Sometimes it’s the journey that counts, as Barney found out.

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BARNEY MARSH

The early part of the twentieth century was staggering in terms of speed of technological progress, especially where aircraft were concerned – in large part thanks to a couple of world wars. Preposterously flimsy wood and fabric construction swiftly gave way to aluminium, and simple prop engines with a handful of horsepower gave way to the mighty Rolls-Royce Merlin engine with 1,000hp.

To put that into perspective, compare the 1981 Specialized Stumpjumper to the 2019 version. They initially seem like worlds apart: materials, construction techniques and tolerances have all come on in whopping great strides – but consider the Lancaster bomber. A strikingly distinctive (OK, ugly) machine, it first flew in 1941, a scant 38 years after the Wright brothers made the first powered flight by anyone in anything (ever) in 1903. The brothers were bike mechanics whose tiny, 6.5m long, 12hp aircraft flew at 30mph for 260 whole metres; 38 years later the flying machine had evolved into a 21m long aircraft capable of 200mph, with 5,120hp engines, a 2,530 mile range and a payload of 6,400kg.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because this stuff is interesting, and as a spectacularly self-centred individual I find it impossible to conceive that you might not agree (did you know that a patent for the ramjet was granted in 1908? 1908, I ask you!).

But why here, in a mountain bike magazine? Well, it’s all to do with history and landscape and the rather fab places that bikes can take you, and it’s especially to do with a ride to see a spectacular flyover that very nearly wasn’t.

Is it time yet?

In May 2018, there was to be a fly-past of Derwent Reservoir in the Peak District by a Lancaster bomber. I rather like Derwent and Ladybower, and I’m also rather fond of Lancaster bombers, the revoltingly ugly big brother in the cultural pantheon to the svelte Spitfire and Hurricane. There were other British wartime planes, of course (there’s a special place in my heart for de Havilland’s Mosquitoes and Vampires), but for me these three are the triumvirate of British aeronautical ingenuity.

So it was that my mate Tom suggested a plan. Tom, our mate Rik and I would park up at Langsett Reservoir, we’d ride the fabled Cut Gate trail, we’d consume biblical quantities of jelly babies, we’d go ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ at the fly-past, I’d take some photos, and then we’d ride home. It would be totally fab.

I also had to make an admission. Although I’d started mountain biking proper when living in Bristol, I was brought up Oop North, and I’d ridden the Peaks many, many times. But I’d never ridden Cut Gate. Tom was in frank disbelief at this point. I think I even saw his bottom lip flap repeatedly in shock. Clearly this was something that needed to be addressed were I to ever aspire to being a Northerner.