Went for a local pootle yesterday and was horrified by the state of one of the trails. as we passed Aspenshaw Hall we coulod see debris on the road, and saw that the hall’s residents seemed to be digging up a trench. I thought it odd that they’d chosen to deposit the trench’s contents on the road, especially as it seemed to have been nicely smoothed.
as we continued up towards Barking Dogs Farm (Wethercotes), it became obvious that the debris wasn’t from them digging a trench, it was from the bridleway up the hill due to the torrential rain we experienced on saturday afternoon. The tarmacced road up to the cottages has been raised and buckled by the water, and the bridleway is basically a half mile long trench. MartynS got some pics on his cameraphone that I’ll post when I get a copy, but at one point I was able to put my entire front wheel (29er) in one of the holes, and it was almost hub deep in the puddle
Just be careful with your route choice – it’s a push all the way up and going down could be dangerous as the top section is relatively unscathed until you go round the first corner (possibly carrying a fair bit of speed) to find a wheel swallowing rut.
Of course, I now await the STW riding gods who will tell me that it’s all perfectly rideable and I should take a large dose of MTFU and a unicycle 😉