I’m staying away this week with work and staying close to Rutland Water – worth taking my bike for a pootle round the lake on Mon and Tue night?

Any reason not to?

No reason not to at all, don’t expect MTB nirvana though, pretty much all been sanitised in the pursuit of safety and family friendly cycling, must ride the peninsular though as this part is as off road as it gets.

Nice one – I’ll give it a go! 😀

Wot puddle-rider said.

Sanitised? You make it sound like there was something interesting there first!

How much of a sheep-shit fan are you?

25 mile loop if you include the middle bit. Good for a blast at night.

If you want a bit more in that area head to fineshade wood over on the Corby/Stamford road.

Last time we were over that way we rode Wakerley Great Wood. Quite a nice little trail if a bit muddy. I expect given the recent weather it might be unrideable, maybe a local can advise.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/any-riding-innear-rutland

Stopped at the café there on an audax ride today – the people riding round the reservoir were looking rather splattered and muddy but at least it would appear to be rideable, unlike all the bridleway signs I went past that seemed to be bogs or rivers when I had a sneaky look….

My mate lives nearby in Oakham, so we regularly ride there in the evenings as a training ride. It’s quite splattery at the moment, so I recommend mud guards if you’ve got them, particularly if you are doing the peninsula because it’s quite sheep poo-ey there at the mo.

I think it’s quite a good night time blast, because you can really push round the loop; the peninsula is quite undulating, so you can get up quite a sweat if really pushing it.

Are you familiar with the loop? If not, there are a few points where it’s not massively obvious which way to go. Might be worth finding a GPX file?
I could probably send you something if you need it?

stumpy01 – I have ridden there once last summer (in the daylight!) and did the full loop – any route info will be helpful for the night ride! 😀

Fineshade and Wakerley is a bit of a mud bath, although the forestry have done a lot of work at wakerley to try and make an all weather route. Might not be the easiest of routes to follow as the signage isn’t great. If you do want to ride I could show you a route on Tuesday night. Gimme an email (in profile)if you do.

velocipede – my e-mail should be in my profile. I couldn’t find one in your profile. Drop me a message if you want some GPX/TCX files sending over?

Or if you’d prefer/don’t have a gps, drop me an e-mail and I can try to send you some pointers on the route for bits that are easy to miss…

Velocipede, gpx emailed.

Thanks PeteB! 😀

Anglian Water has bylaws restricting access after dark in this part of the world. Some have been asked to leave when night riding around Alton Water. They’ve got to catch you in the act first though.