Whinlatter & Grizedale Forests

From Whinlatter & Grizedale Forests

Our substitute for Wild Boar 24. The weekend was spent in two forests, Saturday we rode Whinlatter and Sunday we chose Grizedale, although also known as Gizdale in some circles.
We eventually managed to get onto a campsite which would accept a group larger than two people, which proved hard work, but the Camping and Caravanning site near Staveley now comes highly recommended; facilities, pitches and even the pub on site all get top marks.

Whinlatter was a good hour drive from the campsite, but when we got there was well worthwhile. The Red Route is divided into two loops, North and South. WE ended up with a riding buddy, a local guy who knew which trails we should do first, so opted to do North then South. There were a few ‘offs’ during the day, but the final part of the North Loop has some pretty fast jumps that really can be taken at speed (once you’ve done it more than once). Forgetting the camera on the Saturday didn’t make me so happy with myself. The South loop was similar, also with a flowing finale, still with a lot of slate and rock so easy to make mistakes if wet. Luckily for Alisdair, the powder blue demo bike suited him and must have affected him too, bcse the next thing we knew he’d taken the bike back and bought a FSR XC. How’s that for impulse buying!

Grizedale Forest offered a slightly shorter route, but much less singletrack and the consensus was that we’d opted for the trail-days the right way round. There is quite a bit of fire road on the Grizedale North Face Trial. Which is all when and good at Drakes Corner for the rally in December, but a little more singletrack would be a positive change. We all enjoyed the ride through, Joff put his foot into a bog, up to his knee, so that has to be a funny moment! And some dithering old codger managed to stop still in front of us on the decking sections, not really wide enough to put your feet down, providing a slight panic moment. And Andrew not quite going round the burm would have been good to see. The downhill finish to the ride was good too, well apart from the two gates stuffed right in the middle of a fast flowing downwards section! The very final 10 seconds of the ride were met with a huge amount of rain, so getting into the car proved very wet. The Audi cleans up nicely, so it's all good.

Kirsty did well with her Scott bike, looked very much at ease with it all and pretty much did everything we did, not bad for her first red route trail sessions.

I have definitely managed to kill the first headset in the Stumpy. Riding the demo bike forks provided no change to the ‘clicking’ noise leaving pretty much the head set as the culprit. All changes arranged for my next trip to the service dept., so we’ll see how a new headset goes and my forks back in.

All in all, a fantastic weekend of riding and beers, plenty of rain and sunshine together (typical Lakes Weather) all went down well.

Photos (of the Sunday at least), can be found here. Video of some of the trails can be found here.