…..and night riding in shorts.

I'm just back in from a great night's riding but my legs are tingling with nettle stings. The bits that werent stung were spiked with thistles and brambles and a few midges got their teeth into me too. Ahh the joys of natural singletrack.

I've been wearing my elbow guards for some local XC lately, not because I'm likely to need them but because plastic is nettle and spike proof Don't mean to sound ungrateful for summer but for "natural" rides this is pretty much my least favourite time of year, everything stings or bites or scratches or poisons or irritates…

The problem is the stuff grows!! You'll bomb down a path one day with no problems and then a week later you'll be in the same place wondering why there is undergrowth whipping you as you pass!

In the immortal words of STW:

MTFU

have you never heard of Doc leaves ! thort that was a childhood trick for nettles….other than that wear longer shorts long pants… 😆

Doc leaves? Of course but body armour stays on better – until doc leaves evolve velcro straps of course.

I got stung by a dehydrated dying nettle yesterday and it knacked all day. I can still feel it now.

I was thinking that possibly the lack of water in it had caused it to concentrate the sting

Nettles and Midge – if there is a god, what the f*ck was he thinking? Although bats & swallows (midge) & butterflys (nettles) might think otherwise, the world would have been been a better place if he had left them on the parts shelf.

"if there was a god" – well, isn't the idea that suffering here gets us into heaven. Bring on those nettles.

Um… nettles (or Ginney's as we always used to call em) are not that bad!

Personally I will take a long sunny days a dry dusty trail and some Ginney stings/scratches from Brambles over 3" of gloopy mud, near freezing conditions and perpetual darkness and no stingers in winter…

Nettle's arent that bad really. We were out last night and my arms were covered in nettle strings. Get a shower, bit of moisturiser on them and just enjoy the tingling. Has therapeutic properties I'm told.

I hate nettles

There's some evidence toward that lowey – several clinical trials have suggested it has pain killing tendencies which improve when done repeatedly while the pain effect of the sting diminishes. I just like to treat it as a sign of a good ride and relish it.

I'm wondering if some of the people that find nettles a nuisance are perhaps people that didn't get daily nettle rash playing as kids?

Especially when you consider coffeekings theory..

It depends what you call a bunch of nettles really. I've got a ride where I must be about the only person to use the path (did I just say that out loud!?!). There was a patch of nettles that have completely overgrown the path to the point where for 20yds the undergrowth at the two sides have intermeshed at about cheek level when riding. If you just rode through you would be talk thousands of stings, not just 10 or 20. I normally just grab my bike by seatpost and stem and swing it wildly in front of me to cut a path through the middle.

My fave singletrack has suddenly grown to the point where I can't see my handlebars though the foliage for about half a mile of what ought to be buff, downward-pointing Nirvana. I've found that after a while the stings just blend into an all-over tingling, even where you're getting slapped round the face by the buggers.

It's the brambles lurking in there that really annoy me…!

Anyone got a flame-thrower I can borrow?

Roman soldiers used to use them to keep their legs warm with the stings.

But then we invented 'trousers'.

Tea tree oil is supposed to work.
Although I generally tend to MTFU

Why not do a bit of trail tidying if they bother you that much? Give a bit back and all that!

Anyway, did you know the nettle sting is actually a silica (glass) tube?

I spent about an hour treading out a new trail, through lots of nettles, as it turned out. 24 hours and a sleepless night of severe tingling akin to heavy sunburn. Not enjoyable.

Anyway, did you know the nettle sting is actually a silica (glass) tube

I do now and with a helping of acidic fluid in it.

problem, solved;

or for the cross riders;

Cool pics, wwaswas.

After my last ride I'd been thinking of a Cannondale Lefty with full "Boadicea" style wheel embellishments. Or maybe that stem-mounted flame thrower I've been toying with (just need to figure out how to stop the cable-ties from melting)…