i've not driven with the bike on the back of the car since October last year and have just been riding locally, the Swinley ride will be the first since then, how far and how often do you use the car before a ride?
looking at some of my flickr contacts who ride all over the place and knowing where they start from they must spend moretime in the car than on the trails, it baulks a bit that i could drive for 2.5hrs to do a 2 hr ride
Next to never though partly because it adds so much time to the riding. Only for events really. Though having said all that I did drive to the velodrome last week.
Half my local rides start with a car journey (those that don't mean 3+ people driving to me). Plus races, weekends, epic 3-dayers etc.
At least 2-3000 miles/year I guess, possibly quite a bit more. About 1/2 of my yearly mileage (I work from home).
i have driven as far as glentress to ride.
leeds to glentress and back in the same day, with a 5 hour ride in the middle.
Can ride to Swinley in 10 minutes from my front door.
The price of fuel , the way my car seems to be spitting out fuel on to the road and the little bit of effort involved in loading up kit and bike really is putting me off riding anywhere lately other than locally from my door.
Havent driven to ride somewhere for quite a while. I think it was about 800 odd miles last August, although it was to ride in France for a couple of weeks so well justified!
Thankfully I live within riding distance of grizedale so if I fancy a mtb ride I just go there.
With fuel at £1.30+ per gallon, and rising, I can't quite get my head around driving somewhere for a 2-3 hour ride.
Different if you are going for whole day or weekend to trail centre or something, but that's few and far between these days
tomorrow i plan to drive somewhere for a ride, but haven't in months, maybe a year? I am only driving somewhere as i need to give the engine a thrash as it failed its MOT on emmisions...
Never! no car (but do use trains)
Have a minimum of an hours drive each way to ride off road.
Quite often do London-> Chicksands/Aston Hill ->Peaks-> London over the course of a weekend. ~400 miles all in.
Yes the price of fuel is biting (night riding got canned a while back). But the whole point of working is to be able to ride my bike in cool places. That involves travelling. Even if I had an awesome trail network on my doorstep, I still think I'd get bored and want to travel to different places. We are trying to move oop norf, but nobody wants to buy our flat.
Rides are almost always full day though. Bare minimum of 4 hours, and often 6+
Depends what I feel like really, loads of good rides from the door but if I want to drive, Exmoor is only 20 mins, Dartmoor 40 mins & Quantocks 50mins.
I guess 200 miles driving a month to get to rides.
£30 in fuel to have an awesome (™surfmat) day out on the bike with loads of other bikers exploring a new location is bloody good value IMO
compared to say 2 hours in the cinema for £7, you can piss £30 up the wall in a couple of hours on a night out too!
orangista+1
Currently I'm driving an average 30 mins each way 1 or 2 times a week for my riding.
I'll drive to Kielder or Hamsterley (approx 60 mins) say, once a month.
Come the summer and a house move I hope to have that back down to zero.
most ive driven to ride is 1300 miles to belgium, to race.
I used to think nothing of driving from Fife to Glencoe or the Cairngorms. Last couple of years I've spent riding and finding more local trails. I wouldnt drive to a trail centre again. Fuel is £1.40/litre here now. I'd rather ride than drive.
Today, drove a total of 3.5 hours for a 4 hour ride. Usually I just ride from the door, but fancied a change today.
I have two kids so bike time is precious and can't afford not to drive - the ride to and from adds too much time. I went to Woburn today - 20 minutes away by car. I can detour on way home from work via Woburn so try to do a couple of night rides a week, then one longer at the weekend. I used to live in Hertfordshire and could do a nice 12 mile XC loop from my door with almost no road in it at all. I miss that, I must admit...
Generally up to 1hr 20 nearest trail is 12minutes away, I always drive to the ride location.
Agree with orangista view point
I wouldnt drive to a trail centre again
A bold claim, big Fella!, I'll hold you to that! 😉
I'm about 80 minutes from Mabie, Kirro, Ae and Dalbeattie, 50 mins from Drumlanrig, and about 2 hrs from GT and Inners. I tend to ride the trail centres in the winter, or when the guys from my club are having a day there, otherwise, my nightrides are usually about 15-20 mins drive.
I can live with this, as I live in a nice town with good amenities, but there is no call for my type of work in a rural area (where the best riding is).
It's a trade off.
I also weigh it up against a football ticket, or golf. Some of my mates pay upwards of £750 a year in golf membership, and will pay prob about the same in kit a year, say 250 for a new driver, and 40 odd quid for a dozen Prov1 balls.
I tend to agree with Orangista, I don't want to ride the same places all the time. I start the year with a huge list of rides that I want to do that year, and generally aim to do about a quarter of them!.
I live in Portsmouth and there is f*ck all round here. Normally drive to one of QECP (20 mins), Swinley (80 mins) or Surrey Hills (60 mins).
I'd love to be able to ride from my door - does anyone know of many decent places to ride in Portsmouth/Chichester/Southampton way?
Perspective time.
I live in N E Lincolnshire
After a few years of driving to gradient I started to feel stupid driving to ride my bike.
Compermise was to fill the car with people when we drive somewhere to ride a bike.
Moral: count yer blessings.
The only local trails I have is Delamere, so drive to pretty much every ride..
Happily I've a company car & fuel card for all my travel, so it's not really an issue to drive to places to ride. 🙂
I drive every time i go MTB'ing, about 30 minutes each way, but then i cycle to work every day in the week. Think i fill the car up once a month, if that.
Doing a 350 mile round trip to a wales next month, but its for 3 days riding and costs are split between two so its pretty cheap considering.
I've got 368 square miles of granite upland just outside my back gate..
I can be on singletrack in less than 3 minutes 😀
but often mid week bike goes on rack for night rides with mates from different areas.
Travel usually 30mins each way sometimes more.
It's great having so much on the back door - priceless
I wish my back door was priceless
post a pic basil and I'll value it for you 😉
Is there a starfish spotters club here?
I like to have a little apple based refreshment whilst on the ride, so hardly ever drive!
However, a mate is picking me up tomorrow to go for a ride that involves some free cider drinking 😀
OMG Basil what have you started???
Typically 15-20 mins. Fuel cost and time faff has put me off driving more than 1:30 for a day's ride. That eliminates South Wales, but still includes Mendip, Qs and the nearer parts of Exmoor.
An hour and a half get's us to Sherwood Pines
Surely with the distance covered in 15-20 minutes by car, unless you're on the motorway, it's as quick to ride out?! I very rarely drive to ride, but I have the Surrey hills on my doorstep. Only drive for social rides, never go anywhere else If I'm on my tod!
Racing however, takes me thousands of miles a year!
did 20ish "away" rides last year, normally peaks or lakes so either 60ish or 180ish round trip, the odd trip to wales/scotland. Almost always spend more time riding than driving tho. That's all normally between march and september, autumn and winter it's pretty much all ride from my door. maybe drive to the nightride meet if it's been a hard week.
Racing however, takes me thousands of miles a year!
Me too!
I live in America though, so fuel is a lot cheaper. I have fantastic singletrack from my door, so I hardly ever drive mid week. Weekends the drive varies from 30 minutes, to 7 or 8 hours, depending on which part of Colorado/Utah we're travelling to.
This year so far:
Old Pueblo (Arizona): 2000 miles
2 x Desert trip (utah): 2000 miles
I will be racing almost all of the national series over here this year so still to come:
2 x California : 2000 miles each.
Texas : 1500 miles
Wisconsin: 2000 miles
Montana: 1000 miles
Plus countless 1000's of miles in and around Colorado.
When it comes to racing, Mountain bikes are not cheap or environmentally friendly!
used to drive around 8000miles a year just to go riding/racing.
Haven't driven anywhere to ride yet this year.
About half my rides involve a drive I reckon, mostly under 50 miles but occasionally a wee bit further to get down Dumfries-ways, and less often quite a bit further for fort william etc or wales. I try to make it a rule to not drive for longer than I ride mind.
I've only got a car for cycling use so it'd be a shame not to use it 😉
I used to drive to Wales, Cannock etc on a regular basis, but recently through a change of circumstance, and the cost of such trips, I just can't do it, i'm blessed with some good riding on the doorstep, so it makes sense all around to stay local.
Almost never, I'm lucky enough to have some great riding on the doorstep which keeps me satisfied.
Once in the last 12 months.
~30 ish mile 'round trip to Haldon.
Might actually be doing the same thing again [url= http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=139303&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 ]this[/url] coming weekend ...
Doorstep riding where I am is pants (stiles, mostly all footpaths and flat) - which means 25 to Mendips or 35 to Quantocks. I would prefer to ride from my door but only worth it on a road bike.
I'm 40 mins from Swaledale & about 35 from Pateley Bridge, so every other weekend that's what I'll do otherwise it's byways & bridleways with the odd cheeky trail from the door. If i didn't work alternate weekends I'd travel more!
3 or 4 times a year, most riding is from the door. Off-road in 3 minutes!
Done a lot of riding from the door this year. Can be offroad in 20 seconds and have loads of stuff I can link up.
I've driven to Pentlands once this year (about 20 mins drive - though have ridden out three times, takes about an hour each way), plus Glentress 3 times (just under an hour each way) and Lakes once for a 3 day weekend (about 2.5 hours each way).
Generally do more drive-to-ride in summer - probably go up north once or twice a month from March to November, and have driven to the Alps in the summer for 2-3 weeks holiday.
I'm in N.Wales but have little off road/single track on the doorstep. I tend to drive 10 miles or so to ride a couple of times a week.
To get to anything decent I was having to drive at least an hour, mostly 2. Stuck at it for a couple of years or so, but enough is enough now so the MTB is slowly being sold and a road bike, maybe a cx bike, is on the horizon.
Although I'm lucky to have singletrack close by, I yearn for wildlife, scenery, views, bit of history so that meant anything up to 100 mile round trip for an all-day picnic ride. In that time I could get to such a variety of locations and terrain.
Nevertheless these days I'm severely restricting myself due to the high cost of fuel. More map studying really.
Bit crap really. 🙁
Embarassingly today I drove for 5 minutes to get to the local dh trails rather than ride there 😳
About 2 hours/~100 miles each way is my limit. In the summer I do that about twice a month. Can't justify any more as it's too expensive and I hate getting up at silly o'clock to go riding! Does get very annoying and I envy people with good local trails.
I've just found a nice looking local spot for building my own jumps/drops so I think I'm gonna stick to working on that for the time being, save myself some money!
I've cut right down, these days I've been riding from my house or getting the train. I quite like using the train with the bike as it makes solo point-to-point trips considerably easier logistically.
Can everyone near Southampton vote on the survey please. they don't believe people will travel 10 - 20 miles to visit a great location
http://southamptoncycle.wordpress.com/
Can ride from my door and be on the Mendips in 15 minutes, although if pushed for time I have been known to drive when pushed for time or taking the dog.
I'll ride Swinley from my doorstep, and usually road rides too. But sometimes I'll go by car to get the first few miles out of the way and avoid the town.
In a normal* week,
Saturday - Pangbourne, about 17miles away by road
Sunday - Roadie club run or solo ride from my door or Swinley from my door
Tuesday - Farnbrough and surrounding area, about 17 miles
Thursday - as Tuesday
I could ride from my door every day. but I'd be bored very quickly.
*Probably averaging 50-60miles a week of driving to ride.
I drive most of the time. I do some riding from home, but mostly flat road and paths. There's little to no "decent" riding round here, so you have to drive, and once you've loaded up the car, you might as well drive somewhere good.
And yes, I have spent more time driving than riding on quite a few occasions.
I used to work at the Afan (Glyncorrwg) Trail Centre, and I'd ride after work most nights until a few months before I left.
I'd have to drive there to work, so it was all good.
The trails are so poor there now due to lack of maintenance, and the local secret stuff is being destroyed systematically due to the felling program to control the spread of P Ramorum in the area. I gave up riding there and consequently working there.
I'm building my own set of trails in the Swansea Valley now, right on my doorstep. My kids and their friends are loving it.
And I've got a lot of local guys involved in building "our" trails in local woods not controlled by the FC.
It's great, perfect singletrack tailored to our riding styles that we can evolve as and when necessary.
I love riding trail centres, But now I've got my own version, I really can't see a reason to drive anywhere to ride.
And I don't see why anyone else "has" to drive to ride either.
To answer the question about 15/25 min drives...
Stockhill is 15 mins by car and, for me, 40 mins to road ride. The advantage of riding is that I get a reasonably good downhill back to the house. But if I have a small time-window, I drive.
Burrington Combe is 25 mins by car and, for me, 80 mins to road ride. I rarely have time to ride up there. That time is for mountain biking.
It's all open country roads - 60mph (in the car 🙂