Weekend round up - 19/20 Dec
Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:22 pm
Well what can I say but after all the fuss about a little snow here and there it was up to a few die hards to get out in it and get some miles in, complete with Santa and Reindeer outfits, for the annual MTB Christmas ride.
With Mr Crane going AWOL due to being apparently snowed in up at Darlington the planned outing to Gilamoor was changed after some last minute phone calls from Simon and we headed for Dalby, which was a good call.
Temperatures on route - via the in car display - was showing -12c (yes that's minus 12c) in places. We arrived at Thornton Le Dale to the positively tropical temperature of -7.5c and proceeded to try and get up the lane to Dalby Forest but it was pointless, car was just skidding in the ice and slush. We all parked up in the village and 7 of us (Simon, Alex, Alex's friend Jez - apologies if I've got this wrong, Rich, Phil, Steph and myself) proceeded from there up the hill (which got us all warmed up) to Dalby. Quick re-org at the bottom beside the closed cafe
to check what we were going to do and off we set, on to the red route, well what we could see of it!
The snow in places was quite deep and made cycling through it very difficult so the inevitable happened and we ended up pushing the bikes for some of the way. We did fireroads, bits of the old red route and sections of the new red route in both directions.
However we managed a good bit of the Red Route and had a thoroughly enjoyable day, staying out for nearly 2 hours and getting totally frozen in the process. All made even more worthwhile when we had a steaming cup of tea in the village cafe.
Thanks for the great company and a good call from Simon at 0850hrs to just "LETS GO FOR IT" as he put it.
The Santas and Reindeers:
The Road up to Dalby:
Santa and his reindeer go down a pretty fireroad:
All the Santas had a few tumbles:
With Mr Crane going AWOL due to being apparently snowed in up at Darlington the planned outing to Gilamoor was changed after some last minute phone calls from Simon and we headed for Dalby, which was a good call.
Temperatures on route - via the in car display - was showing -12c (yes that's minus 12c) in places. We arrived at Thornton Le Dale to the positively tropical temperature of -7.5c and proceeded to try and get up the lane to Dalby Forest but it was pointless, car was just skidding in the ice and slush. We all parked up in the village and 7 of us (Simon, Alex, Alex's friend Jez - apologies if I've got this wrong, Rich, Phil, Steph and myself) proceeded from there up the hill (which got us all warmed up) to Dalby. Quick re-org at the bottom beside the closed cafe
to check what we were going to do and off we set, on to the red route, well what we could see of it!The snow in places was quite deep and made cycling through it very difficult so the inevitable happened and we ended up pushing the bikes for some of the way. We did fireroads, bits of the old red route and sections of the new red route in both directions.
However we managed a good bit of the Red Route and had a thoroughly enjoyable day, staying out for nearly 2 hours and getting totally frozen in the process. All made even more worthwhile when we had a steaming cup of tea in the village cafe.
Thanks for the great company and a good call from Simon at 0850hrs to just "LETS GO FOR IT" as he put it.
The Santas and Reindeers:
The Road up to Dalby:
Santa and his reindeer go down a pretty fireroad:
All the Santas had a few tumbles:
