When mud turns to ice at Swinley forest
Yesterday Matt and I headed out to Swinley to have a look at the new trails I’d been exploring recently. A few others dropped out and I wasn’t that keen to be honest but we went anyway. It’s possibly the coldest I’ve ever been on a bike and most of the trails were out of action as they hadn’t hardened with all this rain we’ve been having. So we had a bit of a ride around just looking out for trails and seeing what was around. We caught a few leads and it was nice to just get lost in there for a bit a lot of the time following bits of tape which presumably had been used to mark out an XC race course. I’m not quite sure at what point a puddle stops being a puddle and becomes a lagoon, but I think we were getting pretty close with this one. The new trails were appearing in more and more places but all still roped off. The markers for them had also started appearing and looks to be a huge network going in. My only worry is that they’ll be slightly sanitized and too manicured. No sign of roots in there.
We soldiered on and got wetter and colder and then found the windy twisty one before tank traps. A bit slower in the wet but still fun. Then through tank traps and to the top of the nice traverse down to the jump gulley. Ahh, this had gone due to caterpillar tracks chewing up the area around. We skipped the jump gulley and then headed over to labyrinth and the trails over that side. We hardly saw anyone around for the majority of the ride.
By the time I got to the end of labyrinth my feet were so cold I couldn’t feel my toes. That was it, I’d had enough and wanted to get back and get warm. So funnily enough we got lost again and had to retrace our steps along a bit of the forest I hadn’t seen before. All good exploring potential though.
It was so cold that the water and mud that had spattered over us had frozen. Matt’s shoelaces were frozen solid and both our gears had stopped working so well – actually Matt’s never work. So we got back to the van, started boiling the kettle and then the bloody gas bottle ran out. I’d also forgotten the milk, useless. So we managed two just about brewed mugs of coffee and headed back. All that frozen mud had warmed up nicely on the way back turning into a pile of muck in the back of the van, wonderful. I guess that’s what it’s for though.
I can’t wait to be riding in some even vaguely warm weather. Hard to believe that in 2008 we were riding in shorts and T-shirts in Wales around about this time of the year 8th – 9th April.