where have you ridden this weekend and what was it like?

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!

Cow Castle, Exmoor 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 : (

muddy, sloppy and it made me realise just how much my fitness level has dropped due to my "seasonal" sloth like behavior! now to rebuild the old fitness, there’s a hot summer of dusty trails heading our way!!

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 =)

Yorkshire Dales

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:

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!).