Saturday, 30 December 2017

Fun on the ice and snow at Glentress and up in the Pentland Hills

It started with a visit to Glentress on Wednesday with Roger and Clive 

Clive and I had ice spikers on our bikes, Roger didn't but managed nearly all the red route without too many dabs
Quite a bit of snow the higher we went up, there's something very satisfying cycling through deep white snow

Thursday and I did a solo ride up in the Pentlands which boasted a fairish bit of snow and ice as well

Luckily there had been walkers before I came along or the tracks would have been not only invisible but also unrideable
Out again today with Barrie and even though a thaw was underway the ice still needed the spiker tyres to climb and descend safely



Barrie descending Maidens Cleugh, a track that was more or less a mile long sheet of ice


There's no way you could keep upright on this ice with ordinary tyres





This guy coming down gingerly on a CX bike couldn't understand how we were managing to peddle up the way

Another astonished biker














The river crossing, about the only bit without ice today


An old guy we passed as we went up by Glencorse Reservoir who was discovering just how hard it is to run on sheet ice.

A great week of biking on ice and snow with the ice spiker tyres and seeing the look of amazement on fellow bikers and hill walkers faces as you cycle past them uphill and blast past downhill as they expect you to come to grief big time. Unfortunately a thaw has arrived so the icy ground will have turned to mud in a couple of days again, that's the problem with Central Scotland, the snow and ice never lasts long enough!





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