Its about 19 years since I last took this old man's picture- I must try and find that. It was my first holiday alone and after I'd started working and I took my new Saracen Limted Edition (my first real mountain bke) and stayed in the YHA at Coniston I think and cycled loads of trails in my Lake District MTB Trails guide book.
Grizedale was all bridleways then in fact I'd never heard of the term Singletrack then. But nowadays I'm a singletrack addict so I came back to try out the new Singletrack trails of the North Face Trail.
Pete and Is had no bikes so they went walking instead.
I parked up and got my bike out and as I put my front wheel in I noticed a brake pad had disappeared- a search of the car and no evidence of it I panicked I was going to miss my ride. Luckily there is a bike shop at the visitor centre and a very good one it is too- huge and lots of products, they said they try to have some of all the various brake pads and luckily they had some Hayes stroker trails which are in fact different from Hayes Stroker Ryde pads or Hayes Mag pads etc. (Note to self must carry some spares with me!) So my ride was saved! Phew!
It was -1 degrees c outside and I worried about fiddling with the pads in the cold but good old Hayes have made it really simple and these clipped in real quick, calipers pushed back easily and no cold hand fiddling! Only a bit worrying that it looks like the pin on the caliper that the brake pad clip pushes onto appears to be misaligned on one side - this may be a manufacturing quality issue as I've never had an accident since I had these on, that is probably why the pad fell out when I took the wheel off. Ah well it all seemed to work ok but I must watch not to lose these again.
Off I went climbing up the icy doubletrack to the first all weather singletrack route which was a great rolling climb with a few bits of icy boardwalk wood sections about 1m wide with 2 strips of ice either edge meaning you really had to stay central on these.
The trail had a fair amount of Singletrack and lots of wooden sections which ranged from a short raised section to a long winding boardwalk with some off camber turns and some step downs. Fun! Each wood ride youy could hear the ice cracking on either side as I rolled each plank.
Fantastic views across to the Old man of coniston on this beautiful cold sunny day. The trail became a bit more doubletrack/fire road climbing for a while with a few singletrack sections then a slight change in terrain along a more muddy type singletrack descent from Moor top with a good skinny log ride which I managed and then suddenly I was back at the visitor centre.
Funny thing was over 15km it felt like I climber quite a lot bit always just gradual climbs but never got a big DH, I guess it also descends gently. I may post the GPS profile here when I download it.
It was cold in the CP so I stripped and put warm dry clothes on, had a cuppa from my flask and with a smile on my face and a glow in my cheeks started the 6.5 hr drive home satisfied with a great week of activity!
Back to work tomorrow.
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