I have a couple of hours tomorrow morning where I could ride at Aston (now 20minutes from work).
a) Can I access the trails early in the morning
b) I seem to remember thinking it might be pretty extreme in the wet - ie heaps of chalk and roots. Accident waiting to happen or just a case of more care.
from FB gates open at 0930
its slippy as a slippy thing in the wet, great for your skills.
if you go, let us know which is slippier, the roots or the chalk.
I was up there 10 days ago, wasn't too wet under the cover of the trees. A bit soggy in places but the clay and roots were super slippy.
The boardwalk bit on the slope near the bottom is super slippy when it's wet. Then there's the short chalk climb where you start to climb out from the bottom. I've been there once when it was so blinking slippery we couldn't even walk up it, let alone ride. Ended up doing some weird push/pull bike shuffle.
..and then there's the roots, they'll be slippy as well.
By all means go, you'll have fun, but do make sure you video and then post your 'inelegant dismounts'
Did you go?
Probably too traumatised to talk about it still.
Or hanging from a tree halfway down and trying to get a signal on his phone.
I did it in the wet and didn't find it much fun. Basically it was too wet to ride a lot of it, so unless you like falling off or sliding down hill and pushing back up, I felt it was a waste of a ride.
But in the dry its great fun.
The end of the xc, the red downhill, is the most lethal trail there in the wet. I'd lose it on every berm which was like sheet ice, then found it impossible to stand up. The boardwalk was comedy as one person after another dabbed their brakes at the end and sure enough each one slid off and crashed. I ended up hopping off the side. A couple of the other DH runs later and ended up going home. Took ages to chip the mud off the tyres. Had to wash them in the bath!
Chalk/clay + wet = go somewhere else.
I didn't go. I remembered how slippy the berm was in the dry and as I needed to be away before it even opened...........
It's my local XC training place now - 20minutes from work. Looks like I won't be doing much training over the winter
There's the whole of the Chilterns to ride also. Though it also is similarly slippery when wet.
TBH I wouldnt bother doing the XC loop at Aston when you have the whole of the Chilterns to play in, for free.
XC is about distance, fun, adventure and exploration. Doing a lap or two of Aston is fun (when dry) but your missing out on so much more.
Go there for the DH stuff and have a go at the XC for sure.