Has anyone actually been to a trail centre and whilst riding the trails come across a queue of people?

Usually you are barrelling along at similar pace so unless a group stops then you aren’t going to come across one even just a hundred metres ahead.

As for BMX/bike park features, they are only likely to get added if enough people ask for them.

I always find it amusing (and sad) when you express a preference and people take it to mean “you don’t like what I do as much as I do therefore you hate it”.

I’ll go riding, whether that’s road biking; mountain biking; cyclocross; trail centres; “natural”; whatever. It’s riding and it’s better than being a lazy slob.

I have fun at trail centres when I go, but would get frustrated with their particular formula and crowds if I rode them a lot.

This for me too. I enjoy them but I enjoy natural trails more.

There is a surety about them in that you know you are going to be able to ride whereas with a natural trail you might come across a missing bridge or similar and have to turn back. I’ve done both day and weekend trips to trail centres so it’s not as if I’m not prepared to put the effort in to visit them. It’s a bit like grabbing a takeaway, nice now and again but I couldn’t eat them every day.

I don’t know how many trail centres there are in the UK these days but I’ve been to quite a few and to be fair I haven’t come away from any thinking: “Well that was carp, not going back there”. Whether I have gone back is another matter 🙂

I was thinking of asking this myself. I’m sure there’s a continuum between those who only ride at trail centres and those who never ride at trail centres.

This year I’ve ridden at a trail centre just … twice. I’ll average between two and three rides a week so that’s something like 80 rides not at trail centres. If it’s a wet year I’ll ride at centres more but the last couple of years have been so dry (and the trails are still dry) that I haven’t seen the need.

That looks like the crossing right by Luibelt ruin, it’s a lot easier about 200 metres upstream unless of course you are required to cross at that point. Depending on river level you can just about get across dryfoot. That river can get pretty high as it drains a large area.

Awww 😆

Should have added: I find that a ratio of between 2:1 & 3:1 in distance between road and MTB is about right in terms of overall effort. I.e. 80Km on the road is about the same as 25 – 40Km mountain biking.

All depends on how hard you are working obviously.

Most of those hills are steady rather than steep (Holme Moss has a couple of short steeper sections) and closer to alpine style climbs. Get in a gear you can spin easily at the bottom and just keep going.

I run 50/34 with a 12-25 block and would be in the big ring and pedalling at 70rpm+ for most of those.

Oddest piece of cycling related litter I’ve seen is a chain. Who carries a spare chain?

Wheels (possibly,

I’d say that wheels are pretty essential – could be wrong on this. 😆

Does it happen with any other USB device especially ones that appear as storage devices?

The fireroad/path has a sign to Parkamoor. If you head south on the fireroad that runs along the ridge, it makes a sharp left turn to head back in to the forest, the junction is here. http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=331825&Y=494322&A=Y&Z=120

I don’t know how the marked routes in the forest relate to this.

Well there are multiple ways of “financing” your hobby, some people are prepared to get a new bike every year selling their “old” on on and taking the hit of a loss in value over the 12 months. Others prefer to keep their bike for a while. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. But in general you are right – it’s not a cheap pastime.

Unless you go to the *really* cheap end of the market you are unlikely to get a truly bad frame these days but also consider that if the geometry is wrong for you then even an expensive frame isn’t going to feel right. There’s lots of questions that only you can really answer, in your case price is obviously one of the main ones, but are you intending to stick with 26″ wheels or do you intend to try 650b or even 29ers?; what type of riding do you do?; Is weight more important than strength? How long are you prepared to wait to get a new frame?

As others have said, if you went for the Inbred, you might keep having that doubt of “should I have gone for the Soul” nagging away at you, then again, the Inbred might be all you need.

You haven’t said how much (if any) cash you can put aside each week or month. I’d be inclined to hold off any purchase for now and run your existing setup over the winter and save up as much cash as you can. If possible try and ride both bikes – if anyone has a demo bike then it could well be worth dropping a bit of cash to hire those for a day – (maybe a bit on the expensive side for a £140 frame though).

A bit rambling, sorry, but if you are looking as spending a substantial proportion of your disposable income then you are right to consider all the options and take your time.

The Cairngorm loop – http://www.cairngormsloop.net/about.html

Staveley – green quarter – Gatesgarth – Harter Fell (cheeky) – Nan bield – Kentmere Hall – Three rivers.

Having broken several bones from fingers to big stuff over the years it’s typically 6 weeks for the bone to fully heal. The cast is there to keep things aligned while this happens. I’ve found that after about four weeks things are stable and the next couple of weeks are for things to “harden off”.

Surprised as the lack of love for the Cotic Solaris, I thought I’d hear more shouts for that

Surely that’s taken as a given? It’s a bit like the VW Golf advertisement: “It rides just like a Solaris”

I will be getting sozzled after having serviced them 😆

Eskimo: ta, I’m pretty sure most hardware stores sell Isopropyl Alcohol.

What’s the bike? If you are riding a road/tourer then get a dynamo hub and lights – no flat batteries; no forgetting the light; etc. You’ll need to either build up a new wheel or rebuild your existing wheel which does add to the cost.

Generally for commuting you want something that just “works” with as little faff as possible.

There was a thread recently about the lack of riders out on the Lakes trails. Yet if you go to a trail centre they are packed out. If climbing was like this: climbing walls packed out and only a few on the outdoor crags then I doubt that you’d have much of a literary heritage from climbing/mountaineering. Feet in the Clouds was mentioned – that’s one of a very small number of fell running books and the best seller by a long, long way, print runs of some of the other “classics” are/were in the order of a couple of thousand at most. So that’s from a sport that has been going for over a hundred years.

I wonder if the self-supported adventure style races might start to produce some literature though even here blogs and the like are the media of choice for participants to share their experiences. Perhaps it’s just the feeling that there’s not much new to discover/do which is why you get the “first man/woman to cycle from Lands End to John o’ Groats with a flat tyre” style of claims.

Gates, lots of gates.

Generally it’s pretty straightforward riding, just remembered it goes along Roych Clough round Mt Famine and down to Hayfield so maybe not *that* straightforward! In general it’s more about fitness than technical ability as there are some steep/long hills.

Did I mention gates?

Fingerless in summer (and spring/autumn if the temperatures are mild enough) and full finger in winter. If it’s really cold then it’s mountaineering gloves!

Jumps – a basic skill? On what planet?

What a skills session will do is give you pointers on ways to improve your riding. Some might be so simple that you’ll come away from the session having implemented them and improved, others you need to go away and practice and practice and practice, it’s only then that you’ll start to improve.

The reason professional sportsmen and women have coaches isn’t that they need teaching the skills, they’ve got those, it’s so that bad habits don’t creep in following an injury for example.

Has anyone ridden from Lonscale Fell down over Burnt Horse? There’s a path next to the fence. There’s also a track marked on the 1:25K map leading over Sale How from the col between Skiddaw and Little Man directly to Skiddaw House but I don’t know if it’s particularly well marked on the ground.

Who’s to say you didn’t buy it in the UK 2nd hand so have no receipt.

The serial number? HMRC will have a record of the frames imported by the official importer to check against.

Perhaps not just an hour but a series of half-days might be more worthwhile, would allow people to justify travelling further. Focus on one or two key areas in first session; you go away and practice those as much as possible; next session does a quick recap possibly correcting any errors in your technique then introduces a new skill. Repeat for rest of series.

There’s the thing: you can’t spend all day doing drills, getting bored and tired as it becomes counter-productive, when you get tired your old bad habits kick back in. Doing half an hour a day for a fortnight is better than a full seven hour day.

Pretty much what Kimbers has said: you aren’t going to cure (most) bad habits in a day. Getting the muscle memory to learn (or relearn) something new takes time, it’s like learning to play a musical instrument, plus you need to learn what the correct way “feels” like. You might happen on the latter by accident: “Hmm, that felt different” but if you aren’t even close to the correct technique then it’s going to take a while. Something like pumping the trail isn’t obvious and if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve then you are going to get the direction and timing of applying force all wrong.

People learn differently so while I might like instructor ‘A’, he might not be suitable for someone else. Likewise someone might recommend instructor ‘B’ but if his teaching style doesn’t match my learning style then I’m not going to get the most out of a session.

Mixed ability groups are always going to be a problem: what some regard as basic skills other regard as intermediate and an instructor initially has only the individual’s personal assessment to advise them of the group/course they should try. A sport like skiing has to some extent got over this by describing well known techniques: stem turn; parallel turn; etc. and linking them to particular levels so you know that you should look at ESF level 4 or whatever. In MTB you have the problem of the terrain being much more varied, it’s more like off-piste, so some people are really good at drop-offs but not so good on berms; others are good on loose rock and so on. Going back to pumping the trail, this is very much like weighting and unweighting your skis when travelling over bumps, once you get it it’s like “why didn’t I do this before?”

On a group session you are pretty much going to follow the training structure as advertised but I think if I were to take a 1-2-1 course then I’d be advising the instructor on what I wanted to get out of the day *before* I turned up then they can structure the session better to my needs. (It would be interesting to know what a 1-2-1 or 2-2-1 day of instructing would or does cost)

Pretty well everything bike related shot up in price about three years ago mainly due to the exchange rate from what I remember, a typical increase was 25% over the previous year. Nothing seemed to drop back the following year 🙁

Get the Vertebrate MTB guide to the NYM, I think there’s better routes in there. The NYM need to be dry or frozen though but some trails are all weather.

If you know where to go, usually away from the Ambleside/Keswick, Langdale/Borrowdale honey pots, then even on a bank holiday you can have a quiet time. If you go early or late then it’s even more likely that you’ll hardly meet a soul.

Had a ride in the Northern Fells last weekend, saw just three people all day, all of whom were pleasant and prepared to chat. Similarly – get out west and you’ll be fine.

This year I’ve probably seen more bikers at my one visit to a trail centre than in the thirty or so days “out on the hill” throughout the UK. The busiest area was the Peak, saw maybe two dozen there; Wales – zero (and I mean zero); Lakes – about half a dozen; Dales – maybe half a dozen.

I think trail centres are the main cause – back in the 1980s you’d see MTBs out regularly in the Lakes but there wasn’t really any alternative. If you had two groups five or ten minutes apart then it’s likely that they’ll never see each other = “There was no-one else out. Where was everyone?” This does have its benefits: if all the trail centre riders were out riding on the fells and in particular the “cheeky” ones then we’d be seeing a lot of access problems.

It would be interesting to hear from those whose riding is mainly trail centres as to why they don’t venture out on to “natural” trails. I suspect the reasons would be similar to what you’d get from those who mainly use climbing walls rather than head out on to the natural crags.

Work fine for me. What’s your OS & Browser?

I received an email from Strava this AM saying that the performance comparison feature was back. I remember a thread on here asking about it.

Go to any staffed station and you can book a bike reservation on any train service (assuming that the service allows them that is). You’ll get a couple of extra tickets, one to attach to your bike and one to keep with you

The point where you cut up is very non-distinct, the path is contouring round a steep grass bank. There is/used to be a small finger post pointing the way. It’s about halfway between the two walls/gates before the zig-zags down to the hotel, i.e. just after the second gate which is about a mile after the technical bit.

Boxelder: Some like that sort of thing. If going down to Black Sail, there’s a route down the head of the valley – left as you descend Loft Beck

Do you mean down the long ridge marked as “Tongue” on the map? Or closer to Loft Beck, i.e. on an unmarked path?

For the former you’d have to traverse along Moses Trod for quite a way.

Well done. Don’t get too hung up on the time, it will vary quite a bit depending on wind direction, amount of beer drunk the night before, etc. For a similar distance I’ll do anywhere from 46mins to 53mins one way and 50mins to 65mins the other way. Add on traffic lights, roadworks, random peculiar events and the time will vary even more.

Whatever, it’s better than being stuck in a tin box over the same distance.

Depending on what bike you ride (26 or 29er) and what hills you ride I’d say use an 11-40 cassette and for 26 in wheels either a 32T or 34T chainring and for 29er either a 30T or 32T chainring. If you are strong then choose the bigger size.

Obviously if you are doing something specific where you know there aren’t going to be any big uphills then fitting a larger chainring is an option.

I run 32T up front and 11-40 on the back (29er). I’d say 80% of my riding is in the middle 6 gears, another 15% or so on the next two out an the remaining 5% on either the 11T or the 40T. If I get to the speed where I spin out on the 11T then I’m going fast enough to freewheel. The 40T is mostly a get out of jail card, useful on loose climbs as you can keep sat down and the power even.

What’s the bridleway that leaves the Old Coach Road from further west and traverses the side of Clough Head like?