Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
this morning we tried a new ride from kilnsey to black edge, across grassington moor, down into hebden, along the road thro grassington to threshfield, up the road and across malham moor to the top of mastiles lane and down back to kilnsey
it was cold and at times wet/hail but a fantastic ride with lots of climbing
what about you....
miggy woods, leeds/liverpool canal, temple newsome.
very muddy too.
Wye Valley around Monmouth today. Sun in the sky, seriously wet under wheel.
Settle. Cold, windy, muddy, snowy and tiring!
The new, ever so slightly frustrating Sherwood Pines xc loop...gloopy!
[url= http://paul-knott.fotopic.net/c1639479.html ]Cow Castle, Exmoor[/url] yesterday and it was great. Had a lazy day today A bit of Marin maintenance and tv.
Grizedale, very wet on the ground, but a lovely sunny day! awesome riding!
Innerleithen dh stuff on Saturday, didn't rain until we were back at the cars. Crashed on the jump after the bombhole as it was seriously windy after 3pm. Trails were riding well.
Today did some xc near stirling, super slippery fun, some very light snow.
Around Hayfield - lovely weather this morning, starting to turn colder, windier and cloudier by the time we got back. Good ride although there were some comedy off moments going axle deep in Kinder peat bogs.
Woburn woods, after not riding coz of man-flu for about 4 weeks. Loamy sandy sludge mixed with engine oil. Fantastic especially roller coaster. Totally wasted but happy as a pig in well mud basically. Several groups out including a few roadies on the Brickhill Hill.
Marlborough Downs-claggity clag clag
did the gorrick race at yateley, hants today. was a bit muddy but really good fun.
Glentress black for a test of my new bike, excellent ride and loads of fun. It helped that we finished before the really heavy sleet started : )
Up the River Lee, then onto the Greenway, past the Olympic site. Up through Hackney to Walthamsberg Marshes. Stopped at Springfield Park to have a fag (the bridge at the bottom of Spring Hill is gone; should be replaced by March). then back down, past Lee Bridge Road, across the Middlesex Filter Beds, to Hackney Marshes. Watched a bit of dire Sunday League footy for a bit, then along to Carpenters Road. Scooted along the Ducketts Union canal, joined the Regents canal,and down to Limehouse Basin. Then a quick pottle up the Limehouse Cut, and home.
Lovely and sunny, most people seemed to be in a good mood, saw a funny little dog, and plenty of wildfowl. Bit chilly towards the end, though.
Can't beat it...
a wee piddle round Mam Tor, Rushup Edge, Hollins Cross - wind and bog played havoc with the climb round Rushup Edge- ended up walking half of it.
Am I overly concerned about the condition of the trail up there? It really looks pretty ugly up to me, but it's my first winter in the peaks, and my first ride round the Edge, so don't really know what sort of condition the trails are normally in. Descent to the valley is fun- is the chicken run to the side really that, or used for the climb?
And who was the group of 20+ I saw heading down as I was climbing up to Rushup Edge? Bloody substantial outing that one.
Swinley Forest. Pished down on the drive out, but remained dry throughout the ride. Bit of mud here & there, but not nearly as bad as Epping would've been.
Innerleithen DH today. Wet and slidey with big snow flakes to finish with. Many runs. Happily knackered.
Slip slip sliding around some urban singletrack in edinburgh on saturday, best fun i've had going sideways in a long long time.
Utterly crap road ride today, climbed up to gorebridge from auchendinny with the wind firmly against me, and just as i reach the top the snow/sleet started, got a few blinding flakes in the eyes and some very wet numb hands before bailing out and taking the quickest route back to edinburgh, which turned out to be the nastiest, busiest, roundaboutiest road i've ever had the misfortune to ride along, got back pretty miserable, then pulled the liner out of my expensive Gore gloves trying to remove them from sodden hands.
My honeymoon period on the new roadbike is well and truly over then : (
Hawes. Great weekend's riding. And Saturday night in The Fountain was unbelievable. Never been in a pub quite like that.
Neb I was out in Grizedale too on sat - had a great day. Did grizedale-parkamoor route from the VG guide - some huge puddles around but great weather and riding.
Sat: Elterwater - lovely sunshine though very wet under tyre and Little Langdale ford too deep to ride.
Sun: Dunnderdale - sunny at first but soon gloomily clouded over. 3°C. Occasional showers and hail later. Gusty wind.
On a steep climb one third of the way into the first lap of today's Soggy Bottom Race at Newnham Park my seatpost bolt sheared. I finished the lap without a saddle but there was no way I was going to do three more laps with my arse bobbing up and down a couple of inches above a spike. I watched the rest of the race along side two other STWers, Julianwilson & CrispyBacon, who had both bailed out of the race on account of man flu. LiteW8s ;0)
When I got home my four year old daughter burst into tears 'cos I hadn't won the race! Christ, the amount of pressure some kids put on their parents nowerdays is unbearable.
Llandegla today....nice.Rode with a lad i went to school with & hadnt seen for 18 years - reconnected due to the joys of facebook & mountainbiking.Good vibes =)
Glentress black on the big bike. Hard work after a rough night's sleep attending to a sick bairn. Beautiful weather this morning, though. Sleet and rain came down on the drive home.
Grumm, we were just out playing really, no real 'route', trying out some of the cracking descents outside of the NFT. I think we did the Parkamoor descent down to satterthwaite, excellent it was too!
It was a surprisingly nice day wasn't it! (apart from the freezing cold feet that is!)
South Downs - mistake was riding along the top of em, very open and near the sea so the wind hits you with full force, nothing to stop it, when I turned around with the wind behind me I went faster up the hill I'd just struggled to get down!
But, we had blue sky and sunshine all the way.
Cardrona on Saturday for a gentle pootle on natural stuff. Very wet and very slippy.
Innerleithen XC on Sunday morning with Kona in tow. Great weather, though icy in bits, until we hit Caddon Bank and the sleet n' rain started. Great day excpet for Kona nearly causing a crash on the downhill run close to the carpark.
Kona apres ride:
Went to 'The Wall' at Afan yesterday for the first time. We travelled 3 hours to get there from Leicester!
My friend had been before but I was itching to try it on my new steed, to be honest there was a lot of stop starting, fettling my rear shock then my pals xt front mech sheared a bolt leaving his heckler small ringed at the front! we sured that up to the bigger ring jamming a stick behind it forcing the mech over sufficiently.
The ride, well to be honest there is some really good fast singletrack but there also seems to be a lot of (imo) dull peddling to get to it, but on the whole I think it was worth the rush of adrenalin you get from riding completely on the edge down the last tight downhill run!
Will go again but maybe not this year . . .
couple of hours guided around Holmbury, test riding on the Head for the Hills test ride day.
Had a blast, some familiar stuff, some new stuff. Really must make the effort to do a few shorter exploring rides up there instead of just hitting Pitch, Holmbury and Leith summits as part of a big ride.
Trails were a bit muddy in places but its never that bad up there.
And the best bit - they loaned me a Fuel EX9.9 (the full carbon / XTR thing) which was fantastic. Shame the bonus this year doesn't look like it will quite stretch to the £4500 to buy one. But the 8 is definitely on the radar!
Strathpuffer. My first ever 24 hour event and I totally loved 90% of it. The other 10% was hell. As it should be.
Pitmedden, hard ride and learned some new bits, met some new folks, now knackered but happy 🙂
Tom
Nowt. But did get out on Friday, and rebuilt my Pikes today.
Three nice days in Ladybower arae, one day on a road ride. Today was nice:
[img] http://www.flickr.com/photos/12617230@N03/3206926503/ [/img]
Still can't post pics!
Very dry.
But i'm not telling where 🙂
Friday night, Kielder Black route in the dark.
Then today..........
Kirroughtree (red/black route)...weather good.Fantastic singletrack.
A quick blast down the Rivelin valley. Muddy in places but not bad for the time of year. Wimped out of one steep section again - one day it'll go.
Ladybower area. Trail conditions not too bad really. Weather cold and windy, but really sunny for most of the day.
Hagg Farm was excellent 😀
Quick ride over the Malverns today. Reasonably good conditions underfoot (seems to drain well up there anyway), sun was out, and it wasn't too windy (which is something for the Malverns!).
Rivington night ride on Saturday on my Humuhumunukunukuapau'a which finished in heavy wind and rain. Proper offroad ride over Winter hill and Roddlesworth today which was ace but quite cold and almost ended in my death.
Bristol / Chew Valley road ride yesterday, mentally tough with a minor hangover and windy conditions.
Quantocks today - amazing blue sky all day, perfect riding temperature. The trails were a little slow with the thin mud layer but much better than Bristol gloop.
samuri wheres roddlesworth?
Local woods.
Beautiful sunny day Saturday, but very sloppy after the last two weeks of frosty fun.
Bring back the big freeze!
Up Win Hill ( yes i know) around ladybower and up to Hollins cross sometimes the wind helped, sometimes it didnt 🙂
The Blue Dragon Challenge in NE Tassie.
2 50km stages over 2 days. Day one was good but day 2 had one of the best trails I've ever done. The Weldborough descent is truly epic. The climb up is a bit of a grind but the downhill is worth it, technical singletrack through rainforest & I mean technical. The racing HT held up suprisingly well, but the FS would have been more fun.
2km from the end, my team mate had a stack, breaking the end off his bars between the grip & brake lever & gashing his elbow. (6 stitches) He rode to the finish though.
All in all a great event.
Pacific Spirit Park, Vancouver. The North Shore trails are still very snowy so took an easy one in the fog from Spanish Banks to UBC. Loamy soil, nice little climb and fun through the twisty trails. Nice to see grass again after nearly 80cm of snow over Christmas.
I here it's a bit chilly in Blighty? Any other STW ex-pat Brits in Vancouver??
wors: It's just at the bottom of Darwen Hill on the Abbey Village side. There's two reservoirs and some woods.
[url= http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=53.681154,-2.498188&spn=0.036347,0.077248&t=h&z=14&msid=108853659728219333446.000460d18ac5b4c36886d ]Entrance[/url]
That's the entrance from the winter hill side, you can get there from Belmont by either riding the Belmont main road or by riding from Belmon towards Delph reservoir and then turning left onto on a long, long farm track which will bring you out at the marker. You ride from the marker to the bottom of the Ryal Fold climb or can ride road to the top of that climb and then cannon down. Drop down through the woods to Abbey Village and then head back over White Coppice via Withnall woods.
Danbury, Essex. It was mildly gloopy, with some bits of deep mud and very slippy. I have some helmet cam footage (including falling off) of exactly what it was like [url=
linky[/url]
i rode up into the pentlands. the wind was too strong and the snow made it a bit too slippy to go right up to the top. made it to the top of the ski slope then went downhill. very short but an amazing ride...
Just around Mugdock/WHW area. Was bitingly cold and sleaty/snowy, trails were muddy. Lost a pedal within the first 100 yards of the ride and had to drive back to my flat, clean threads etc, re-fit pedal and head back out to meet the guys half way round.
That's not me. I look identical only slimmer.
Ok, it's me.......
Guess who booked late and got last choice of bikes?
50 mile Borders road loop on saturday morning from Glentress car park, out to the south past Talla and Megget reservoirs. Beautiful scenery, cold, windy and nice. A change of bike back at the car park, then up the hill for a blast down Spooky Wood, cup of tea then home.
Westfield bmx track with tyred jr yesterday morning as he practiced riding standing up.
Good bike weekend, all in all. Even got mrs tyred's new build finished last night. Pictures will follow.
Following a tip on this forum, I explored the local woods - in the daylight this time. New(ish) to the area so had no idea the trails existed. Scared myself silly just looking off the end of one of the gap jumps. I think I'll leave that to the kids.
Stainburn for me!
was quite a short loop but had a giggle and it reminded me what ive been missing after not riding for a month or so! but boy am i unfit!!
SS road bike both days this weekend, only an hour on Saturday, longer ride on Sunday. Local Peaks stuff. Somehow managed to find the nice weather window on both days although the wind on Sunday was ferocious in a couple of places. You know it's bad when you can't even spin out a 1-geared bike going downhill cos the wind is so strong!
Rivington Yesterday, Nice afternoon with good visibility. Unfortunately the only thing we saw were hoards of people. My own fault for breaking my own rule of not going into the Gardens during the day.
Went downhilling on Saturday took some photos slippery but fun... [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/photos-from-devons-worst-kept-secret-warning-dh-action ]clicky[/url]
and raced Soggy Bottom yesterday a mud bath turned very gloopy 2.5inch tires were a bad idea!






