Cold Offshore Winds - Borth
After a couple of days of Xmas inactivity I couldn’t wait to get back out and do something. The weather was cold but sunny and there was a freezing east wind blowing so I went out for a windsurf session on the seafront at Ynyslas on Boxing Day. It was fine to start with but then the wind dropped and as it was offshore I then had troble getting back to the beach. It was freezing cold, there was no one on the beach so my only option was to swim back to shore. he fact that I’m here writing this means that I made it!
The next day I decided to play it safe after my little adventure yesterday and sail in the estuary instead. there were no wave anyway so the estuary was the better option. The wind was also stronger and less gusty here so I had a good sail...
Amazon.co.uk Widgets
I had a nice ride around the ClimachX trail just north of Machynlleth on Monday. Unfortunately on the first bit of singletrack a rock flicked up and snapped the little gear cable guide that runs under the bottom bracket shell on my bike so the rear gears stopped working.
Once we had figured out what had happened I ended up pulling the cable tight so that I was in the largest rear cog and then fixing it there by trapping the cable under the bottle bosses on the bottom of the downtube. This meant I was unable to change gear but at least I was in a gear that was usable for the rest of the trail.
I managed to complete the trail like that in perfect sunny, autumnal conditions and have now got hold of a spare cable guide and fitted it to the bike. While I was at it I...
I’ve been ‘back into’ mountain-biking for about a year now. My blog post when I bought the new bike ended by saying:
I haven’t been on a bike for about 12 years and probably haven’t ridden one in anger for about 15, so it will no doubt be a shock to the system, but the idea is to have some fun in the hills and hopefully get a little fitter in the process. I’m not expecting to get back to my old standards as I’m not 20 years old anymore, but hopefully it will slow my steady decline in fitness.
As you can see the idea was to get a little fitter and have some fun. I decided to get a mountain-bike rather than get back out on my road bike simply because road-cycling is all about going as fast as you can and competing rather than simply getting out there and having...
I had a nice mountain-bike ride last night, despite the fact that there were frequent torrential hailstorms. It was pretty cold up in the hills and the rain held off for most of the ride but the puddles were deep and the river crossings cold.
It did however give me chance to try out my new Goretex cycling shoes and the worked well. Coupled with a pair of waterproof Sealskinz socks and my waterproof cycling trousers I felt ready for anything the welsh weather could throw at me. It seemed to work. Despite being completely immersed in water up to my knees now and then I finished the ride with perfectly dry, and more importantly, nice warm feet.
It is definitely worth having the right gear as it makes things so much more comfortable and therefore more enjoyable. As i’ve heard said...
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been doing quite a bit of mountain-biking recently and armed with my trusty Forerunner GPSr have of course been recording where I’ve been. Many of the routes have been along properly way-marked trails at trail centres, other have been in more remote areas so I thought I would share some of my favourites routes with you here.
First up is ‘Anglers and Artists’, a nice remote route around various lakes in Mid Wales. It also passes close to some of the geocaches I’ve hidden in the area. The total route is 20km long and starts off relatively high, has a steady, undulating start followed by a nice descent into Artists Valley and then a long climb back to the car.
The best place to park is just over the top of the hill on...
I first experienced the joys of mountain-biking at Brechfa a few months ago when I tried out the red-graded Gorlech trail. I enjoyed that and wanted to go back for more so when the guys I usually cycle during the week with had a trip to Brechfa planned to try out the newly opened black-graded Raven Trail I couldn’t resist joining them.
We met at the car park and once again it was raining, but the six strong crew of me, Dave, Myles, John, Andy and malcolm were all keen to get out and try the new trail as it had been getting great reviews. After getting kitted up we headed off up the first little climb and then straight onto a little bit of singletrack. It was nice to get going so soon rather than the usual big climb to start with. However things soon got a little tougher. From here...
I’ve been wanting to ride at Llandegla for a while now so on our way back from Wrexham we stopped off at Llandegla and I finally had my chance.
As we pulled into the car park it looked really busy, people and bikes everywhere but I guess that was to be expected on a bank holiday weekend.
After a quick look around the shop and visitor centre we walked back up to the car in the overflow car park and got ready. I had planned to do the full red route and black route whilst Anna and Morgan were going around the 3 mile long Green route. Anna was going to walk with Morgan on his little balance bike.
We set off together and once on the trail it wasn’t nearly as busy as it looked I did pass quite a few people and there were often people stood around at the beginnings of certain...
Readers of my diary entries on Forces-of-Nature will realise that I’ve been out mountain-biking quite a bit recently. I generally ride one night a week with a small group of other local mountain-bikers all of whom have tubeless set-ups and don’t seem to get any punctures. I didn’t think there was any need to ‘go tubeless’, afterall I don’t have that many punctures and they are easy to repair on the trail so I didn’t really see the advantages.
However, after puncturing a couple of times whilst out with the others I did start feeling bad about making them wait around for me whilst I repaired the flat, so I have decided to give in to peer pressure (not something I do too often) and give it a go.
There are several ways to ‘go tubeless’....
We’ve just had another action packed weekend here in rural mid Wales. Thanks to our local katabatic wind I managed to windsurf every day last week and although the wind wasn’t forecast to be great for the weekend, Ivor kept blowing and I managed to windsurf on Saturday and Sunday morning in the estuary at Ynyslas.
The flat water conditions do get a little boring after a while so I spiced things up trying silly tricks like body drags and carving 360’s. Both of these are fairly pointless tricks but fun to try and I guess blasting backwards and forwards across the estuary is fairly pointless in itself anyway.
After our Saturday morning windsurf session Steve and I headed off to the hills for a mountain biking session. We drove up the mountain road behind Talybont and parked...
Sunday was hot and sunny again so I headed off to Nant-yr-Arian where there was a moutnain-bike demo being held. It was of course very busy there and there were lots of nice bikes about. I set off on my bike for a little circuit around part of the Pendam Trail and then went to the Specialised marquee to collect a lovely lightweight carbon fibre S-Works Epic for a test ride.
It certainly was a nice bike. £4000 worth of full suspension loveliness! I’ve never ridden a full suspension bike before and it certainly make s a difference on the downhill sections and over the bumps. The tricky, bumpy uphill sections were easier too as the suspension allows the back wheel to stay in contact with the ground better and therefore gives more traction. It felt a little slower on the uphill forest...
I knew it!… If I spent some money on some new toys something else would break requiring more expense.
I’ve been needing some new tyres for a while so I took the plunge and used my £5 voucher from Wiggle to buy some new Continental Mountain King tyres for my bike (a bargain at £15.99 each!). I’ve also been in ‘need’ of a new 5m sail and some other windsurfing equipment so I’ve order a 5m Gun Hammer, a new mast extension and some harness lines from Gun Sails and have arranged to send my broken booms back for replacement under warranty. Of course, with my ‘key rider’ discount and the usual good value from Gun these were bargains too.
I then went out for a ride on my mountain bike last night and returned needing a new spoke, a wheel...
I haven’t long got back from an outdoor weekend in Wales.
First I drove to Liverpool and Anna, Morgan and I stayed in a Travel lodge for the night so that I could drop Anna and Morgan off at the airport early in the morning so that they couldget the plane to the Isle of Man. I then drove to Dinas Dinlle near Caernarfon where I met Steve so that we could go windsurfing. The wind was pretty strong and in the end we went out at Foryd Bay for some shelter, but even there the wind was too much so we headed off to the Snowdon Ranger Youth Hostel instead.
We then went for a nice walk around Llyn Cwellyn and found a few geocaches before signing into the Youth Hostel. here I realised I had lost y credit card so after a few frantci phone calls I had cancelled the card and made sure no...
The weather yesterday was perfect for mountain-biking, gorgeous sunshine very little wind and cool, so Harvey and I headed off to Pendam for a ride and some exploring.
From Pendam car park we cycled out past Llyn Syfydrin and along the track towards Nant-y-Moch. We saw Dave on the way so said our hello’s and then headed out along the road besides Nant-y-Moch and all the way to the top of the mountain road. We then followed the forest track to Anglers Retreat with a small diversion down a rocky, muddy trail and through a little bog. We stopped at Angler’s Retreat to check on one of my geocaches and then continued on past Llyn Penrhaeadr.
I have another geocache hidden on the shores of Llyn Penrhaeder so we decided to stop and check on this one as well. There are no obvious...
So much for the forecast of 20cm of snow, we haven’t even had a flurry yet… Lets hope we get some tonight as Brad is coming to visit and is bringing his snowboard with him!
I didn’t sit around waiting for the snow though, I went for a little run around the block and then a nice windsurf despite the cold temperatures. Funnily enough no one else was out so I had the place to myself. I didn’t stay out long though, not because of the cold but because I had taken too big a sail over to the beach with me so was a little overpowered. It wasn’t as windy as yesterday when the Borth weather station recorded a maximum gut of 54.5 knots… Yes, I was out windsurfing yesterday as well!
Brad is bringing his mountain bike with him, so even if we don’t get any snow...
Living on the beach with a large, flat salt marsh behind us means that there isn’t any great mountain-biking on our doorstep. We do of course have some really good trails nearby, but most of these are a 20 minute drive from the house and it would be really nice not to have to do that drive. So, yesterday I set of exploring on my bike.
I headed inland to Tre-Ddol, which involces a 4 mile slog along the flat road across the bog, once in Tre-Ddol I simply picked the nearest hill and cycled up it… And what a hill it was, brutally steep and I wasn’t quite ready for it. In fact I have to admit to being beaten by it, despite it being tarmacked and me being on a mountain-bike I was forced to get off and push the top part… I shall beat it next time! From here I cycled along...
I had a tough day at the office yesterday… Started work at 4am and worked until 10.30am, stopping to help get Morgan off to nursery and Anna off to work, then the fun began. A good windsurf session off the beach here at Ynyslas. The windsurfing itself was good, lots of wind and some decent waves, and then the weather got interetsing too. First the sky went very dark indeed and we were surrounded by thunder and lightning (I got off the water as a 4m carbon mast is likely to attract the lightning and I don’t fancy finding out what happens if it hits it whilst I’m attached!), then some really strange looking dark clouds swriled overhead and we were hit by a massive hailstorm, then the wind dropped off, so I packed up and headed home.
As soon as I got home the sun came out...
Seeing as James asked for a daily updates as far as my attempts to get fit are concerned, here are the stats from my Mountain Bike Ride around the Pendam Trail at Nant-yr-Arian today.
First the route itself:
My Speed and Heart Rate graph… Max 172bpm once again!
And the summary stats.
After the first lap I then did another lap of the most northerly loop, and on the way checked in on a couple of my geocaches to make sure they were OK. Both caches were fine, but the tree hiding the cache at Blaenmelindwr has been felled and a few people have had problems with the coordinates for the cache at Syfyddrin, so I took some new readings with my Forerunner 305 which has a better GPS receiver than my old eTrex.
I was impressed with the performance of the Foreunner, as it seemed to keep...
I seem to be becoming GPS enabled in all walks of life these days. It started with a Garmin eTrex that I originally bought to see how fast I could go whilst windsurfing and then started using for geocaching.
I had a TomTom One XL for my birthday which has been working well and is good fun in the car and now I’ve recently ordered a Garmin Forerunner 305.
Well, as usual at this time of year loads of people decide it is time to get fit and shed some of that Xmas excess, and I’m one of them so I have started running and mountain-biking in an attempt to regain some of my fitness. I thought if I splashed out on a GPS enabled heart-rate monitor to track my progress then I would have to keep at it in order to justify the expense.
It hasn’t arrived yet, but I shall write a...
The weekend just gone was the date of our annual family pre-christmas get together and rather than go ‘Xmas Tree Hunting’ near Bristol most of the Cole family met up at Coed-Y-Brenin for a walk in the woods. My parents arrived here on Friday evening and then on Saturday morning we all headed off to Coed y Brenin where we met Jay, Megan, Harry, Charlie and jack (Jennie couldn’t make it), Brad (Eloise couldn’t make it) and Trudi, Kia and Shaun. We also met up with a small Ynyslas contingent of Simon, Sarah and Josh and Dave and Sarah.
It was a cold crisp and clear day so once we were all together we headed to the visitor centre before deciding most people would go off for a walk in the woods and to see Santa whilst Dave, Sarah and I had a little mountain bike ride....
I had another nice day in the hills today mountain-biking with Reg, Shem and Martin. We started at Pendam where I met Reg at around 10am and had a cup of tea, Shem and Martin turned up, Shem with his brand new bike. A Giant Anthem which looked really nice and was pretty light too. We had a little ride around most of the Pendam Trail then stopped for a cuppa before heading of towards Nant-y-Moch and back.
Nothing too strenuous, just a steady pace with lots of little stops. Shem’s new bike didn’t quite make it though as a seal on his front forks blew with a nice pop-shhhhh kind of sound so he will be sending the bike back to get it repaired/replaced.
I’ve decided that I usually do a days gardening for local OAPS each week just to get myself away from my computer and my...
I’ve had another action packed weekend here in Mid Wales. Enjoying the best that the area has to offer, all thanks to Anna who of course had Morgan to contend with on Saturday whilst I enjoyed myself.
Steve arived at around 9am and we headed off to Pendam for a mountain bike ride out to Angler’s Retreat and back. I had done this route a couple of times at night whilst following others from the Ystwyth Cycling Club, but hadn’t done it in the daylight or found the route on my own.
The route finding was fine and if anything it was easier at night, but the route itself was good with a good variety of surfaces and technical difficulty and not too much sustained climbing. It was pretty cold and wet up there and the wind was picking up so we only did the one route of about 14...
There was no wind forecast this weekend and after a brief visit to Coed y Brenin a few weeks ago I was dying to try out some of the moutnain biking trails there so I made an early start on Saturday and met Steve in the car park at 9am.
We decided to do the trail called ‘The Beast’ which is basically a combination of the MBR and ‘The Dragons Back’ trails and according to the trail guides is 38km long, rated as a black run and therefore only suitable for experienced riders used to prolonged physical effort and difficult terrain and should take between 3 and 6 hours.
The trail starts off with some well constructed rocky singletrack which was very bumpy for Steve and I on our hardtail mountain bikes. It then climbs up the hill on a combination of forest roads and...
Anther busy weekend has been and gone. It was the Aberdovey Windsurf Demo weekend and typically there was no wind at all forecast. I did show willing and drive around to Aberdovey on Saturday morning and had a little look at the kit. Not much was happening but seeing as there was no wind at all that wasn’t surprising.
I did meet some people we windsurfed with in Dahab though which was good, but by around 11.30 we decided it was time to head off for some mountain biking. Steve, AndyW and I headed off to do the Climachx Trail and we passed a couple of the kitesurfers (Graham and Jon) on the trail. After gettgin nice and muddy we then headed off to the beach at Ynyslas for a quick surf which was really nice after a hot sweaty bike ride.
Steve stayed over on Saturday night so we had a...
Continuing my exploration of the local trails I decided to have a go at the Climachx Trail to the north of Machynlleth yesterday. I’m not feeling much fitter yet, so I have to keep plugging away and get out doing some exercise as often as possible and the write up about this trail sounded interesting:
The cli-machx is is sited in the Dyfi forest; home of the Raw Dyfi Enduro. It’s a 15km round trip, with 9km of built single track with compressions and whoops, rock slab drop offs and some beautiful flowing turns. The last descent is the longest in Wales and features rocky jumps; watch out for the ‘eye of the needle’; a huge jump with a narrow landing between two trees on the other side. The finale is a sequence of eight huge berms following quickly after each other. Hit them...
I had a busy day on Friday. After a 5am start in order to do a couple of hours work, I took Anna to work and Morgan to nursery and then drove up to Llyn Pendam to meet Steve. We then had an enjoyable Mountain Bike ride around a combination of the Summit Trail and the Pendam Trail. We started from Pendam rather than Nant-yr-Arian.
When we finished we couldn’t quite resist a swim in the lake so after dropping off a travel bug in my nearby geocache we jumped in and had a short but very invigorating swim in the Llyn Pendam. It actually wasn;t that bad, it certainly wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t too cold either and felt quite nice.
The I had to rush home, drop off my bike, go to work for a few hours, fill up with diesel, collect Morgan from nursery, collect Anna from work and...
Steve had the week off this week and wanted to go out for a cycle in the hills. I should really have done some work, but couldn’t resist a day playing on our bikes so we headed off to the hills around 9am. I know, ‘It’s a Hard Life!’, but you only get one life so too much work and not enough play isn’t the way to live it.
We started off on the Pendam Trail but as soon as we got going Steve realised he couldn’t change gears properly. Not surprising really as his front derailleur was clogged up with dirt and grime. there wasn’t a lot we could do about it there so I put it into the middle cog for him and off we went. Steve was a little uneasy on the technical downhill bits, but was better than me on the uphills. Cycling to work everyday for the last...
Could this be the beginning of me getting fit once again? I’ve been out on my bike a couple of times again this week and once again on Friday afternoon I did a couple of circuits of the Pendam Trail at Nant-yr-Arian. It was a little wetter and therefore slightly more slippery than before this time, so I took it easy the first time around and yet again did it in 48 minutes.
I pushed a little harder the 2nd time around and completed it is 42 minutes which is a record for me. I still have quite a way to go as far as strength and fitness for the climbs go, but a 45 minute work-out is more than I’ve done for a while so hopefully if I keep it up I’ll improve and will soon be able to beat5 40 minutes. Who knows I may even loose some weight in the process.
Of course, it...
After working yesterday morning whilst it rained outside, it brightened up in the afternoon so I decided to go out for another ride on my new bike and explore some likely looking trails.
I set off from home and cycled along the road to Tre’r Ddol and then found a bridle path that I wanted to follow. Unfortunately it was far too steep, far too muddy and far too difficult for me to cycle up so I ended up pushing the bike. Not a great start, but once at the top the views back down to Ynyslas and Aberdovey made it all worthwhile. From there I followed a muddy track acorss the top of the hill and then made a tricky, rocky descent down towards the mountnain road that goes from Talybont up to Nant y Moch. I then rode all the way up this long climb to the top and then headed off on the...
I was ill last week and did very little work on Friday, but I did find the energy to pit my new bike together which arrived from Evans Cycles that afternoon. In fact there wasn’t much to do, the pedals needed fitting, the handlebars needed aligning and the headset tightened and I made a few adjustments to the stem height and brake/gear lever alignments and then it was ready to go.
I didn’t feel well enough to get out on it though so instead I did a little bit more tinkering. Adjusted the shocks, attached water bottles and little saddle bag thing to carry some spares and set up the cleats on my shoes. It then really was ready to go anI couldn’t wait to get out on it.
I haven’t been on a bike for about 12 years and probably haven’t ridden one in anger for about...
Saturday was a miserable day here, grey and damp so we had a family outing to the supermarket and a naughty lunch at MacDonalds!
By about 5pm the weather in Borth looked to have cleared a little. It was still grey, still a little damp but at least the rain had stopped, so as I was itching to get out on my bike, Anna gave me a few hours to go out and play and i loaded up the car and headed off to the hills. By the time I got to bow street the hills looked as though they were shrouded in cloud, by Penrhyncoch my windscreen wipers came on and by the time I got halfway up the hill to Pendam it was lashing down… Still, I was here ow so I wasn’t going to let a lot of rain stop me.
Usually when you get to Pendam you see a few other cyclists out, but not today, there was no one around...
