On the plus side, it's dry today, it likely to be dry until Sunday, Sunday's only got a bit of light rain and by Wednesday it's going to be 18c and Sunny!
We'll all be moaning about blown out dusty trails by next week, maybe 😉
It's been peeing down and foggy on and off all week here 🙁 Everywhere's bloody soaking. Meh.
Last three years I’ve photos of these trails. Bone dry under warm skies. Today 7.5 degrees, raining, epic mud worse than mid winter and not a lot of grip
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/886/26541818537_9d69060de0_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/886/26541818537_9d69060de0_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/GrpKWZ ]Spring trails[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexleigh/ ]Alex Leigh[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/873/40698850284_3aec2e9c00_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/873/40698850284_3aec2e9c00_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/251qfgf ]Spring trails[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexleigh/ ]Alex Leigh[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/871/26542061727_c2099feb3b_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/871/26542061727_c2099feb3b_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/Grr1eV ]Spring Trails[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexleigh/ ]Alex Leigh[/url], on Flickr
Good to get back out on the hardtail. Ankle after three months recovery seems to be okay with that. Rest of me a bit grumpy!
Second pic up ^^ there. Same trail a year ago. Nearly to the day:
[url= https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5691/33218682083_c5d66a97e4_b.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5691/33218682083_c5d66a97e4_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/SBqqRZ ]A tale of two chubbies! Penyard MTB[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexleigh/ ]Alex Leigh[/url], on Flickr
Yeah - it's pretty shit out there....
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/890/39604200070_7fa89cd24f_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/890/39604200070_7fa89cd24f_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/23kFSTG ]P1050036[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/druidh2000/ ]Colin Cadden[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/887/39604206930_f1473d1c3c_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/887/39604206930_f1473d1c3c_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/23kFUVY ]P1050025[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/druidh2000/ ]Colin Cadden[/url], on Flickr
Stay away in case you get a bit muddy
great landscape in those pics, that's a bit better than whats on my doorstep (Rivington)
I have 3 bikes I can commute on. Part of my commute is through some muddy woods.
Bike 1. Fat bike. Only bike that can get up the slippery slope. Goes sideways through mud patches at speed.
Bike 2. Full sus 26 with Bonty Muds. Won’t get up the slope and goes slightly sideways.
Bike 3. Rigid 26 with cyclo cross tyres. Won’t get up the slope but cuts through mud like you won’t believe and no sliding.
I urge everyone to get some cross tyres. They are amazing. Crap on roots and rocks.
I've been up Rivington this evening, it was drying out quite well.
Get on it!
I hope next weeks weather forecast is right
It must have been a boom time for the sales of Mudhuggers (other mud guards are available...). I've managed to ride all through it once or twice per week. Mixing up the trail centres and local rockier trails is always fun (especially when it would have been possible to descend those rockier trails in a kayak!).
Even my GX 12spd has coped!
The snow was great for a laugh, the frozen days on top the Beacons/Black Mountains were incredible.
The drainage in the lower field needs sorting.
But I still can't wait for that feeling where you get back from a ride, chuck the bike in the shed, take a seat on garden furniture that hasn't been blown 400m across a field and crack open a nice cool cider.
Nearly there boys and girls, nearly there...
or cycling in short shorts and cycling vest until past when the sun goes down at half 9.
Made the mistake of thinking the tracks through Stanstead House were a good measure of conditions last night & headed up on to Kingley Vale.
WTB Horizons are definitely useless on sloppy chalk & muddy grass.
Full mudguards are also great at picking up enough of the above to necessitate regular clearing with a stick to enable the wheels of the now 100kg bike to rotate.
Was so glad to get back to the road at Stoughton & stuck to it for the rest of the ride.
Hopefully next week’s forecast weather will dry things out a little...
<whisper> sunny intervals and breezy forecast for the next week here 🙂 </whisper>
Car stolen & being repaired has meant a month without any off-road for me, last night I cracked
30km round trip by road to cycle 10km of woburW trails at the muddiest I've ever seen it!
Car back next week im thinking of taking Wednesday off too ride lovely surfaced cwmcarn !
Trying to do trail centres all the time as most natural routes are cold and muddy but doing a mix of Gisburn/Llandegla/ Cragg & Lee multiple times a week and little else quickly gets old, so did an overnight stay further out and did CYB and Antur Stiniog. Expensive tripnout but makes a change and keeps motivation going through this long muddy series of months. Hopefully everything will change with next weeks forecast of dry weather + temperatures of 15C and above and we will see the end of it at last.
It will then be time to start doing that long list of rides that haven't been worth doing since last July, will feel great to do them again after all this time.
Was nice and dry in The Lakes yesterday and Rivi is running pretty well.
I'm pretty much over it now - I'm not a fan of riding in the wet at the best of times. The off piste at Cannock is pretty grim - it was starting to dry last week (rode Friday night and Sunday and it was nice) but this week will have turned it back to a grotfest.
The last properly dry ride I remember was 6th July last year when I was at BMCC and they warned us about it being super fast and dusty (they weren't wrong). After that, wet and more bloody wet. There was brief respite during cold snap which dried Cannock up a treat....and then it snowed.
The up side to all this water is that the ground is very soft which makes it ideal for fresh digging, rebuilding trails and improving lines.
Tried that too - unfortunately the stuff I've done hasn't been given a chance to dry and its almost as bad as it was before I tried to repair it.
I can see the other side of the valley for the first time in 5 days 🙂
I hope next weeks weather forecast is right
You mean the optimistic "next week it will be warmer and drier than this week"? Always trotted out in spring because it requires no forecasting at all. 🙂 (See also "next week will be colder and wetter" in October/November.)
it requires no forecasting at all.
So, weather in the UK is predictable now is it? Yeah don't think so.
So, weather in the UK is predictable now is it? Yeah don’t think so.
I'd say that predicting that it will get warmer and drier over the next few weeks in spring is as safe a bet as saying that you'll take a quote out of context and start an argument about it. 😀
Doesn't seem to have been that muddy. I'm in the same area as MartinHutch and was out in the Dales last Friday on my summer tyres. The worst sections were actually those with very short grass where there's not enough vegetation to get a grip (this was the climb out of Settle towards Langcliffe) but apart from that it was fine. Did the descent from Weets Top shown earlier in the thread and the ditches in the bottom field were "fun" but rideable.
At Easter we spent three days in Scotland with no rain and the bikes were hardly dirty
The week before Easter we were up in Swaledale, again generally fine riding but a few places damp from the recently melted snow.
Feb and March were mostly fat biking as we had quite a bit of snow around here.
A bit more full on fat biking:
Weets top
South of Skipton
As Martin notes, vegetation hasn't got going yet - grass won't grow until the ground is somewhere around 4/5C - and the trees aren't in leaf so there's nothing taking up the water. The BW that goes past our house is alternating between a muddy river and bone dry almost on a daily basis. The other thing to note is that the underlying geology has an effect as well: gritstone will mean surface water being slow to drain away whilst limestone will drain much quicker and puddles will usually only be around immediately after rain.
Rule #5 MTFU!
Dales looking awesome but too far away for me! Devon has had a couple of dry days but the ground is so wet as to be unrideable in places. Fed up with the impending deja-vu when the back wheel slips, I slow down and then the inevitable foot down - into the gloop to just over your shoe/sock. Never washed my shoes so much! Let alone the bike. Fingers crossed for some drying time.....
Velodrome was nice and dry this evening.
I’d say that predicting that it will get warmer and drier over the next few weeks in spring is as safe a bet as saying that you’ll take a quote out of context and start an argument about it.
Week on week the weather is pretty variable. Next week is set to be warm, I bet the following week is cooler. So bit daft mocking the weather forecasters on that basis.
I remember the freezing temps and snow showers at the end of Apr 2016