Princetown in the spring

A loverly spring day, lambs frisking, mountainbikers scattered all over the moor

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Out of Princetown on the bridlepath south passing South Hessary Tor, first right and a lovely loooong rocky track






down by the wonderfully named Crazy Well Pool into the woods and up by Blowing House ruins. Found some trolls in a cellar.





We followed the Devonport Leat SW then cut north along a cycle route to join the disused railway line. Granite sleepers are harsh to ride over!

Grinding up the hill to cut off a corner where the old line went looping around King's Tor, joining the road just west of Rundlestone, and following the road back to princetown, for a reward




There's Princetown brewed Jail Ale at the end of the rainbow :-)

Dartmoor Epic

Pete from Braking Wind had suggested a ride on Dartmoor, fine idea!
I drove down with Jasper (#1 son) and Harry (Jaspers buddy) to Pete's place near Bovey Tracey, to meet him and Emmet.

We rode down to Bovey, then up Lustliegh Cleave to Manaton,

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THe woods were beautiful, sun spearing through the trees, mud and rock at grippy consistency, good temperature... big big climb to Manaton. Then round to Jay's Grave, and on to Hound Tor where someone had left some furniture in a field.




Ace! There was snow still lying up here too, so there was some slippy slidy falling off fun, before attacking the descent to Manaton. Hilarious Dartmoor rock chiutes and boulder rolling down off the moor and back home for cake.

Exmoor in winter

In between Christmas and New Years I got together with a couple of people I hadn't seen since quitting Bike Shed to become an instructor. We met up, did the usual twiddling around of cars and headed for Exmoor

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Carhampton, massive climb and massive descent to Dunster, up over the ridge and a rock crashing drop to Wooton Courtenay, back up and over and looping round home. 20 miles to the yard and 5500m of climbing according to Dan's GPS!






Exmoor = middle earth. If you look carefully you can see a hobbit riding his mountainbike up here
there was this sign saying unsuitable for motor vehicles....

singlespeed moving fast!

Below: helmet hair as a proof of ride quality!





some watery bint proffering a singlespeed out of a pond is hardly a sound basis for a government

Dratmoor revisited

Having waited a week for the weather to tidy itself up ('summer' 2008 will be remembered)...

Went for it. Anton, a French student who is staying in our village had expressed a keen interest in going for a ride on the moor. So I decided to just get weathered.


Actually it was fun, not cold and it didn't rain for the first hour or so. The picture shows a bit of our route that was described as 'this is a potential mudbath' which it was.

Later on the water was a little higher up the leg. Here's Anton crossing. I'm standing about halfway across.
The route was a good introduction to Dartmoor, it climbs out of the village of Postbridge gently (muddy) drops over the shoulder of the hill (fordy) then dives north through farm land, and suddenly you're climbing a high valley. There's a fabulous rocky singletrack descent and then through forest to the roasd, through some bridle paths and back to the start.

Dratmoor

The British 'summer'. Bah! I finally have a day free, some riders had asked for an introduction to riding off-road on the moor, so I planned a nice ride on Dartmoor.

An easy 16km route on the high moors, Postbridge to Challacombe Down. East from the village to Pizwell, and north over Challacombe down then looping back south through the forest of Soussons Warren to the PUB.

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Gale warning issued by Met Office. Torrential rain, tree-felling winds, good day for experienced riders to have a soggy mudfest, but not really a good day to take riders of unknown skills out in the wild world.

As the great philosopher says: D'oh.