Even after to roughest, toughest, most stressful work week in forever, a quick Friday night blast round the woods is enough to get everything back in perspective and put a grin on your face… Never underestimate the power of two wheels and some open space.

Corn getting big. The landowner on this farm is a nice chap, and keeps the public ROWs accessible

Southern Upland Way (Glentrool to Dalry)

Big MTB Peaks ride, 80km. I’m convinced a Peaks km and metre climbed is at least double anywhere else, I’m absolutely done in!

Last day at Lake Garda for us. Move on tomorrow to the Aosta Valley

Today we did the Caset and Leder trails. Got a shuttle to the top down the Caset and then claimed to the top of the Leder and down to the lake.
26 miles riding. 1000m climbing and 2500m of downhill. Some of the best singletrack I’ve riden with no one else around. Technical in places but fast and flowy for most of the time.

Friday night blast here too. After a bout of COVID I’ve not felt like riding a bike at all but fancied it last night. I wasn’t particularly fit before and I’m fine on the flat but no power for even the smallest hill. The only consolation being the only way to fix that is to ride more

rOcKeTdOg
I’m fine on the flat but no power for even the smallest hill.

I found exactly this for a few months after my own tussle with C19. Still get a similar physical ‘flashback’ on the occasional ride even 18 months on.

The landowner on this farm is a nice chap, and keeps the public ROWs accessible

Same here 🙂 Although we do have a few bridleways that have been planted over too.

A terrible ride walk in the Picos de Europa today. We thought we were on a good one by starting in high village, with me due to winch up the road while mrs_oab and youngest_oab sat on cafe in Potes.

Trails completely overgrown and under graded. Ankles ripped by thorns, multiple ticks and flies incessant.

The steep winch back up 330m to the car on farm tracks was the best bit of the day…

First ride in nearly 2 weeks, good to get out !

Sunday morning local, spent far too much time playing with cameras and overthinking the best way to take riding selfies.

Solo bimble. Steep stuff game was way off today!

Just got back from a nice quiet ride over the Purbecks with the only traffic on trail was of the Bovine kind.

https://strava.app.link/4zZYR4V6mrb

Really great day out at Barry Sidings yesterday. Weather supposedly dry after slightly damp start. It rained all morning, but trails were mint and grip levels surprisingly high (apart from the bottom woods above the wooden fence!!). It was just one of those days when everything gelled, no-one had an off, no mechanicals, no punctures, 1200m of climbing and endless descents. And great grub in the cafe too.

North York Moors, Whitby, Scarborough Gravel.

My first ever (in many years of trying) non-goofy event photo! 😁

Glorious Gravel in the Lake District, excellent and surprisingly varied course, seemed to have a lot of tarmac but at the same time some of the ‘gravel’ sections really seemed to be at the limit of what you should send several hundred gravel riders down 😂

@cb200 – loving the bars and paint colour, the front end of your bike is a cure for SAD 😎

No riding for me this weekend! 🙁

@13thfloormonk how was the Glorious Gravel ride? I’m on their mailing list and get seemingly infinite emails about them about events but haven’t signed up to anything yet. Would you do it again?

Another local gravel loop for me, a variation on last weeks but much improved for having less (although still some!) edge of field type stuff and more fast flowy woodland trails!

@soundninjauk

It was a good event, a very by-the-numbers Sportive really but on gravel instead of road. 3 well stocked feedstops, a small but well organised event village with good quality coffee/cakes at start and decent pizza at the end (and and endless supply of free zero alcohol beer which was handy prior to the long drive home!).

I was tempted to stay another night so we could enjoy beers and food in Coniston, but there wasn’t enough laid on in the event village to hang around for.

Route was a really strange mix of maybe 40% scenic and quiet roads, 30% easy smooth gravel, 20% quite rough and challenging gravel, and maybe 10% where frankly you would have been better off on an MTB 😂 We were happy on fairly standard gravel bikes with 40mm tyres

I would love to do more but can’t justify the endless travel south of the border, need to keep an eye out for similar events closer to me.

Cheers, sounds like it’s worth a shot at least! I’m very south of the border so probably just need to pull my finger out and drive to one that isn’t offensively far away (of which there do seem to be plenty).

Arrived in Aosta yesterday so today was the first day out at Pila. Last night’s forcast was for storms all day. It rained in the night and although we could here the thunder in the distance we managed to ride all day in sunny dusty conditions. Did 3850m of descent including the Pila to Aosta run, however the top part is closed from Pila to Les Fleurs

🤘🤘🤘

Black Mountain bivi this week.

Just 50m short of 4000m descent today. Best run of the day was route 21b which had a bit of everything in it but most of all it was fast and fun chasing each other down
Time to move on tomorrow. Can’t decide whether to go straight to Samoens or detour and ride Verbier for the day. Will decide in the morning.