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.

The Great Ayton Key Search

From Great Ayton & Guisborough May 09

So, we've all done it. We've all set off for a one way trip, leave a car at the end and we'll just drive back to pick it up from the start when we've finished. We've all been there and found some dork forgets the key to the car waiting at the finish. Yep, we all had to cycle back to the start of the very long hill on Saturday to get home. Cheers Matt!

Matt and Chibu were both in demo bike territory again, this time is was the Scott Genius and Spark, both very highly specced demo versions too (no wonder Matt wasn't concentrating on where his keys were!). I think that the Genuis (Matt) was better than the Trek Ex-8 by the way we were talking about it, however it was the carbon fibre version on test and way too much money. The Spark was also good (Chibu) and decisions about buying them now loom...

We started at the car-park for Captain Cook's Monument and, heading up towards Roseberry Topping, we peeled off into the woods (which many trees have been felled since I was there last). The roots and trails were really dry so it was easier to keep good speed through these sections and, a lot of fun. We managed to get to the top of the world, well, it felt like it at least, on the top of High Cliff (an craggy part of the hill which makes the tallest point). There were a lot of people out walking for the day we noticed, although my eyes were watering most of the time as we went whizzing past them, so I'm presuming they were walkers.

It was pretty windy most of the day and somehow George conjured up a route that had the wind at our back 90% of the day. We're still not quite sure how the luck of the Irish was working in his favour and how he managed this, particularly bcse we did a loop! Maybe it was bcse we were joined by older brother Richard, and the power two Irish have is so much greater...We'll never know :-)

Once again Trail Guru failed to work properly on the iPhone, having researched the Garmin Edge 705, this really does look like a better option for reliability on GPS coverage and record GPS tracks. The downside of this being the £240 that needs to be shelled out to pick one up. I'll keep checking eBay to see if there's one going second hand.

It was only after our downhill finale, which saw Matt horizontal and a bike pretty much doing the same (always worrying when it's still owned by the bike shop) that we realized the our finale was to be followed by the real finale, the long uphill slog to the car which any of us had keys for. No injury to the demo bike, so that was good news and slightly scuffed elbows all part of the fun!

We picked up some good photos of the day, maybe a video too after some editing. Keep your eye on the Vimeo links for further video updates.

We finished in true style, visiting a very quiet and quaint coffee shop in Kildale, for hot sandwiches and cake. Chocolate cake and lots of it! I'm looking forward to doing this particular trip again. And that's just for the cake!

With the cancellation of the Wild Boar event, next week will still lead us to the Lakes, with the couple of trail centres there to be tried out.

Wharncliffe

From Wharncliffe Woods

Slightly hungover, well, actually, very hungover, the technical XC Red route through Wharncliffe can be a little difficult in places.

It started with phone calls trying to work out what time we'd arranged to meet whilst in the pub the night before. Never a good idea to arrange times whilst late at night and drinking. At least the team name for Wild Boar 24 got sorted whilst in the pub; Pies, Pies, Pies!

So, we finally got to Wharncliffe after a trip to McDonalds to top up on carbs. Can you believe no fries before 11am? or cheeseburgers for that matter? has the world gone mad.

Matt has the demo rig of the Trek Ex-8, which was in the root beer colour. A good looking bike. The trail starts out pretty twisty and good singletrack followed by a couple of sections of rocky singletrack, which is pretty difficult to negotiate first time through without putting your feet out. The trail hops back and forth onto the forest fire-road but the hills are reasonably long, up is long and hard but also means the downhills are also fairly long. Matt enjoyed the Ex-8 although gears needed a bit of set-up bcse it was so new. Photos of the ride can be found here. Plus small video.

We were glad of the XC trail length not being too long, hangovers wearing over everyone, but next time through will be easier, as we know the route and there are plenty of extra side routes to find and explore to add extra distance onto the trail.

We'll probably not do nights out before riding too often in future.

Next Week: Bank Holiday Monday ride.
Wild Boar 3 weeks away

Lake District Easter 09

The Lake District offers plenty of technical riding, it can sometimes get a little tricky, which we found out again this weekend as Nick and I flew up Irton Pike and Irton Fell.

We started at the campsite and followed the forest road up to the base of the Pike which was a little lung busting, maps and GPS tell me a change in height of 200 metres in less than a mile. We did it without stopping but mostly bcse it felt like it would be too steep to easily get re-started. Once we got the top of the Pike, we came down the very steep rocky front face, which in places was un-rideable, particularly when hanging off the back of the seat and you stop abruptly by hitting a log, full force of the seat ping backwards and taking one in the credentials! Not much fun having the walk the bike downwards in some places so wouldn't do that route again.

Irton Fell was more difficult in getting to the top, the bridleway proved extremely soaked and flooded through Mitterdale forest, so opting for the fireroad helped. Once at the top, through the top forest section, the fell opened up in front of us. A great view and we took photos. The fell was covered in soft waterlogged bogs. I found this out first hand as I tried to cross one soft patch, but found the handlebars just drop away below me. With the wheel still going downwards, now buried below the top of the disc brake, I flew over the handlebars (luckily a soft landing in a bog!). This was easily the funniest moment on a bike since we were in the snow (or Alisdair falling off in the car park) :-)

After dragging the bike out of the bog, which took some effort - feeling like quick sand as it sucked the bike back in! - We followed the forest road back down the side of Irton Pike which we'd come up the day before, with a minute or two of downhill, good for the fun factor although the technical rocky parts of the routes can be quite hairy if you don't pick your line right. It might help if I felt I wasn't running out of brake pads.

More pads needed ASAP.

Even keeping the riding to these two loops (we also covered a little of Wast Water lakeside too) was good fun.

I can't publish the TrailGuru link bcse the TrailGuru site has crashed at time of writing (apparently due to a power failure but is now being repaired).

Next Week: Local for a 16 mile loop; Dambuster
Countdown to WildBoar24 Race: 4 weeks + 1 day

Day in Dalby Forest Trail Centre

It started with a few pranks whilst setting up, but finished with the extremely welcome site of the car park, 25 miles later!

What a brilliant day. The trails were really good, our first outing into Dalby Forest and it was really enjoyable, up to around 20 mile mark. After that, most of us were tired and it was a bit of a slog getting back home. We even managed to get Nick and Matt tired, this is some achievement.

The trail itself rode well, full suspension was probably the choice set-up as the rocky sections were likely to have added fatigue and some of the arm-shaking flat and downhill sections felt tough even on FS. The route started with a leg warming uphill out of the visitor centre car park, followed by sections of flowing down and up sections. We did notice that for each of the short down sections they were invariably followed by a similar up section, and towards the end this did add some leg burn to get home. We might have preferred a longer up so we could have longer downs, but of course this is terrain dependant. Some of the roots and felled trees strategically placed in the single track made for some pretty good air, they were really enjoyable.

We didn't use the Purple Mountain Bike Centre, but it was there at the end (or start) if we would have needed.

I didn't even try the TrailGuru application, we were out for about 5h 30mins with rests and food stops, the iPhone battery would definitely not even got us half way, so sacked it off altogether.

At Dixons hollow we stopped for a bit of a play on the swooping 4X track and the table-tops, although one guy not with us had managed to crack his ribs on the handle bars and was in a bad way. Not much first aid we could offer other to get him comfy whilst one of his mates was off for the car. Breathing was a good sign and he wasn't alone, but I hope he was okay.

In the end we all had a good day, well worth it fro the experience and I'm looking forward to the next Trail Centre we try. It should also have given us good fitness test for the Wild Boar 24 in May. Basically, we all need more fitness.

Alisdair had to claim the funniest moment though, clipping into his pedals and then promptly falling off his bike whilst stood still, before we'd even started.

Photos are online here from my camera.

Next Week: Easter break in the Lakes.

How Windy was Saturday?

On the look out for a new local trail, in readiness for the longer nights, I managed to pick the windiest weekend for ages!

Local trails are sometimes a bit too obvious to find, sometimes just right under your nose and so you look past them, well that's my theory anyway because I managed to do 10 miles without really going anywhere.

Although I did come across some random tent pitched across a path/bridleway which was rather strange, followed 100 metres further on by kids burning whatever they could find in a small wood, didn't hang about there for long as you could imagine. An interesting Saturday morning.

I did find myself in Horbury though, and for some reason I've never really noticed what Horbury was like before. It was clearly larger than the small town I'd giving it credit for, not really noticed the church or historic buildings (an old hospital building marked by stone masonry, for example). The houses in some parts were also large and hidden away, it just looked like a place of reasonable wealth in yesteryear, but still had a village type appeal.

Back to riding and although I didn't really hit too many hills, the ride was a good work out, need to now inspect the map and try to find more off-road sections in the same area to connect the sections, but I did manage to puncture both front and rear tyres which was annoying, both from thorns off bushes.

Next week: Towbar fitted to car + ride local to towbar garage, followed by day at Dalby Forest.

How to get Fit?

From Ride On

- Put yourself up against the clock!

After riding now regularly for some weeks, with many rides going past the two hour mark, I might have considered the 2 hour Novice Trail Quest route to have been something relatively easy to accomplish.


Instead, the clock really does increase the intensity and the effort goes up 2 fold. Our time was clocked at 2hours 11minutes, which was without penalties as we'd opted for the Novice option, being our first Trail Quest. We covered around 20 miles in those 2 hours, which is fantastic considering some of the long leg burning steady inclines. Plus the stop-start nature of using the SportIdent electronic checkpoints, which are much improved to the Lane Quest hand written (pen and paper) option. The distance covered just highlights the decent pace we were able to keep up.

The TrailGuru iPhone application wasn't able to keep up again, I'll be turning to a Garmin device soon for GPS mapping and dropping that into TrailGuru instead, the iPhone battery is not up to 2 hours constant GPS usage. Here is the TrailGuru part that actually recorded.

Towards the end, concentration on the uphill sections was all about rhythm and just keeping the cadence set and steady. Fitness wise - this has had a large impact and lungs and legs have improved because of it.

Photos of our ride are kept here.

On the fun factor - there was less of it than expected. We did get a few downhill sections worth the uphil section getting there, but the clock really ups the intensity even on the flat and it's always there in the back of your mind. It did feel like this was a mission than a fun event, which still included quite a few road sections that can drag.

Our scores might not be high, we scored around 100 points, but we certainly improved fitness and so the effort was well worth it. The NYMBO website is where the scores are kept, I thought the entire event was very well run, marshalls were very helpful and all things explained to us 'novice' guys in an informative manner.

Not sure how many more Trail Quests we'll do but this was a good way to keep the fitness high, however less road and more 'trail' would have been preferred.

Two weeks to the Dalby Trail Centre day out. Next week: back to local.