Biking in the snow

Yesterday, Simon and Ed nipped out on the bikes in driving snow on the far North Yorkshir hills. We drove in Penny all the way past Richmond to a little town called Reeth where we left the car and head out. It was a nice road climb to the hills where the snow appeared and gradually got deeper and deeper to the point where we had almost 6 inches of snow to contend with and no easily recognisable paths across the fields πŸ™‚

Ultimately we were faced with whiteout conditions where you could not see more than 20 feet in any direction and Simon actually found it was getting harder to see the route that Ed had taken ahead of him – the driving snow felt like grit being thrown into our faces 😐

We followed the road until we made it back to the main road that we had come in on, and then followed the four miles back to the car – cold wet hands took almost 15 minutes to come back to sense when we did get back and we had managed 20km of a 32km ride. The views prior to the whiteout were utterly outstanding and the bike shop / cafe were awesome – lovely home made cakes and hot food along with fresh ground coffee – we will deffo be heading back there asap – hopefully Lee will join us next time πŸ™‚

Mountain Biking in Gisburn

Lee, Ed and Simon went to Gisburn on Saturday for a swift 20K spin in the trees πŸ™‚

Simon’s new SunnyCam glasses got their second outing and he did better with them this time around – will try to figure out how to get some footage up on here for all to enjoy soon πŸ™‚

First footage from the trip is here in the form of Lee’s Decision

Next one is Hully Gully – oh my…

The trail was certainly more rocky than we remember and the rain had not helped – there are not only loads of rocks and stone but also lots of tree roots that are exposed and when they get wet, they are SLIPPERY πŸ™

Hully Gully was as usual a lot of fun although lots more ruts than the last time we visited.

We also checked out the skills section this time around – not been in there before and wow – demonstrated to us that skills is something that we need to work on πŸ™‚

No falls this time and lots of laughs – perfect medicine πŸ™‚

Dalby Forest on the mountain bikes

The original plan was to head up to Hamsterley Forest today with Lee and Ed. Thankfully Ed checkout out the website a few days ago and figured that various bits of the trail were closed off. Upon diagnosis, it seems that quit a lot of the trail was closed so we decided upon a last minute diversion to Dalby Forest and my was it the RIGHT decision.

We arrived shortly after 9am and got out soon after – we chose to start in the Low Dalby car park and hence we would have the worst climb FIRST – another great decision πŸ™‚ Just under 3 hours and around 30km later we got back to the car park exhausted but having given it our all. I think it fair to say that we had forgotten how much fun this place was – although Simon just recalls being the most tired EVER – but then the last time was almost 30degrees Celcius so that will have no doubt had a major part to plan in the exhaustion πŸ™‚

Next time we will need to do the full 40km (all the red sections and the black) although clearly we will need to be super fit to do this πŸ™‚

Simon got back, washed the bikes and sorted the CCTV so that all cameras are now ON and adjusted for optimum coverage :-). Just got to figure out how to control and configure stuff remotely if at all possible as then could hide the box away and not think about it again…