Sunday 27 December 2015

Next workday/social ride

The last workday of the year will be, as determined by our new schedule, Thursday 31 December 2015. Meet at Hulme End car park at the usual time of 10:00. The plan will be to ride Route 549 to where it joins the High Peak Trail (NCR68) at Sparklow. We can check the signage as we go. A little further north is the Royal Oak pub, which offers some very good local ales. After drinking the old year out (!), we will continue on the HPT to Parsley Hay, where we will finish (I'll carry on, on the HPT towards home). 
Weather is predicted to be sunny with a temperature of 7 C and a moderate wind from the SW. Pretty good for the time of year! See you all there! 

Saturday 19 December 2015

A merry Christmas to all our members and all our readers!

As we come once again to the end of another year of rangering for Sustrans, I would like to thank you all for the hard work you have put in. As in previous years, most of our efforts this year have been expended in signing our trails, something about which we need to be always vigilant in order to provide clear directions to the public, as well as being a constant reminder that these routes form part of a much bigger network. It is expected that new stretches of multi-user path, at Staker Hill near Buxton and between Matlock and Rowsley will be added to the network in the near future and that these too will require our attention. 2015 has seen the organizing of a programme of led rides for the public which we hope will come to fruition in the new year; a number of our members have been trained as ride leaders by Sustrans. We have welcomed this year a new Volunteer Project Officer, Dan Robertson, with whom we have met a number of times. Dan is very energetic and pro-active, and we all look forward to working with him in 2016. I hope you all have a well deserved break from rangering this Xmas holiday, and I look forward to seeing you all at the next 'workday' on Thursday 31 December, which - weather allowing - will probably consist of a ride and a visit to a pub. (BTW, I'm always looking for a snowy cycling picture when it comes to Xmas! This one was taken in the Grin Low car park early in 2013, under the auspices of the Erewash Valley Sustrans Rangers and before I officially took over this group from Jeremy. But I'm running out of such pictures - maybe it will snow a week next Thursday!)