Two dry weekends in a row - Bristol
Two dry weekends in a row and been out on both. Weekend before we took out road bikes out for a spin round Bristol on the regional route 10 (we live a couple of miles from this).
The route is nominally 85 miles, but as some of the road conditions were terrible - still lots of run-off and tractor-spread mud on the roads we were very slow trying not to fall off - and not get the bikes too dirty (failed there - the bikes ended up looking worse than my mountain bike after a typical ride!!) so we took a short cut above bristol and cut the length down to 65 miles. Great litte ride - although if we do it again I will cut out the short route through the avonmouth industrial section as this goes off road onto dirt track at one point - and one of the motorway underpasses was flooded!
This last weekend we decided to go for a short off-road spin into Bristol and back. Went out via one of the bridleways at the back of the village out past Bristol Airport. This would be a nice little route apart from off-roaders and Trailbikers have been churning this up so there are large areas of liquid mud and deep ruts everywhere. After crossing Brockley coombe and dropping down Bourton Coombe we decided to try out a few untried bridleways on the map. The first one saw us turn around at a flooded meadow with a rushing stream in the middle, so it was back on the road and up to Failand. The second bridleway was also a little overgrown as the landowner has fenced it off from the field which just results in the growth of nettles and brambles. So after this we stuck to more familiar territory and swung through Ashton court on the Timberland trail and then out and over to Liegh Woods. Unfortunately we are not familiar with Leigh Woods and there are no real trails marked up, so we had to wing it to drop down to the riverside path, this saw a couple of about turns as trails turned out to head in the wrong direction. I can see that there is a lot of potential here - but without a trail map it is a long way to cycle for us, so I will not try Leigh woods again until I can tag along with someone who knows there way around. Then it was a bit of a slog along the old tow path, and then roads until the bridleways around Cadbury camp at Tickenham. Then more road slog until we headed up Cleeve Hill and dropped the other bridleway back into the village and home.
A good day out - 60km in total and just under 1000m of climbing. And the Enduro proved itself capable of being ridden on longer XC routes, well by me anyway, so my rebuilt rockhopper may get resigned to back up come pub bike duties.
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