Nettles are out in full force this year. I was chatting with me mate last night while out riding and we both agreed that some stinging on the legs in ‘some’ way is enjoyable and gives you a bit of adrenaline. Aybody else, or are we strange?

Yup don’t mind them in a perverse kind of way. Also The bracken is scalpel sharp around Cannock ride through it and not feel a thing look down and there’s blood everywhere

What doesn’t kill you etc

And those brambles that slash your arms…
Heaven!

Strangely invigorating aren’t they?

The small bramble slashes to my arms and legs from Friday’s ride were displayed with pride in work today 😀

Must be something with beating nature’s attempt to make the trails unpassable..

“Zing!” Is the word I think…

Got monstered today. Legs, arms and hands are atill tingling 6 hours later.

Giant Hogweed anyone?

Badge (rash) of honour? It’s that blessed irony of the singletrack being dry and dusty yet the walls of nettle / bracken / bramble come in closer and closer to punish you whilst you’re enjoying it.

Nearly had a comedy off last week – that sticky grass stuff (that sticks to clothes when you throw it at people, like all mature grown ups do…) caught around one end of my bars and wrenched it out of my hands. Proper tankslapper, but made me chuckle a little.

I think there is something about the Alpine air that makes the nettles extra-potent. I took a pre-season, getting-used-to-new-bike OTB the other week and landed in a big patch of them. Instant blisters. **** agony!

After each ride recently it looks like I’ve been self harming or juggling poorly with chainsaws, badge of honour I suppose 😆

Love nettles me, i run a gardening business, its an occupational hazzard but i secretly like it…

They are fine whilst riding, just once they have been there for a while they get bloody itchy and keep me awake often, which is a right PITA

I kinda like it until you’re in bed still tingling, attempting to sleep.

Love it

Nice hot, sweaty summer evening ride, lots of stings and bramble scratches. Get in the shower when you’re home and use Original Source mint shower gel. Lie in a fresh made bed and just tingle. Can’t beat it!

hat sticky grass stuff (that sticks to clothes when you throw it at people, like all mature grown ups do…)

I’ve always called it “stickybuds” but its correct name is cleavers – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine

Love it
Nice hot, sweaty summer evening ride, lots of stings and bramble scratches. Get in the shower when you’re home and use Original Source mint shower gel. Lie in a fresh made bed and just tingle. Can’t beat it!

Haha, snap. Although I prefer lime shower gel.

The nettle sting/sensation is good for rubbing on arthritic or painful joints, and yeah…i like a good nettle burn

The sticky things are known as Sticky Willies in Scotland.

Up to a point yes, but I passed that point about two rides ago.

It’s so overgrown on some trails round here that you can’t even see which way the trail goes a bike length ahead.

Got stung to billy-o yesterday, legs were numb then absolutely howling. Couldn’t get to sleep until 5 this morning.

Lots of gorse round our way. Bloody evil stuff – ded scratchy at the time and then itches for at least a day

I don’t mind the nettles (I think I sweat the stings straight back out again) it’s the grasses that get me, 3 days of blotchy rashes aargh!

Booktownman, drink son…Drink!

Stings and scratches fade, I’ve ripped two t-shirts on brambles in the last couple of weeks. Need mini chainsaws on my bar ends or something.

Boadicea stylie wheels?

Don’t mind nettles but what I do find tedious is horse fly bites…..seem to last for about 3 days 🙁

After each ride recently it looks like I’ve been self harming

That’s what some said to me recently. To be fair my arms did look like i’d escaped one of Jigsaw’s games.

Don’t mind nettles but what I do find tedious is horse fly bites…..seem to last for about 3 days

Me too, nettles are par for the course but inset bites are out of order and those flying, biting things seem to have a penchant for my flesh.

Trick is,if you can bare it, not to itch them when first stung. Makes them 10 times worse!!

I’m beginning to suspect the anti-MTB lobby of spraying trail-side brambles with Miracle-Gro™, some of them are more suited to Manga than the English countryside.

Over the last 20+ years nettles have been par for the course, sometime wake up in the early hours after a night ride with very itchy legs/arms but that’s a price I’m happy to pay to be able to ride where I do!

I’ve had 2 decent jerseys shredded by the turbo-bracken this season.

I was saying that whilst out the other week. Theres something weird about it – not sure if its enjoyable but I certainly don’t mind it!

Brambles though – theres nothing enjoyable about having your arms and legs torn to bits. After riding last night, it looks like I’ve been trying to self harm…

I hate the way brambles run up your forearms, until they get to the crook of your elbow, and then drag across like a thousand razor cuts at once. Then the sweat gathers in your elbowpits and adds to the misery.

At the end of the summer and up to Christmas, for the last few years, I’ve had very itchy forearms which I’ve put down to the after effects of years of contact with summer trail veg. It eventually subsides in winter, ready to be topped up again. I don’t mind the stings and scratches but the long term itching can be infuriating. Anyone else get this?

Had to quickly take my hand away from the bar to avoid a particularly vicious bramble today – the ODI Rogue grip was a pin-cushion of thorns, I had to stop and pick them out one-by-one.

Roman soldiers used to rub nettles on their legs to keep warm.

And thats why they won.

I thought I was alone, but yes I enjoy the apres nettle sting buzz too. Used to work tramping around the woods all day and it kind of became normal.

@Brassneck: Romans also believed they were descended from wolves, so they’re clearly barking.

One of my riding buddies, new to our weds night escapades, wore a long sleeve top and then complained it got snagged. I and the other long-termers told him to MTFU as skin grows back and is way cheaper than his fancy long sleeve top 🙂

To be fair he rides a lot on the road to commute and has a recumbant so is not used to brambles etc. I asked him if he was coming out this week and his answer was **** yes so maybe we’ve managed to educate him to the ways of forest 🙂