My non-cycling mate says to me yesterday. Yeah but No. After a ride on friday night my arms are covered in scratches which have now semi healed into several inch long red scabs, Nice! My legs are in a similar state. The trails are closing in and are now rather scratchy! I shall have to reassess my ride choices this week if I don’t want my mates to refer me to social services. Goodbye forest trails until the Autumn.

Yeah, much the same here!
I’ve now opted for the big wide open trails of the Ridgeway, and some wider forest trails. Less fun, but it’s the better choice.

Take some secateurs on your next ride to tidy things up a bit, then you and everybody else that rides the trail can continue enjoying it until Autumn.

Same here in Dorset, the gorse is bloody lethal. Forgot my gloves on one ride, and my hands resembled pin cushions!! 😯 Everywhere is really overgrown. 😕

Wear your bramble/gorse/etc scars with pride! And take some folding secateurs to be the trail fairy.

In related news I’m looking for a summer jersey that resists the same attacks. My lovely new Morvelo short sleeved tee is looking pretty terrible after just two rides.

the stinging nettles are pretty potent at the moment too!

Yep, have then same look
And added some big scratches above my hip from a silly crash to add to the look

It’s not so much the scratches for me as the outbreak of rashes and itching that seems to follow my interactions with the foliage. Still, gives the girlfriend a good laugh.

The other weekend, trail getting narrower until there’s a choice: brambles on the left or stinging nettles on the right? AAAAGH!

Someone does strim those particular paths later in the summer, possibly the parish council. Didn’t help at the time though. At least there’s no Giant Hogweed.

I’ve found the cheapo anti allergy pills from Aldi take care of the irritation. But yes the nettles are a killer, espicially when you travel aways down a track only to be confronted with nettles the size of your hands meeting in the middle and mentally & physically you grit your teeth and plough through, like Homer falling down a cliff.
Then you get scratched to ****ery by a giant thick bramble and it takes off half your arm skin and then bends back before thwacking your mate on the arm behind. ‘Watch out’ you call out, but it’s too late! 😥 😀 I love cycling.

jekkyl – Member
…Goodbye forest trails until the Autumn.

don’t you mean, until someone has gone out with secateurs…?

take a minute or 2 on your next ride to trim back the worst of it, say ‘ello and smile to the walkers. it’s bloody great seeing some misery guts fighting back the urge to say you shouldn’t be riding here, when he’s actually thanking you for your hard work…

Loving the rides home from the pub in the dark.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PVZ2rn]IMG_9759[/url] by John Stanley, on Flickr

Same here. Getting very adept at the left hand off – swerve, right hand off- swerve as I weave thru the ever expanding undergrowth. 2 Strimmers mounted on the front wheel Budica style are the answer.

I have a prominent 3″ scar running along the vein on the inside of my wrist. My Jack Russell did it years ago while I was trying to restrain him at the vets. I get asked regularly if it was an attempt to slit my wrist 🙂

Always looks good riding back through surburbia covered in blood

Now that was a bike ride

Earn some trail karma and cut a couple back, if we all did a little bit we would be golden 🙂

Several years ago I recall a pupil asking me if I was okay and if there was anything I wanted to talk to the class about my self-harming… still makes me smile!

Yes I’ve been self harming also .

That was a memorable ride. Photo taken post wash, they were all bleeding during the ride. Two years ago now and I’ve still got scars from some of those.

I’m in Brittany at the moment and to my surprise I discovered some proper MTBing on a lone peak overlooking the sea called Menez Hom – it’s a bit like a less steep Dartmoor tor. The official trails are wide and rocky and not exactly technical (but fast and rough) but I found some great paths which are steep and challenging. One of these was a good 30% gradient, constant switchbacks, in between bracken and on grass and a mix of small granite boulders, from football to oven size. A great learning experience of how to keep the bike moving without stalling the front wheel and how to remount and continue when the trail never has an easy bit. Fun!

Unfortunately the gorse further down did a pretty thorough job attacking my lower legs… But that paled into insignificance when I was popping and pumping my way down a straight yet narrow trail next to a gulleyed stream and suddenly the trail surface narrowed by about 6″ (hidden by the grass) and my front wheel slipped offf the side and stopped dead (at 24mph according to Strava).

Cue the fastest OTB crash of my life and one of the most violent. I think I landed on my shoulder, hip and head almost in synchrony. I had to get the bike down from the tree it had launched itself up into. Felt sick with shock but amazingly nothing broken and very little skin missing – I have a 6″ diameter indigo bruise on my left hip and my left shoulder isn’t moving very well but three days on I can how change gear in the car without screaming, swearing or resorting to labour pains style heavy breathing.

Still, today I got to pedal one of those bike car things next to the sea with the family in, which was most amusing (and sloooow).

for those that say, oh, get out with the secateurs — FFS – I did a heap of trails earlier on, some trails have all but disappeared under nettles, gorse, brambles, bracken. If I took 2 minutes I’d do next to nothing, to clear a trail would take days..

sorry, rant over, often feel it falls down to me to clear local trails (I know that’s not true) but it’s a huge extent locally, you can cajole folk to make their own effort, but it’s overwhelming in scope..

I have wondered how much good a scythe rather than secateurs would do. Nothing impassable yet except due to ferns, it just doesn’t get ridden til autumn though.

but it’s overwhelming in scope..

Even the longest journey begins with a single step…

A decent petrol driven strimmer would be more effective. Who can be arsed though?! just ride somewhere else, autumn’s not exactly far away.

On a BW that is following a narrow (< 2m) lane and with vegetation at either side then even with a professional sized strimmer it’s going to take some time to clear, 100 metres per hour? (complete guess and would depend on the “woodiness” of the vegetation)

For a short section of a couple of metres then secateurs/cutters will do, after that it’s a lot of work.

A billhook or machete make pretty short work of most plants. I like to put the trail clearing hours in in late spring, it seems to be most effective then. Sometimes a wee trim is needed mid summer.

See, I lie and say that self-harming scars are from mountain biking! 😀

My name is bigyinn and I self harm.

A good trim back to the root of the brambles in late spring usually keeps the trail clear.

Take some secateurs on your next ride to tidy things up a bit

Why not take a machete and ride the trail at speed whilst screaming a battle cry and wielding the blade against the vicious foe?

Chaaaaaaaaaaaarge!

(I’ve not really thought this plan through – the whole riding one-handed through thick brush swinging a large and lethal blade, so maybe don’t take my advice as gospel)

Always makes for interesting conversations with your teenage students when you rock up to school in the summer with arms covered in scratches and scabs…

…doesn’t help I habitually dress all in black either.

Very much enjoyed the look on some roadies’ faces as a fellow mtb-er tried to describe the blood and scratches on his arms as “not from self-harm” but in fact managed to proclaim quite loudly that “Whatever it looks like I’m not a self-abuser”

why not just gaffa tape knives to your bars?

I once asked a new girl at work who was sat at an adjacent computer, in a tightly packed temporary office, if she was a mountain biker after glimpsing our similarly scarred arms out of the corner of my eye.

“No – why?” was the somewhat confused reply at which point I looked properly and realised her scars were less numerous but considerably deeper…

I think I got away with a confusing mumble in response.

I regularly go for dog walks with a cordless hedge trimmer at this point in the year and keep my more local trails in check. It gets less odd looks than the chainsaw does in springtime/after autumn storms at least…

I’ve had to explain myself a few times now in work when I turn up with slash marks all over my arms and legs 😆

My regular boss just ignores it but if we have a visitor they give me a strange look. Apart from one who, the first time we met, just looked at me. Then looked down at my legs (I’d just got in so was in my riding gear) and then said ‘The brambles are a bit wild at the moment aren’t they!’

Turns out he’s a roadie that dabbles in CX so we then spent the next 5 minutes comparing ‘badges’ 😀

Still got a good scar on the inside of my elbow from the Arizona Trail Race 750 where I ran into a massive cactus in the dark. Was being chased by rednecks in a car, turned off the road into a carpark/brush area, lights off, pushed into the undergrowth to hide, ran into cactus, ow that really hurt, and spent next 20 mins removing cactus needles from various parts of me and my clothes, still in the dark. Makes me smile each time I notice it!