It's been roughly
3 years (to the day) since I first rode Penmachno on a set of Marin trail weakened pins. Although "rode" isn't accurate as I was completely shattered and don't remember much except the never ending pain. Both Uphilla and I were keen to revisit this trail, this time on fresh legs and also try a new loop donated by the trail pixies.
With busy weeks behind us and daylight savings kicking in we decided on a later than normal start and took a leisurely amble up the autobahn arriving at roughly 1pm, in glorious sunshine. Now don't get carried away, this is Wales and it's fickle weather also supplied a fairly brisk'n'chilly breeze that kept us from standing idly around. Although with knobblies promptly unloaded we didn't need any further encouragement to leap off up the fireroad...
My ride buddy has a fresher and more favourable
recollection of this trail which helped spur on his wibbly wobby legs. After a couple of tentative opening sections (these trails ain't like those in the flat lands) we started to find our groove and start hammerin' along. The original trail follows the hillside in/out/up/down and is a relatively point'n'shoot afair with plenty of grip on hand 90% of the time. The other 10% was spent "catching" ourselves from near tumbles :p
The extended loop starts with a long fireroad descent (boo) but then show us some crackin' flowing singletrack that tempts you to lay off the stoppers and keep your speed up. Until it all gets too much and your forced to reign yourself in (a little) - beltin' stuff.
During my first visit I don't recall the wonderful almost panoramic vista of the Snowdon range, complete with snow capped peaks - awesome.
The new loop also has some of the longest board walk I've ever ridden. It's also got a fair number of turns that keep your focus at 110% Oh and a part fallen tree almost forces you to slow and duck underneath...tempting you to dab, but on we soldiered :-)
Shortly after the start I was grateful to find that the climbing eased off to a nice gradient with plenty of steady winches through rock gardens to keep you focused. The exposed, pedalie open section of the original is still there...along with the same 'orrid head wind :x
Unfortunately I missed my ride buddy take one of his now typical over-the-bars dive on a hidden dip that suddenly reared itself. Thankfully he came out unscathed.
Although the car park busier than we've ever seen it, we only saw two riders on the hillside so pretty much had the place to ourselves :thumbu
Worth the trip.
TracklogPosse: Farqui (5Spot), Uphilla (5Spot)
Mechanicals: None
Weather: Bright'n'sunny (no really!)
Ibstone - Chiltern Ride Invite...........
Ibstone is located between High Wycombe and Henley On Thames and is in close proximity to the nearby 'Ridgeway' village of Watlington. Watlington already has two blog posts. The first an MBR killer route, the second a fine route posted by Uphilla. It's a great area for riding and admiring stunning views, not to mention some decent MTB hills! The proposed route is just over 23 miles with 3100feet ascent. It should be a great ride to exercise the legs and lungs prior to summer or a trip to Morzine!
The proposed date for the ride is Saturday April 25th and you can see from the route map that the start point is in located close to the Pub at Ibstone Green. The time of ride is flexible as long as it allows for suitable refreshment in the pub ...post ride!
Let me know if you are interested.
R2
With another winters commute approaching I decided that I'd like to open up my route options which would mean that my pathetic LED front light would be useless. You know the sort, ye'olde LED flashers that are more "be seen" than "see by".
So I trawled the tinterweb and found
Tactical4U offered a compact bar mounted LED system that ran off x3 AA's and pumped out 200 lumen's. Best of all the price was a smidgen over £20 - which surely made it worth a punt. Uphilla confirmed that he ordered something similar a while back and said it'd probably be okay for commuting. Sorted.
The Hong Kong shipment arrived less than a week later (£10 p&p) and was quickly filled with spankin' new NiMh's. Initially I was a little disappointed with the output but then found that the beam can be adjusted from a teeny spot (the shape of the LED emittor) out to a wide flood.
The lamp bracket is rubberized and fits well on the bars but only offers up/down alignment. A large recessed rear mounted switch controls the light through low, off, high, off and flashing. The battery uses an elasticated strap which fits easily underneath my 100mm stem.
In use the lamp is small and unobtrusive and the clunky button works well even with gloves pinkies. When the street lamps disappear I find that the flood setting (even on high) doesn't offer sufficient penetration but a couple twists tightens the beam to a more useful spot/flood combo. It works a treat on the roads though and cars/buses no longer cut across my path.
I've no specific details on actual runtimes yet but the spec's suggest 6hrs.
For less than thirty notes this is a marvelous offering and proves that robust, bright and long running LED's are defo the way to go :thumbu
Uphilla has fondled the the unit, played with the three light settings and mentioned that they'd since improved the battery casing and shrunk the lamp.
* "info" pic's listed on behalf of Tactical4U (to save bandwidth).
After lunch we three headed out around the familiar
MBR trail and the opening rocky section soon had DD doubled up with a headache. The tough lickle soldier soon shrugged it off and plodded around the rest of the trail without so much as a "where's the short cut" :p
I can't recall if Uphilla somersaulted here or on a later section but as usual our rubber pal immediately jumped back on and cranked off into the distance.
We've all ridden this several times before and mostly remembered what was coming although I'd forgotten how much fire road crankin' there is. Fortunately excellent sections like The Pink Heifer make the toil bearable.
Unfortunately none of us cleared the tricky bridleway climb up from the ragin' river but we were all quite tired by this point.
The trail was again much drier than anticipated with just the odd puddle here and there to remind you it's autumn. The sunshine was doing it's best to keep us warm but as the day light receded, so did the temperature.
The drive back through torrents of rain (from Telford on) which made me chuckle at just how good the weather had been for us - quite unusual for me this year.
Photo's.
Posse: DDave (4x), Farqui (5Spot), Uphilla (5Spot)
Mechanicals: None
Weather: Fabulous autumnal day, cold breeze but dry and sunny
Uphilla and I had already hatched a plan to take in a couple of the north Welsh trails before the end of the year, namely the extended Penmachno and Coed Llandegla.
The day before arrived and we were pleased to see that the weather forecasts all looked favourable and before we set off we quickly checked the trails websites for the latest maps, etc.
"Oh-no", Penm was closed with a rally AND Coed-L had it's car park closed due to snow ! :O
Over the next few hours a sketchy plan-b was hatched with options of Coed-y-Brenin (which has lots of choice) and even
Machynlleth to the south (time permitting).
The 'hillas' made their way NW after the Friday rush but by bedtime I still hadn't received final confirmation of our venue - so I guessed the lads were out in wilderness without a signal. Come 5am Saturday morning (yawn) and they'd managed to find a signal to confirm CyB @ 9.30am was indeed the center of
choice(b) - game on.
3hrs later I'd enjoyed traffic free drive and been rewarded with inumerable truely jaw dropping views of the autumal colour with picture postcard snow capped peaks. All under a bright blue sky - which has been quite a rarity this year. Actually the drive wasn't without incident as I had a near miss playing
chicken with a pheasant (thank you mr.ABS) and a windscreen strike serveral turns later of either it's dumba$$ cousin or a partridge. I do know that it was big, went with an almighty and in an instant took my ticker from calm and relaxed to pounding harder than Afan's 6km climb.
But I digress, where were we ?Whilst I waited for the center to open I assembled my trusty steed and watched the car park gradually fill as the daylight ticked by. The casual 'hillas' rolled up, unloaded, twiddled with this'n'that before we all rolled down to the trail head to decide which of the 6 routes we'd tackle.
Our
opener was to be the medium length
Tarw trail and off through the '
horns' we dived.
We've all ridden this in the past but not since CyB's overhaul and after a few short sections of singletrack we began our climb up the fireroad to into the short Heart of Darkness. I don't know about you but I find I need a few miles to adjust to these trails (they're so different from my home patch) and I through here I took many a bad line and fumbled plenty of dodgy gear choices. However I soon settled down and hammered through Snap, Crackle and Pop which were familiar from the ol'Red Bull trail. My 5Spot felt great with loads-a-grip from the NNic's, amble braking from my Mag's and the Pike felt so good being rammed into every rock that came my way :thumbu
Onwards we cranked and after thumpin' our way through the Rocky Horror Show, Mantrap and Flightpath a quick glance at my buddies showed the same moosive grin that adorned my chops :p
Back at the cafe we plunged into some lunch whilst deciding what the afternoon might offer...
The only photo I snapped was in the
car park, before 9am.
Tracklog.
Mechanicals: None
Weather: Fabulous autumnal day, cold breeze but dry and sunny
The route consists mainly of bridleways but as is the norm around here they're often dug into the landscape and provide excellent banked turns to liven up the long fast descents. Thankfully the drizzle hadn't turned the chalky ground into a quagmire but I can image the route would be a serious grind in the wetter months.
The route consists mainly of bridleways but as is the norm around here they're often dug into the landscape and provide excellent banked turns to liven up the long fast descents. Thankfully the drizzle hadn't turned the chalky ground into a quagmire but I can image the route would be a serious grind in the wetter months.
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