Is it dry anywhere in England at the moment?

Atlantic sea temperatures are still well above the ‘normal’. That, sadly, means more energy for our weather systems, which means they carry more water, and winds are stronger. At least we don’t live down the eastern seaboard of the US, hurricane season could be a doozy this year.

Dunkeld, I watched a youtuber ride Dunkeld last week up the mast and it actually looked like Spring!

I’m not believing that, my old stomping ground around the Dunkeld Estates and up by the lochs, you got some dry trails going up, then it was like a bog at the top of the hills all year round, think i lost a shoe on one ride a few years back 🤣

As for where i am now, north of Bristol, we had another inch of rain last night, grounds saturated, trails are in ruins, weather forecast is showing another two weeks of rain coming, we’ll be in May and it’ll still be miserable conditions, i’m not getting much confidence we’ll have a better summer than even last year, which was crap through the summer months due to rainfall.

We had a proper spring-like day earlier this week but it’s poured down since then in The Chilterns.

Took the hound for a walk this morning and even the areas that are normally fairly dry are a saturated, muddy, slippy state.

With the forecast for the next week or two looking no better, I’ve given up on plans off riding outside for a while and stuck a bike back on the turbo trainer.

Even god is angry at the Tories.

I live on the South Downs, near Findon. I imagine it’s an absolute quagmire so not interested.

Last weekend, Sunday it was – the South Downs area over Petersfield way was pretty much mud free. It was lovely. Me and a fellow ebiker, who I raced (and lost to!) on the final stretch of QE red run, had a chat about how nice it was.
So anyway it had been wet most of the week, so only a couple of dry days sorted it out. Hopefully, what with this wind, not too much rain and Monday will be ok down here. No I haven’t checked the forecast!

Dalby bone dry at the minute. Event large parts of the off-piste is in prime condition…

It’s that wet, the FS hasn’t been touched, the CX is in road mode with mudguards (and still get’s filthy), two road bikes without guards haven’t moved since summer, and the commuter bike get’s filthy every day.

You know that we had snow again the other day in Sweden right? _Just_ rain would probably be an improvement on that, although I would cheerfully take actual sunshine and a break in the current clouds.

argee – this is the video, sure looks pretty dry.

Fingers crossed,we are in the camper as we speak heading North from Yorkshire 😎

hatterFull Member
Rode Woburn on Sunday, perfect conditions, didn’t even need to clean the bikes. It’s really sandy there so if it gets too dry it turns into a horrendous sandpit but right now it’s fast, grippy and lovely.

I did a nightride round woburn last night

Was pure filth, plastic seat covers for the car ftw

Anyone able to comment on the state of East Exmoor? We’re there over Easter. Trying to decide between FS, the hardtail or bollocks to it and just take walking boots and brolly.

Thank you.

East Exmoor ish here. Can report stoney generally well drained on most of the above treeline climbs i.e. Dunkery Beacon, top of grabbist etc (apart from heading directly across the moor on peat trail of course), below treeline it’s an absolute gloopfest. We had snow on the moors today and a massive downpour with hail. Perfect UK mtb conditions then 🙂

Thanks for that, really helpful. We’re in the area between Clatworthy and the sea.  Erring towards the hardtail.

Raced at Sherwood Pines on Sunday and it was bone dry, no need to even clean the bike afterwards. The whole area looked dry when we were driving across.

Only place I can get what I want out of biking at the moment is Woburn. Like everywhere it has it’s filthy days but drains well so you can get a good ride in next day.

Raced at Sherwood Pines on Sunday and it was bone dry, no need to even clean the bike afterwards. The whole area looked dry when we were driving across.

Yeah north notts area is drying quickly but we had heavy rain again yesterday.

Glentress certainly wasn’t today, apart from the new bike-parky stuff.

We started with the blue at Blue Velvet and were proper filthy and soaked by the time got to the bottom. Big smiles though 😀

In Mull for the Easter weekend and have sunburn.

The Chilterns are currently epically muddy. So muddy we are driving the dogs to the local hardcore track to keep the mud in the house down to acceptable levels. My latest exercise in mud and pedestrian avoidance was to MTB on the towpath in such a way as to rupture my AC joint.  So now I’m riding zwift, where it’s also raining. On the plus side I saw a stunning double rainbow across the effluent filled river chess on the way back from buying more ibuprofen.

On the plus side I saw a stunning double rainbow across the effluent filled river chess on the way back from buying more ibuprofen.

This line needs to be narrated by Sir John Gielgud over Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’.

Drying nicely in Suffolk. There were some longstanding parts that reamined sludgy but one of these was dry yesterday. There was a huge gully down the middle of the bridleway caused by run-off on sandy soil 300 to 400 mm deep and 500mm wide rideable but not much fun.

I rode from Nottingham to Essex yesterday. An entire day of glorious weather and mostly dry roads.

I’ve done the ride most Easters for the last 7 years.

All the rivers and stream were swollen and well above their banks.

The fields were sodden with regular enormous puddles.

Someone has dug a mile of drainage ditch down their field next to the road since last year. The ditch had a decent river flowing down it.

I was delighted to be on road all day. None of the footpaths bridleways I passed looked any fun to ride.

Just back from two dry weeks on the road bike in Mallorca and it looks like I’ve missed more rain in the south of UK. There’s water running off fields and floods where there never have been before. Zero interest in riding off-road for the foreseeable and I expect I’ll be booking some sunnier trips to Europe this spring/summer.

Very much a mixed bag yesterday, on my road ride to around Droxford (Hants)…

Some roads were bone dry, including the fun Sheep Pond Lane descent, which is quite exposed. A fair few lanes had bits of water run off from the fields, pretty much those a bit shielded from the elements by dense hedges and alike. But I was a bit shocked to find a giant paddling pool sized puddle on Cott Street on the way home, just up from the old Hunters Inn pub, which covered my poor bike in gritty water.

Trying to coax myself to go out for a very short ride before a family gathering, given the forecast for the coming week, kicking off with a rain warning this evening.

We were up at Dalby yesterday (off piste stuff). Some runs a bit greasy with a few spots of peanut butter, others running really well!

Leeds is starting to dry (ish) … ready for more rain this week

Kinder Scout dry all day today.

we’re being trolled! 😉

Hmm, the reservoir pictured in that Guardian article is currently full to the brim and, last week, was weiring over the dam.

@Klunk check the date!

The forecast for the last week for Lacock has been predicting between 30-60% chance of rain. I’ve been paying close attention to it because I was taking a couple of Japanese visitors over to look around. It did briefly rain a couple of times, but mostly while we were inside, so I’ll take it as a win.
However, I cleaned the car yesterday for the first time in months, and it’s covered in muddy splash marks! 🤨

Arrived at Glentress today for a few days of Dirt School with the little one. It has not stopped raining for hours, absolutely relentless, and the rest of the week prediction looks much the same. Gonna be a testing time I think (we’re in a van, not a cosy air BnB!!)

Laggan was bone dry yesterday apart from one or two patches on the black. But the rain is looking grim up here or everywhere on Friday.

It’s years since we’ve visited Laggan, what a cracking little spot 😎

Inners was weirdly dry for the uplift last Sunday.

But that’s not in England – and it’s probably grotty again now anyway.

Peak slop is lasting way too long locally. Even the canal towpath is so muddy I took a spill last week.

The FT reporting it’s been the wettest 18 months since records began. 

“Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, there had been a “large increase in the amount of rain that falls on the island, particularly in the wintertime, but also in the autumn and spring”.” SO basically, rain all the time.

From memory, May and June were nice. That leaves us with 10 months of wettness

Aye, and we’ve a prediction of hosepipe bans in the summer.

We really need to get better at slowing the flow, encouraging the ground to store water and preventing run-off and downstream flooding (beavers and peatland restoration?)

Related to this I guess but the weather forecast seems to be utterly worthless lately, the BBC one anyway. Literally no point looking at it the day before.

Is there anyone doing it better than the BBC at the moment?

Yes,  BBC has been carp since Meteo Group took over their weather several years ago!

Met Office for days in advance.

Weather Underground for real time, on the day.

I read between BBC and Met Office as well as Met Éireann as we’re in NI, the latter is usally the most ‘optimistic’ in forecasting drier weather, the BBC most pessimistic, so Met Office somewhere in between but usually hopeless as it tends to use cloud symbols to cover a multitude of our typical local weather! One thing I miss from the old Met Office website was the ‘live’ cloud cover (satellite) imagery, as this was often more reliable to use as a short-term forecast for us, once the wind direction was taken into account.

I find Met Office pretty good, nice app too. And they have a map on the app which is useful for avoiding downpours. On the map you can switch between 5day forecast / last 6 hours. Using the last 6 hours, grabbing the slider and rolling forward/backward is actually really useful to see how a weather front is developing/heading for you.