hi, anyone been riding trails round rossendale in the last week or 2. just wanna know if anywhere’s rideable at the mo?

Aiming to be out tonight, will post tommorrow -probably head either up to the windmills or somewhere around the Halo

Should be all pretty frozen and snowy on top, certainly is over Deerplay where I live.

Halo is always iced over this time of the year. i was up on holcombe the last time it snowed and it was very icey so it will be exactly the same now.

I was up around the windmills last night and it was very near impassable; snow was deep and hadn’t had much traffic. It was very hard going.

Holcombe is much better; lots of rambling feet have compacted the snow to make it good going. There are still patches of ice to keep it interesting though.

cold this week, snow forecast for friday

then rain and +5deg on sunday, so all back to normal.

Scotchegg did you go down Robin Hood’d well, if so what state is it in , thats the only section I’d worry about for ice

Robin Hoods Well on ice? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Should be interesting? We’ll be finding out tomorrow night. -7 forecast! The moors will at least be solid

mr potatohead – you ending up in the Hare & Hounds?

no don’t like the landlord, probably the duckworth or maybe the robin hood at helmshore

The landlord is admittedly a miserable so and so, but he knows his ale.

I hadn’t noticed the landlord. Don’t know why. I reckon we’ll inevitably find ourselves in there. possibly with frostbite.

Scotchegg did you go down Robin Hood’s well

I did, on Sunday pm. It was OK, put I was pussyfooting gingerly down rather than the usual kamikaze run. I was holding back to keep my options open, but it was packed snow rather than ice.

There were 2 crumblies near the bottom who looked like they were on the Eiger, not a footpath; it was clearly better with tyres than on foot.

The moorland paths to the Monk’s Cross were more rideable than they have been of late. All the mud had frozen and the snow was plenty grippy.

do you mean pilgrim’s cross. I hadn’t even considerd that , thought it would be a mud-fest

No mud, all snow.

Grand.

We were up at Pilgrim’s cross a while back. Its frozen solid up there. More ice rink than mudfest at the moment. The wind chill factor up there means there’s a lot of ice. All now covered in snow. I’d take it easy

Was anyone out last night then? Whats it like? Just weighing up route options for tonight

Coal road to the turbines was awful deep crispy frozen snow very difficult to ride, The link into crag from the last windmill was about a foot deep but the 2nd half had a track of sorts walked into it – ridable sort of. the main track through crag (not the trails) was ok in the 4x ruts
The highlight was the decent down the pennine bway to coupe absolute hoot the only bit of the ride worth riding debateable wether it made up for the previous drudge
ps the river trail from rawtenstall to irwell vale wasnt so bad but irwell itself was a sheet of polished ice – ended up going down with a right thud – helmets and knee pads do have their uses
G

RM did i show you round lee quarry when it 1st opened
G

As Graham [ justme] said a lot of it is hard slog .Holcombe may be as good as anywhere for the time being

I think Holcombe is the plan for later then. Bucky Woods might well be a giggle.

I’ll advise everyone to get padded up. I somehow doubt I’ll be upright all night. I rarely am in perfect conditions 😀

have done bucky woods in the snow before (in the daylight)it was really good better than usual – usual = pissed through mud and crap not on the odd day its actually dry
G

justme- dont think so mate.