First of the new Fat bikes arrive- Surly Pugsley Ops

New graphics from Salsa on finishing kit

New Surly OD chainset and rings 36/22

Damn fat knobbly tyres

Canvas green with matching rims and Nates tyres

 Complete bike £1849

Standard Pugsley just £1599

a quick bivvy

Time's sure short these days, trying to fit everything into a busy summer time.

This Saturday we sent the dog on hols for a night and grabbed a quick trip into the hills. A late afternoon train ride to 20 miles away then a circuitous route to a favourite bivvy spot.  Scorching hot evening and morning sandwiching a deliciously warm night.

Shona had her new Brooks Cambium to try out. On the face of it this one's ideally suited to the messier side of biking - no worries about getting leather wet and dirty. No bedding in either, comfortable from the off with a flexy but supportive shape. Once we've got some more miles in we'll report back, looking good so far!

Back in town for a 11 o'clock breakfast and that leaves the afternoon for chores. Nothing better than waking on a hillside at 5am in the blazing sunshine, gotta grab those moments when you can...

Two singlespeeds

This will be an interesting bike build - two Hope trials hubs laced up to Velocity Blunt SL's to start with.

1 x 1 x 2

Given the splendid weather outlook for the holiday weekend we cooked up a plan to make the most of it. Pulling a pair of  Surly 1x1's from the back of the bike cave we hopped on the train to Kirby Stephen. Plan was to pick up the Pennine Bridleway national trail and head south till we got close to home at Summit near Todmorden. The official train start runs from Ravenstonedale but as we got off the train in Kirby Stephen there's a good mostly off road link to join up at Pendragon Castle. From here the trail heads out onto the hills where there's an impressive stone monument where you can lean your bike for a bit in the evening sun.

After a bit of up, down and along we started to look for somewhere to roll out our bivvy rolls. It was a great view of the full moon just off the top of the Coal Road we'd seen on an Audax a few months ago -  really quite steep especially spinning our singlespeeds. One thing that hadn't improved was the temperature - we'd only taken daytime gloves and it was probably the highest point on the route. We've learnt and forgotten the 'take a spare pair of gloves' rule and probably won't again!

After 5 hours restless hiding in our bivvy bags we also decided we'd taken lightweight sleeping bags - another few hundred grammes of down would've been welcome so we got up and took our chilly hands off to the trail. 

The sun peeped over the hill and warmed us an hour or so later as we got out the stove for a coffee. 

Heading for Settle we had the trails to ourselves for a few hours.

We took time out for veggie chilli and coffees in Settle before pushing, literally, on to Long Preston. Some interesting route diversions followed around farm yards and field boundaries - with gates - lots and lots of gates...

More coffee in Gisburn, no time for singletrack today though. 

We'd originally conceived this trip over two days but early on we realised we were in possession of far too much time and not enough trail, anyway our hands had just warmed up. The decision was made to push on and finish up late. 

The conditions really couldn't have been better and if we'd thought about it a bit we probably could have carried on South past the turn off for home towards the Peak District but the draw of the clean bedsheets was too much!
We'd had a fair old ride on our singlespeeds and learnt a few lessons along the way.
We'd recommend this ride to anyone who likes gates. Lots of gates.


Kit List...

We rode - two Surly 1x1's, one old, one newer. Singlespeed (natch) - 32/18 & 32/19 for the weaker male. One with 650b wheels and the other with (so last year) 26" Fattish 2.25 mtb tyres.
(In the future we'll probably get these S & S coupled so that we can take them apart for travel and store them more easily in vehicles)

We carried gear in a mixture of Revelate and Wildcat seatpods, bar harnesses & framebag. Nothing on our backs or in pockets - bliss.

A couple of lightweight Deuter sleeping bags were nowhere near warm enough but that wasn't their fault. Our North Face Kilo bags would have been preferable but a pound heavier.

Morning coffee was taken care of by an MSR Pocket Rocket and a couple of Alpkit's Ti mugs - a Jetboil would have been quicker but bulkier. We could have done without either really.

A Garmin 800 GPS lasted longer than we thought it would for navigating with some off/on for powersaving. We only got the guide book out a couple of times for route checks. The route is well signed for the most part anyway.

TodCross

Surly Disc Trucker Di2 Alfine 11 speed

All racked up and ready to go...

Delightful Dales?- A Snowy Audax

So Sundays ride was a nice hilly 200 km Audax round the dales, the weather forecast on Saturday promised sunny intervals and light winds it was looking promising. However waking up 1.30am Sunday morning and looking outside it had been snowing- not so promising. 

We arrived at the start in Clitheroe and meet up with Amy (http://trio25.blogspot.co.uk) on her nice new Kinesis for an early start at 7.30- and set off into sleet, rain and more sleet. We managed to make good time to Kettlewell for the first big climb of the day over Park Rash- this was where it started to get interesting, we probably got 3/4's of the way up before it became unrideable with snow covering the road, this being the point you remember road tyres and snow are not a good combination.  So everyone got off and pushed over the top for about a mile till we hit some landrover tracks and could gingerly start the descent to Middleham. 

Park Rash- it got worse after this...

After a quick hot choc to warm us up it was off over the tops past the rifle ranges at Leyburn into some sunshine and a nice crosswind, another fast descent took us to Fremmington where we had to stop at the Dales bike centre for a very good coffee and some much needed cake!

Fueled up we rode through Swaledale which is actually quite rolling! before another climb up and over to Nateby and a control stop at the Black Bull pub where the landlady feed us sandwiches- these were much needed as  we still had another 84km to go and had just turned into the wind. From Nateby we climbed out the valley and dropped onto the main Sedburgh road - before turning off to climb the Coal road which again  due to it's height was covered in snow. This was mostly rideable if you could manage to stay in the Landrover tracks and still had it in your legs, once over the top the road becomes a steep downhill with lots of twisty turny switchbacks that had us all stopping at the bottom trying to get some feeling back into our hands.

On the Coal Road.

 Another 'rolling' valley road soon popped us out on the Newby Head pass and from there it was a quick 50 km via Horton in Ribblesdale, Settle and some interesting back roads to the finish. 

A long days riding,11 hours though we managed 128 miles, 13,008ft of climbing and probably should have ate more. Big thanks to Amy as always for the company, the mindless chat (between panting up hills) and Haribo's when needed!