravel bikes came a more relaxed attitude and pace to riding. Looking for zero pressure group rides, a safe space and a small welcoming environment for anxious riders found her at a loss locally, so along came Reyt Good Bike Club – an off-road cycling group that is female-led, but open to all, numbers are deliberately kept low and all involved in the route planning and ride leading are volunteers. Fun is prioritised, and there are a bunch of learning opportunities to gain further confidence with bike set-up, handling and even how to plot routes and read maps. It’s a Reyt Good job they’re doing, so the first opportunity I had to join a ride I checked if Vicky would be free and promptly bought a ticket without giving it a second thought.

Second thoughts

No sooner have I booked my ticket, I receive a stream of enthusiastic messages from Vicky, my riding buddy and Chief of Organisation. Bivvy bags, frame packs, dry bags, sleeping bags, down vs synthetic, how to pack your bar bag, Pinterest boards of trail snack recipes… in true form, I ignore the lot. Vicky is a floodgate when she’s excited about something, and it’s easier to let the water run dry than try to manage it. Or her.

Now the excitement has evaporated, I must acknowledge that I have in fact committed to a bikepacking weekend in Yorkshire in mid-October. One night, two days – not a big route by my standards, but with a fully laden bike I’ll probably eat those words to help get me up the hills. Now, I have been bikepacking before, but it was in summer and at no point did I actually believe we would sleep where we intended, so I did no preparation (Wrongpacking Helvellyn, Issue 138). This time around, I would be far from a bail-out option and could probably guarantee the weather would mistreat us. So I beg borrow and buy a bunch of camping gear and frame bags, some of which are actually available from Reyt Good in the spirit of inclusivity, and I return to not worrying about it.

“What you don’t think about cannot cause you angst.”

– Confushart

Making a racket about jackets

Arriving at Alpkit in Ilkley, we power through the introductions and get the record stuck on the same track of ‘what jacket’, since the sky is currently clear, but the forecast promises us a heavy shower at midday. Our group is small and I’m pleased to finally meet Tasha, a forum regular, subscriber, and accomplished outdoor-ist. Tasha is a Reyt Good volunteer, but she’s on this trip as a guest. Sophie is joining Emma in leading the trip, and in contrast to Emma’s sparkly Juliana Quincy, Sophie rides a weathered Cotic Soul that looks to suffer from ablutophobia. Having two ride guides demonstrating that Run What Ya Brung is perfectly acceptable feels good, since I wasn’t overly confident I had come on the right bike.

Vicky is on her lovingly dubbed Mule, a Sonder Camino, and then there’s Dani who has an impressive ensemble of gear and a really racy looking S-Works Crux. I’ve come on my Planet X Tempest, which I consider to be a road bike with Calderdale-friendly tyres.

It’s around ten minutes into our adventure when we all need to stop to de-jacket. As we stand around faffing, a road cycling group chain gangs past us at such speed they almost cause us to need our jackets back on. Tasha tells us of a bad time she had on this very lane when a quail ran out in front of her, causing her to crash. I take great pleasure in mocking her for living somewhere posh enough for trail quails, since I spend my days navigating angry geese on the towpath in Todmorden.

Base pace

We’re noodling in the direction of Barden Moor, enjoying the unadvertised sun and the social pace of the ride. We’ve not been up any hills yet, but we’re all plenty warm enough which bodes well for our camping later. The threat of rain keeps getting pushed back, which in the moment is great, but Vicky has the sense to point out to me that it’ll likely arrive when we’re setting up camp. I choose to ignore Vicky once again, as she’s always right and I don’t need any help increasing my dread about sleeping outside after sweating on a bike all day.

The bridleway through Barden Moor is a treat. The gentle gradient and huge views make it easy to get up to the top, but we stop several times for snacks and photos anyway. I realise Emma and Sophie are both making sure nobody is having trouble keeping up, and in a moment when one of the riders did start to fall behind, they subtly brought the pace down.

Before our descent to the café we’re briefed on the trail. Flowy with a hint of rut, probably lots of foot traffic, Be Nice Say Hi. We have a great time taking it in turns to lead the way, choose lines around puddles and chatting to curious walkers, confused by our frame luggage. Dani hasn’t had much off-road experience on her Crux, so she has a lesson in how to survive a gravel ride on actual gravel, and repeatedly apologises for her lack of confidence, not that it matters at all. All the confidence in the world can’t help you on a wet sandy descent when your saddle is up your ass and there’s a bar bag blocking your view of the features. We come out of it unharmed and smiling, and make our way to the Devonshire Arms Inn in Cracoe.

What should be a light lunch becomes a pizza party, and we spend far longer than we had budgeted for here. Cold hydrating drinks followed by cosy warm cappuccinos make it very hard to leave, and the arrival of Carly, Emma’s girlfriend and co-parent of Hamish the dog, doesn’t help matters. Hamish kindly eats the sheep poo from my cleats as I sit quietly pondering the weather. It’s gone very cold and rather breezy, but still hasn’t rained. Cold and dry I can cope with, cold and windy acceptable, cold and wet terrible. Cold, wet and windy is unacceptable.

It’ll Be Reyt On The Night

We arrive at Kettlewell Campsite in a reasonable time, considering we have Bread Legs from our feast and the temperature has plummeted. We quickly apply all of our jackets, and get to work setting up our individual camping spots. This is Vicky’s time to shine, as during her earlier excitement when I couldn’t cope with any organisation, she took herself out into her garden and practised setting up a twin bivvy with bike garage and roof. If anything, it was a good thing I ignored her stream of messages, because she was so productive with her time. Our makeshift home is a three-sided tarp arrangement, a ground sheet, bikes in the middle and a bivvy either side. While I’m grateful that the solution appears to be a sturdy one, I don’t have time to thank her before running for cover as the heavens open.

As we sit on a bench under a gazebo kindly brought over by Alpkit’s Ilkley team, we assess our sleeping set-up. One side is fully open to the elements, and it’s raining heavily… but this gazebo has appeared, so worst case scenario is me and Vicky sleeping on a bench? It’ll be Reyt. We all get a fire going, Carly reappears with homemade chilli and all the trimmings, and we have a great time exchanging stories, talking about work, bikes, dogs and everything in between. Eventually we’ve exhausted ourselves enough to brave the bivvy bags, and I am flat out until morning, comforted by the sound of torrential rain on the tarp and not a drop getting in. Fair play, Vicky. You do build a good three-sided tent.

Feeling invincible from our success of the previous day, we make a plan to not stick to a plan. The clouds exhausted themselves overnight and our clear blue skies have returned. There are some fun options to get back to Ilkley so we choose to follow our noses based on how our legs are and how stable the weather is. We load up with snacks, and as Sophie runs out of space she tapes yesterday’s banana to the front of her bike. It gains a Sharpie face followed by a red leaf of hair, is named Shaun White, and he leads us out toward Coniston.

We begin our adventure home with a comically tough climb – Mastiles Lane. If you haven’t ridden this, it’s a wide walled lane that may once have been surfaced, but now is blown up into loose chunks of rock of all sizes. It is pedalable if you like a challenge, so I crank my way as far up as I can be bothered before collapsing into the wall and getting my camera out to capture a host of solutions to getting up this killer hill at the start of the day. Watching Emma throw her bike on her back and run in cyclocross form has to be my highlight of the day.

Cats and dogs

A stream crossing sees the group divide into cats and dogs. The cats (myself included) carefully pick our way across the rocky outer edge, being careful not to slip in. The dogs pedal through it and accept their fate of frozen toes by noon. We all spend some time admiring the fossilised worms on a rock, and are pleased to see that Shaun White is still present.

The rest of the homeward journey is a surprisingly struggle-free day full of laughs. Vicky is proud to present the group with some limited edition ‘dessert flavour’ Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles, which are so disgusting we all practically spit them back at her, but we commit to trying each flavour and making ourselves feel sick. Emma gives us two options for a descent, one of which she claims isn’t fully ridable on a gravel bike, but it does lead to somewhere good, so we take a chance on it.

It is not suitable for gravel bikes, but we all ride it regardless and celebrate what can be achieved when you don’t have the pressure of holding a set pace or having to prove you’re capable. We’re just out here having fun, helping each other, supporting each other and making decisions together. There hasn’t been a single moment where I’ve not felt incredibly happy and lucky to be here with this group – even as the rain arrived last night, I still felt totally fine about what would be.

I guess that’s Emma and her small crew of volunteers achieving exactly what they set out to do. Getting people out on bikes, having fun and not feeling pressure or as if they’re out of depth in a group. If you have a cycling group like this near you, please support it. If you’re lucky enough to live near Yorkshire, try to get yourself on a Reyt Good ride, I promise you’ll have a Reyt Good time.