Today's Ride

[al-onestare]

Blowing a hoolie, feckin' freezin' and horizontal showers. Tis the season to sweat. Really looking forward to getting Zwift next year. It's been fun using OneLap but I need something more comprehensive.

 

[bikeworkshop]

Snow on our hillside this morning, so Minty and I went for a ride on The Beacon

It was good snow, quite grippy but not sticky.

Riding on the forest paths was odd, as if the Gravel was coated in ice so like riding on a layer of ball bearings!


You forget how easily ice packs into spds, but here we are on page 777 so let's just live with it

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Riding on the forest paths was odd, as if the Gravel was coated in ice so like riding on a layer of ball bearings!

Good stuff, love the snowy trail pics.

 

[bagpuss]

A fresh northly wind was a foot today and stayed for all of my time awheel
Using the lanes of Derbyshire and Staffordshire there was plenty to see.
As you can see Tutbury has two castles
One historic and a fairly new one.
Hanbry affords stunning views of the weaver hills
Lunch was enjoyed at Newlands farm.

Today's ear worm.....

 

[moonlite]

Thunderstorms predicted for this afternoon, so decided to go earlier than usual. Bit of an odd ride, really: I wanted to take a road route I used to do quite often when I first arrived in Australia -- my brother-in-law had a farm in the hills toward the coast which was quite a challenging ride at the time, but I haven't done it for a couple of years. Set out after breakfast and although I wasn't feeling very peppy, rode out there in good time. It turned out not to be as far as I remembered, so on the spur of the moment, decided that rather than just turn back, I'd take a gravel road through the National Forest to link up with some other popular routes and finish that way.





Problem was, that not-very-peppy feeling persisted and although the road was great and very quiet, I wasn't feeling it much. Still, when you're out there and can't do anything else, you persevere, don't you? So eventually made it onto the old familiar route which was welcome. And immediately encountered something unexpected -- dozens and dozens of kangaroos bounding along in groups, across paddocks, streams and fences by the roadside. Stopped to take some video to share on here. That's proving difficult, as its URL isn't acceptable on this platform for some reason. Let's see if this works.



As I moved on, I hit a bump which rotated my handlebars downwards in the stem. This has happened before and it's extremely annoying, not to mention dangerous, so stopped again and applied as much torque as I could with my folding Allen Key set. Lo and behold, as soon as I set off again, the bloody bars slipped again. Cursing, I applied the brakes, skidded to a halt, failed to unclip, and fell swearing to the ground. Just a little blood -- enough to get the missus all riled up. A truly eventful couple of minutes!

The rest was just a slog home -- the gravel roads in that area are lovely and I do appreciate them, but today it was a case of grimly spinning until the miles had been consumed. Still, after all that, it felt good to stop. And Strava tells me it's the most climbing I've ever done in one day, which is also unexpected.