Dylan's Ride Blog

Epic ride

Sat, 27 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I have ticked my mega ride box for the year already, and it's still only May. How's this sound: York, Whitby Scarborough? 92 miles all told, and at least 40 of these off-road, often on technical single-track. The first 35 miles on quiet back roads and fairly benign gravel tracks were fine and I made good, fast progress. All to fast, as having cleared the woods between Sinnington and Cropton, after 4 hours in the saddle, I started to feel the first signs of cramp in my legs. Just before lunch the pain was bad enough that I had to walk a few of the rocky sections I knew I'd normally ride, because my legs had turned to jelly.

Rosedale provided a big lunch and 40 minutes break, but no Indian Tonic water (which had previously proved to work against cramp) , but the gruelling climb up Knott Road knocked me back again, and by the top of Glaisdale Moor, the cramps had returned. The rocket like descent from Glaisdale Rigg restored my good humour, but the hard climb in East Arncliffe Woods really started to hurt. Fortunatly I made it to Sleights and a shop selling Tonic Water in pretty reasonable shape, although I did stay on the road from Grosmont, as I just wasn?t up to offroad by then. After guzzling tonic water, and getting more than a few odd looks, my legs started to work again, and I got some really speed along the road. Once I picked up NCN route one by the viaduct in Whitby it was just a matter of keeping on slogging up to the top at Ravenscar. After that it was just a matter of gently pedalling to keep the speed up down the long downhill to Scarborough.

'Special Bridleway'

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:50:06 GMT

Did a quick 18 or so miles around Scarborough. There's actually quite a bit of bridleway around the town, plus a few semi-urban paths that nobody seems to pay to much attention to the exact legal status of. I also got to blast round the top of Raincliffe Woods. Technically only part of it is bridleway, and that's probably the least interesting half, but let's just say if you behave sensibly and ride it outside of the busiest times, you will probably not do any harm. Do watch you speed on some of the really swoopy fast bits, as the path is narrow, and popular with dog walkers. There are a few dangling branches and logs to catch the unwary too.

Spring

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I managed to ride at least part of the Nawton route. It's all drying out nicely, and the section around Hold Cauldron was really nice. The bridge is still out but the river is easy to cross when it's dry

Winter madness

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 00:00:00 GMT

Rode a long route in the snow up on Sutton Bank. Very cold and snowed most of the way around. The sky cleared sometimes, to offer amazing views. The only sting in the tail was a nasty cold crossing of the river, as the bridge had disappeared in the floods. Funny how a bit of snow will reduce most bikes to an unreliable cluncker as snow+9 speed transmission = nightmare

Technical stuff

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:05:51 GMT

Been playing around with using MS's Virtual Earth for mapping, rather than google maps. The biggest plus is that it has high res images for the moors, unlike google's horrid fuzziness. I hope to have something fit to link from the main site shortly. In the meantime here's a work in progress: http://www.moraine.co.uk/mapping/routes/route2.aspx?route=39 sadly the damn thing is IE only at the moment, but expect that to change

Great time to ride

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:25:15 GMT

Rode the Nawton loop, and it's all in great shape. The usual muddy spots are all dry (yeah!), and the trails are fast and dusty. Shame the RC atlas BB is starting to give out after only 400 miles. Not impressed, but at least RF's warrenty should sort me out

Geeking around

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I have just converted the main map over to MS Virtual Earth. It's slightly slower than Gmaps to load, the API is hard work, but the map does look rather nice. Still got some issues in FF to fix before I can flip the route maps over to VE, but once done you'll see the routes in amazing detail. VE is slightly less bling than Gmaps unless you are prepared to work on tweaking, but the level of detail is amazing. Just try zooming in and in and you'll see what I mean... At some point I'll blog what technology is used, as it's a real alphabet soup involving AJAX/Atlas, webservice and VE

Mapping fun

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:49:38 GMT

The main map is now powered by virtual earth, and I think it's significantly better than the old version. The route map has been done in virtual earth to, but I found that there are some problems in firefox I simply can't fix, so until the mapping control works a little better, the google one stays. Speaking of google, there seems to be a fair bit of traffic coming from there of late. By virtue of a few design tricks, and lots of content this site seems to rank well in google at the moment.

It doesn't get much better than this!

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 23:23:00 GMT

If you can stand the heat, and don't mind lugging around a full load of water, you really need to do a big ride now. There's almost no mud, only dust. Can't wait to get out there and ride some more before all too soon, it's back to bike and soul destroying mud.

Italy vs. UK

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:35:47 GMT

Just back from a week in La Marche, Italy. I took my bike, and got to ride some really nice routes in the mountains. It's interesting to compare riding abroad against the UK: On the plus side, was the total lack of mud, and fast, dusty trails. On the negative side, was the 32 deg heat, huge hill and the lack of decent maps.

Although there were quite a few long sloggy uphill sections, which are inevitable in a very mountainous area, the payback was equally huge descents, some of which were very narrow and technical. Riding down zig-zag paths takes skill and nerve, especially when you start to notice the big drops and the lack of grip that loose rocks offers. My biggest gripe, was that even with the aid of a local topographic map, which had walking routes marked on it, finding good routes was a challenge, as the map didn't really show what was legal to ride on (although nobody challenged me when I rode forest tracks), nor have nearly the same level of detail as an OS 50,000 scale map.

Still, if you ever happen to find yourself in Pianello, near Cagli, there are several way marked trails on Monte Nerone and the surrounding hills that will reward the long climbs that you have to make. The trails are for the most part technically easy (even though you need to be fit to get up the hills) as they seemed to be aimed at fairly modest mountain bikes, although the downhills will get even Hope M4s very hot. So much so, my disc rotors have gone a funny shade of blue in parts! If you fancy sometime a little more challenging, there are walking trails that are sometimes ridable, if not very steep in parts. I scared myself stupid on a narrow path far above a river: one slip on a loose rock, and it would have been time for some 'big air'.

The real action in Italy seems to be on road bikes, and it's rare that you don't see somebody attempting one of the large mountain passes except during the hottest part of the day. It being Italy, the bikes are inevitably very nice road bikes, with well dressed and very honed riders on them. To my great suprise most riders seem to be able to cope with one water bottle, whereas I was going through several litres of water every hour. Either they have some secret supply of roadside water to replenish themselves with, or else they are far more acclimatised them me.

You've come a long way, Dalby

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Just back from a quick evening ride in Dalby, to see the new trails. Very promising. Apart from the jumps and boards of Dixons Hollow, there's a lot under construction around the start of the black run, and it looks pretty promising. Fast, technical and good fun. It looks like quality manmade trails have come to Dalby Forest at last. I'll be back to see what it looks like when the various bits link up to make a coherent route, rather than the current bits and pieces.

Still. Although I enjoy man made trails, and admit there's quite a buzz you get from a section of trail that has been designed for a bike, my favourite stuff is still what the happy accident of nature and ancient packhorse trails have made. Sure, it's not flowing, and you may find yourself riding anything from a grinding road climb, to a barely rideable mud bath, but that's all part of the fun.

New route in progress

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I've been investigating a new route in the area from Pickering to north of Newton on Rawcliff. I've ridden part already, and walked part, and will hopefully get to ride the whole thing soon enough and right it up on here.

There's some nice riding in the area, with a lovely fast downhill from Newton, which connects to a nice technical rocky climb, which can then connect to some nice, but muddy tracks around Cropton forest, but as always the hard part is to make these isolated bits into a coherent route, and then to investigate the route fully, before writing it all up and sticking it on the site.

Who's been stealing our bridleways?

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Did a post work ride around the north and west of York yesterday. My goal was to stay offroad as much as possible, and use legal rights of way. There's a nice riverside bridleway from Nether Poppleton along the river, but annoyingly there's no bridge over the Nidd to get across to Nun Monkton, to connect to the new permissive BWs on the other side of the river.

Carrying on, I found that what used to be a bridleway from Rufford to Hutton Wandesley, has now been downgraded to a footpath. This hacks me off greatly, for several reasons. It's a useful route which helps link up some of the local trails (which are already in shortsupply), York city council has spent money, yes, our money, on taking away access that we tax payers previously enjoyed. The money spent on the paperwork and new signage, and there's lot of nasty little signs telling horse and bikes to f**k off, could actually be spent on maintaining or improving existing access, rather than taking it away. And all for what? The path was certainly capable of withstanding horse/bike traffic, and had the right sort of gates, nor did it go through a garden or farmyard, which might understandably be a reason for a diversion. Presumably a local landowner leaned on the parish council to get the route downgraded. I did actually attempt to complain to the city council about this when the signs warning of the change of access went up, and I did contact the local IMBA rep about it, but whatever efforts that were made, it wasn't enough and now I find myself breaking the law, by riding something I could have legally ridden last year. Grrrr.

Rain, rain go away

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Argggghhhhhh! Having recovery from last week's trip and got the bike reassembled and working (thanks mr baggage handler for managing to bend my outer chainring), I was ready to sample some nice dry dusty trails afterwork. By all accounts the moors are tinder dry. Well, the weather had other ideas, and pouring rain on the bike, home from work was enough for me.

Paper maps and blatent commercialisation

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I've added some links from where I mention the relevant OS map for a particular route. The link goes to Aqua3 who sell both normal paper maps and special laminated waterproof versions of each map. Why I am doing this? Well, I'll be honest, and say I make some money from each purchase, which goes towards the cost of running this site. But, if you do purchase a map this way, you'll get a discount over the regular price, so it's not a bad deal for you either. Sure, the waterproof maps are expensive, but they are worth it if you ride in all weathers.

I don't want to recommend something I wouldn't use. Even before I set up this arrangement I was a happy user of Aqa3 maps. Having destroyed many paper maps over the year, I found a waterproof map was better value. Once a paper map gets wet, the paper starts to tear at the folds, and even if you dry it out carefully, the map just starts to fall into several peices. If you don't dry it properly, it tends to turn into a lump of paper pulp sitting in the bottom of your bag, and is pretty much useless from then on.

I may add other similar commercial deals in future. Not because I want to get fabulously rich from this site, but to help offset the costs in time and money of running this site. I will only promote stuff I use myself (unless they pay me staggeringly huge amounts of money), and that is relevant and useful to the visitors to the site. So, no popup ads!

Map reading and navigation

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I have just added some notes on how to read a map, and various other navigational techniques of use to mountain bikers to the site. A quick bit of googling found there's actually not that many places which have a simple summary of map reading and navigation techniques in one place.

It's not intended as substitute for experience, nor will reading it ensure you never get lost again. Hopefully it will give those of you who are a little bit rusty a timely reminder. After all, geography in school was a long time ago, and you may not have been paying attention. Now that summer is on the wane, we have low cloud and early nightfall to look forward to, and navigation cockup are both easier to make, and more potentially dangerous. After all, nobody likes being lost in the middle of nowhere, just as the sun starts to set.

I haven't described taking a bearing in any great detail, as it's just not something you'll use that often, and it's hard to explain.

If anybody has suggestions, or disagrees, please let me know.

New route - Pickering Newtondale Forest

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I managed to get out and do some riding between the inevitable bank holiday showers. First a nice blast around my favourite, 'special bridleway' in Raincliffe woods. As well as the usual route, I also tried a nice descent in Cockrah woods. Sadly, none of the legal bits link up into a particularly good route, so I'm not going to publish it here, but if I you find yourself on the top edge of Raincliffe woods you can pretty much figure it out for yourself.

I did actually manage to ride the whole of a route I have been considering for a while. It's a bit of a mixed bag, with some fairly boring farm tracks, but also a few really tricky descents, and an absolute classic bit of technical singletrack over Stony Moor, which lives up to it's name, with loads rocks scattered along a nice narrow path. I must confess I failed to clear all of the rocks, and managed to fall off once or twice. Fortunatly there was nobody to see my mistakes, as it's always more of an injury to pride than anything else when you fall off when going less than 3 mph. Still, it's a great challenge for anybody who fancies themselves as an expert at 'trials' like moves. If you do ride the route, do watch out for the big descent. The ruts and roots are pretty hairly and in wet weather will be sure to send you over the bars, assuming you have the cojones to ride it.

Why no reference to classic books on this subject?

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:22:21 GMT

Mountaincraft and leadership, by Eric Langmuir is the classic you should look at.

The Rosedale Railway

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

There's a nice track that runs around the Rosedale valley. There's a funny thing about this route: It's been used for years by local bikers, and variations on it have been published in national MTB magazines. It has become legal to ride in the last few years, although there were some legal issues along the way. I'd like to feature it here. But there's a catch: It's a permissive bridleway.

At risk of coming over all frumpy, I'm loathe to publish anything on here that is not 100% legal and above board, and despite the route being legal, there's some odd rules about promotion of the route, so I need get the route cleared by the landowner before I can actually publish it, which will hopefully be in the near future.

Here's the deal: A lot of the route is a permissive right of way. What that means is the landowner has given permission for it to be used by bikes. If the landowner thinks that allowing access may cause him/her problems, that consent can be withdrawn. Which means I have to be careful about mentioning something that is already blinding obvious to anybody with a map. Of course, you may well know about this route, so if you do please be responsible about using it. At risk of repeating myself: Don't scare the redsocks, or livestock, try to avoid causing further erosion to muddy bits, and generally try and be a good example. I know it sounds really square to say it, but if we all do a good job, we might get more places to ride. Mess it up, and we lose places to ride. It's that simple.

New domain on the way

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I have just moved the site to a new domain name: www.mtb-routes.co.uk/northyorkmoors The DNS entry will take a day or so to take effect, and it's going to take a while for the search engines to pick this up. In the meantime the old site will still be up and running, and when I eventually take it down, it will just redirect to the new one.

Moving domain and search engine stuff...

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Well, if you are reading this, you can probably tell the domain has moved. If you do happen to link to this site, please adjust your links to point to the new domain. The old domain will redirect to the new for a while.

Now, all that remains is to wait for the search engines to notice the change and adjust the links. If only it was that easy. The war between search engines and spam means that there are alsorts of delays and checks built into adding a new listing, and a new domain, even one full of content seems to be regarded with suspicion by the various spiders, who are trying to tell if it's yet another page full of fake content and page rank enhancing links to the usual pills, p0rn ponzi scheme vendors.

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:55:48 GMT

Rosedale round is nice easy going ride, made all the better by being able to start and finish at The Lion on Blakey Ridge, finish ride with meal there-perfect end to good ride. Have to agree though Dylan we should do all we can not to upset locals and keep off worst muddy bits so we don't spoil it for all. Lots of choices with it as well to make it more challenging if you want.

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:07:55 GMT

Just had a look at their web-site, nice how it welcomes you linking from this site and the discount is very good, bought plenty of paper maps and got them wet, still to try the laminated ones this could be kick up backside I need to get one. Thanks Dylan

Bring on the night

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:11:16 GMT

Despite the current warm weather, there's no getting away from the fact that summer has left the building. Gone are dusty trails and sitting outside the pub after the ride. In are gritty and muddy trails, and long sessions of bike cleaning and rebuilding afterwards. It's not all bad news though, there's no excuse to go into hibernation or swap handlebars for the remote just yet. Time to put some mud tyres on the bike, or better yet dust off the winter hack bike, charge your lights up and get out there for a night ride. I did just that today, for the first time since last winter. Suddenly, what was a boring hack around nettle and dog poo infested local trails, became a challenging ride, despite never going more than a few miles from York.

OK, so it's not quite the same as swiftly gliding along smooth dusty trails, with the promise of a beer outside the pub afterwards, but night riding has some attractions all of it own. Granted good lights cost a small fortune, and the cheaper lights seem to compromise on weight, brightness and endurance. But sitting inside dreaming of summer has it's own costs, which you'll only become too aware of when you start to ride again after a winter off the bike. Some of the things that make night rides fun are a) suprised looks from motorists who slow down in the face of a veritable wall of oncoming light, only to discover it's a bike, rather than a UFO, b) how going down a muddy hill at 10 mph feels more like 25 mph as you wizz along a narrow tunnel of night, surrounded by pitch black. c) explaining to non bikers how your lights actually cost more than several 'halfords value' bikes. d) the slightly smug feeling that you get when you realise that 10 miles of mud, crashes and equipment destruction is actually more enjoyable what was on TV that evening.

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:11:16 GMT

It's worth noting there's also a permissive bridleway from just north of Lastingham to the top of Rosedale Chinmey via Ana Cross, that is mentioned on the DEFRA access site, if you search for North Yorkshire bridleways.

Veggies look away now...

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:40:23 GMT

Somebody at work was bemoaning the lack of taste of supermarket meat, and the disapearence of traditional butchers. As good food is something of an interest of mine, I was able to reel off a list of places I knew about that sold good quality meat. I thought I'd stick it down in my blog, as mountain bikers are pretty fond of a good roast dinner.

MK Philip, Bishopthorpe Road, York. Friendly butchers selling local meat, also sells game.
Tony Neary, Clifton Green, York. Local meat and Aberdeen Angus beef.
Derek Fox, Malton. Butchers with all the usual stuff, cheeses, and a varied selection of game, including stuff you'll rarely see elsewhere.
G Scott, York. Specialist pork butcher, who make really, really good sausages. Not cheap, but if you stop and think what's in sausage, cheap isn't so good.

There's plenty more places, so if I have missed somewhere, add it to the comments. Small towns like Kirbymoorside and Pickering still have decent butchers, so you can buy some meat on the way to the ride (the meat isn't going to spoil after being left in the car for a few hours in winter). Farmers markets also sell meat, but they are only in town once a month.

Incidently, if you've never tried game, this is the season to do it. The pheasant season starts on the 1st of October, and autumn is the time when a lot of game is in season. There's nothing quite like a brace of pheasants, roast spuds and fresh brocolli as a satisfying, locally sourced, seasonal meal after a long muddy ride. Once the clocks go back there's plenty of time after you get home from a ride to cook, and put dinner on the table at a sensible time; so why not support the local economy and eat proper food?

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:39:35 GMT

On the same theme, if fish is your thing, Alliance Fish, which is by the docks in both Whitby and Scarborough sells freshly caught fish from local boats.

Cream crackered

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:58:26 GMT

I managed to get out and ride a new route today. It was a monster. As well as the actual planned route, I scouted a new permissive bridleway I noticed, with the intention that can be added to an existing route. Just over 40 miles in total, when I got back to the car, tired and filthy. 40 miles for a mountain bike ride is a lot, as this particular route is pretty much all offroad

Despite the recent rain, the ground was damp, but still rideable, aside from a bit of a mudfest in a place called Farwath. Even a little bit of mud makes you have to put more effort in, and concentrate to avoid spills. I really must put some winter tyres on the bike, as it's no use pretending it will dry out again this year, as there were times when I just could get a decent grip. Funnily enough I followed the tyre tracks of a group off riders over Simon Howe, and noticed with amusement, somebody was still riding slicks. If summer tyres were slidey on peat, I can only wonder you many times the person riding on slicks feel off.

I'll write the ride up later in the week. I'm quite pleased with the route, as there's loads of moorland singletrack, including a bit that has only recently been made up to a right of way, and makes for a great bit of technical moorland riding.

Bridges fixed?

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:59:34 GMT

According to the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/5379178.stm the last bridge destroyed in the floods of last year has been replaced. I'm pretty sure they mean the bridge at SE 531 909, which is part of the Hawnby route. The one snag is that the BW is still technically closed, according to the North York Moors National Park website. I'm sure it will be formally open again soon, now there's a bridge, and no point keeping it closed.

If anybody knows any different please tell!

Boring technical stuff

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:52:40 GMT

I've been messing around with the code which does the blogs. I've added some support for archiving blog entries, which puts all the data in a search engine friendly format. I'm also adding support for tags, which allows blog articles to be filed in different categories. None of which you really care about, quite understandably so, although it might help you find your way here from search engines.

Easy route in Rosedale

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 23:57:40 GMT

Just added a nice easy route in Rosedale. I'm pretty sure the hardcore rider has enough routes on this site, but for those who are new to mountain biking, and don't want to ride around yet another forest, there's not nearly enough here.

It's also a nice route to try and introduce non riders to proper mountain biking. Scaring or injuring people just isn't the best way to try and get people to like mountain biking (been there, done that!), so the ideal route for the beginner should be fairl easy, yet still give you a taste of what 'proper' mountain biking is all about.

Please feel free to leave feedback if you think this sort of route is a good idea, or if you think I should concentrate on the harder routes.

Turning of the seasons

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:43:57 GMT

I managed to get out and ride a new route today. It's that funny transition season, where it's still warm enough for shorts, yet my summer tyres, which had been fine for the last 5 months, were pretty useless as soon as I hit the mud. Sadly stinging nettles are still very much alive, and quite potent still. The leaves have just started to turn, and the wooded riding was very pretty.

It's a bit sad to know that unless I manage to ride when it's completely frozen, all rides from now 'til May 07 will be muddy, slidey things, involving much cleaning of the bike afterwards.

Sloe gin and other foraging antics

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:28:47 GMT

Just like everyone else, I like food. I especially like fresh food that hasn't gone through the whole supply chain. Partially, as it's free, and fresh, and partially just a sense of satisfaction at cutting out the middleman. I guess it's the hunter-gather in me coming out.

This is the season when the hedge rows and moors are just full of food free for the taking. Blackberries have pretty much gone now, but bilberries can still be found on the moors. Although they are really fiddly to pick, they taste lovely. Mixing them with vanilla icecream stretches them out a bit and is something I'd recommend. You can use them in baking, as a substute for blueberries (yum: bilberry muffins!) This year looks to be a great apple season and every apple tree is just loaded with rippening fruit. Apple crumble with fresh apples is one of the highlights of the season, although sadly it's too late to make blackberry and apple pie, unless you froze some blackberries in August or September.

I've also picked parasol mushrooms when out walking in Nidderdale, and they are lovely, when fried in olive oil. With the delightful taste, comes a little fear, as some mushrooms are very poisonous. Mushrooms are a something where you really need to have an identification guide to hand, and be absolutely sure you can positively identify which mushroom it is before you eat them. I'm not sure how many people die from mushroom poisioning, but why take the chance?

And last ,but not least, are sloes. Most hedgerows are full of the little, bitter, black coloured berries. They are not very edible on their own, but stick them in gin for several months and the gin takes on a rich burgundy colour, and a taste which is like a very rich old wine, but with a kick. You can use vodka rather than gin, and the end result is much the same. I guess any strong, flavourless spirt would work. As regards the sloes, folk lore has it that you should wait until after the first frosts, but anytime in October seems to work in my experience, as in these days of climate change you could be waiting a long time for for jack frost. Just make sure the berries are plump and ripe.

Here's my lazy recipe for sloe gin: Pick lots of sloes. Gloves make this a less painful process, as the bushes they grow on are thorny! Get a bottle of gin, it doesn't have to be a particularly good gin, as the flavour is going to come from the sloes, not the gin. Decant the gin into a container. Fill the empty bottle with as many sloes as you can get in. If a few leaves end up in the bottle as well, so be it. Add in a hundred grams or so of sugar to take a wee bit of the bitterness out, and fill the bottle with the remaining gin. Repeat the same with another empty bottle (screwtop wine bottles work pretty well). Shake the bottles and then leave them. You can give the bottle a shake every few weeks or so if you remember to, but don't worth if you don't. Around Christmas, decant the now dark coloured gin into another bottle and enjoy it after a cold winter's day. If you are as lazy as I am, you can leave the sloes in the bottle, and just pour off the gin as you need to. Although once they have been in the bottle a few months, the sloes have done their job, there's no harm in leaving them longer. In fact, if you have any left, it should keep for years. If you have picked more sloes than you need, and have some cooking apples, you can have a go at sloe and apple jelly, but that's a whole lot more work.

Of course, you can buy sloe gin ready made, but where's the fun in that? Just like buying blackberries in a supermarket, when the hedgerows are full of the same fruit for free, it just seems to be a parable of how detached from nature we have become.

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 18:46:02 GMT

One more for the list: B.W. & D.J. Glaves and Sons, in Brompton by Sawdon (between Pickering and Scarborough). Really excellent meat from a village butchers. The meat is locally sourced and slaughtered on the premises.

Offroad time estimation

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I'm playing around with a little application to help calculate how long it takes to do a route. Why do this, and why not just include a estimated time value for each route? Firstly giving a time estimate for a route is inaccurate: there's just too many variables. Rider fitness, trail conditions and unforeseen events can all conspire to make an estimate inaccurate. Instead, I have added a calculator which gives you the ability to produce an estimate that you can tweak for your own particular needs. Of course, the caveats I just listed still very much apply. In general, I found the estimates work reasonably well, at least in good conditions. You can revise the average speeds downwards to allow for winter conditions, but you still need to bear in mind that winter conditions increase the likelyhood of mechanicals and other difficulties which may slow you down. If you are using the calculator to work out if you can complete a particular route by a certain time (i.e. before it gets dark), don't forgot to allow a healthy safety margin to allow for any problems, and of course rest stops.

The page uses a modified version of Naismith's rule, with the numbers modified for mountain biking, with the addition of some 'fudge factors' to allow for the difficulty of the route, and your fitness. When you link to the page from a route it populates the length and height gain from the route for you.

In use I found it suprisingly accurate. It can't possibly allow for every unplanned puncture, every missed turn and the axle deep mud pit you'd didn't know was there. Despite this, the numbers are certainly in the ball park. You can further improve accuracy by adjusting your average speeds, if you have a reasonably good idea what these are. I allow about 17 mph on the road, and about 13 mph for off road. If it's winter, and I expect mud, I tend to use a 10 mph average, which if anything is on the high side.

Please feel free to comment on how well this works, and if you have suggestions. I'd be particularly interested to know how accurate this is compared to your own real world rides.

To see it in action, just pick a route and look at the time estimate page.

Reaching your limits

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:15:25 GMT

Ever had "one of those" rides where you just wished you did an indoor sport, or lived in a better climate? I did this weekend.

I did what I thought was a short ride on Saturday. For various reasons I didn't actually hit the start of the trail until 4:30 in the afternoon. No problem I thought, as I had my oh-so-bright-HID lights on the bike, and I was on my winter single speed hack bike armed with some mud tyres. I might be out a little past sunset, but nothing I can't handle. I had also forgotten that I had only the lightest of lunches.

The ride was in the Wolds, which by this time of the year, are pretty muddy. Worse still, the summer's undergrowth had still not died back, so riding conditions were a combination of long grass (which slows you down a lot more than you think) and mud. To add further difficulty, the ploughing season has started.

The first part of the ride went fine. Muddy fields and long draggy climbs were dispatched against the backdrop of long shadows over the rolling hills of the wolds, and the sort of dramatic cloudscape that you only really notice in the country. As the sun started to set, things started to go pear shaped. A nice grassy bridleway turned into a ploughed field, with no grass margin to ride along. A few hundred yards of field took minutes rather than seconds to cross. Then, what would have been a hard but rideable climb, turned into a long bike push, as I just couldn't muster enough grunt to keep the pedals turning. By this time it was dark enough to see the stars and the lights of the villages and farms below. I got to a gravel track that headed downhill, and turned on the lights. Suddenly, my view of the world turned from a fairly shadowy panorama, to a bright bubble of light in front of me and utter blackness all around. One thing that makes night riding so different, is that the perception of speed is different. Heading down a well surfaced gravel track by day would have been pleasant, but nothing special, compared to a 'proper' technical trail. In my travelling bubble of light, 20 mph felt like rushing down a tunnel at twice that speed. As I stopped for a rest I could hear owls hooting in the woods, which sounded a little spooky. Thoughts of mad axe-men hunting for unwary fools did cross my mind.

After getting pretty wet in a lurking puddle (judging the depth of water is even harder in the dark), I arrived at a road, with soaking wet legs. Suddenly I started to feel cold and tired, despite only having been 16 miles. At this point I decided that it was better to deviate from the planned route, and stay on the road and go around a hill, rather than over it on the bridleway. I then had a long draggy road climb to bring me back to the orginal route. This soon had me very warm, but no less tired. I stopped for a look at the map, at a junction which was the last chance to commit to either a section of offroad, or to bail out. Fortunately I had remembered to bring a head torch with me, which made map reading a lot easier. And I became totally confused as to what to do next. I couldn't decide if I should carry on, or bail out and return to the car by the fastest means. I just couldn't decide what to do. I started heading to the start of the bridleway, and stopped again after a few yards, and started to looked at the map again, in the hope that somehow the realities of the situation had changed, and then started out for the briddleway again. During all of this messing around time was ebbing away, and it was now gone 7 pm. There was plenty more juice in the lights, although I wasn't so sure about me. I started out down the bridleway and sped along for quarter of a mile, before the bridleway ended in a ploughed field. By day I could probably had seen enough to work out if this was just a small obstacle or an omen for the next 3 miles. At this point I finally got a grip of myself and decided "to hell with this, let's cut and run". And so I trogged back along the bridleway. I imagined what somebody in the farm I passed would have thought of the bright but appearently indescisively wandering lights were.

Back on the road, I remembered I had been sensible enough to bring an extra layer with me. Putting my gortex jacket on brought a welcome bit of warmth back, but I soon started to feel hot and clammy inside the jacket, as what seemed like a flattish road was proving hard work against a strong headwind. After what felt like a long time, but was probably only minutes the road started to head downhill, and the remaining 3 miles vanished in a blur of trees flashing pass. The sound of very knobbly trail raker tyres was oddly hypnotic, and I rode down that hill in a sort of trance, which was only broken by the familar and welcome sight of my car sitting at the side of the road in Weaverthorpe. I had done 20 miles in 3.5 hours, which is probably fair enough for the conditions.

After struggling with a mud and slippery bike, which seemed not to be able to fit in the back of the car, I was on the road, and back. The roads round there are tricky, winding things which dart around hedges and turn 90 degrees for reasons long forgotten. And I have to say my driving by this point was pretty poor, as I was fading fast, and fighting cramp in my left leg. I made it back I one piece. I had abandoned the route I wanted to ride, but had made it

So, what lessons can be learned from this? In theory I was a reasonably well prepared, experienced and fit rider, yet I made some big mistakes.

Food. My biggest mistake by far. A decent meal before starting out, and something to help me along the way would have kept my from hitting the lows I did. I had foolishly not replaced the emergency energy bar stash in my pack that I had scoffed on the last ride. Looking back it was obvious that my ability to keep control of the situation was clouded, and lack of food played some part in that.

Riding conditions. Even with lights, and suitable tyres, riding around muddy fields in the dark takes a heavy toll on you physically and mentally. I should have adjusted my expections for how far I could ride to allow for the fact it's not summer any more.

Inflexible planning. I should have set off earlier, or done a shorter ride.

Pride. Being stubborn and not giving up is good sometimes. And sometimes it's not. I should have admitted defeat sooner and cut the ride short, long before "indecision junction".

Mistakes multiply. Although I had no mechanical problems or punctures, other small mistakes pile up on each other, and suddenly you are sliding out of control, towards disaster. And had I not belately 'got a grip' on the situation I could have been in real danger.

Tiredness. When you are tired and lacking food (funnily I didn't feel hungry at the time) your brains fills with fog, and you become unable to act decisively, and make poor choices. My messing around at the junction was a good example of this.

The bike. Single speeds are great in winter. Cheaper to maintain, less to go wrong, and less to clog up when riding. However, all but the but the most die hard one-cog jihadis have to admit that they take more effort to get up hills, and are slower than a geared bike.

Safety in numbers. "Groupthink" has it's own perils, but, one person can be just as stupid without somebody else telling them "are you sure that's a good idea?".

I could go on. The main thing to remember is eat more before and during the ride, and don't be afraid to bail out.

Dead end bridleways

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:44:19 GMT

Ever looked at a map when planning a ride, and had a promising section of bridleway catch your eye? You follow it across the map, thinking of all the riding possibilities this might yield, and then you notice the dashed line suddenly turns to a dotted line in the middle of a field.

If you want ride that path, either you have to accept that you'll have to ride out to the end and back, which isn't usually much fun, or you'll either have to walk the bike on the footpath (and become in the eyes of the law a pedestrian), or just pretend you didn't know and ride it anyway. Annoying isn't it? Downright stupid to, as in the majority of cases, the orginal historical route would either have been used by horses or not. Unless there was something worth actually visiting on a horse at the point where the bridleway abruptly turns into a footpath, the chances are pretty good that this reflects an error in the process of recording rights of way in the 1950s. Sometimes this amormality will be at a parish boundary, and simply reflects the difference between in how each parish went about recording these rights of way. Some parishes were pretty poor at this, and simply didn't bother recording bridleways. For an example, just look around Hinderwell on the coast between Whitby and Staithes to see a veritiable bridleway desert, compared to the surrounding area.

In some areas, particularly the National Parks, efforts have been made to correct these oddities, by finding historical evidence of the actual right of way, and having the misrecorded foothpath upgraded to bridleway. There even seems to have been some legislative encouragement from central government to sort this sort of thing out. But lots of these still remain as local government tends to move quite slowly. And worse yet, sometimes there have even been attempts to downgrade the bridleway on the ground that nobody uses it on horse or bike anymore.

Fortunately, there are people who try prod the system in our favour. Most notably the CTC, IMBA, and not forgetting the British Horse Society. Sometimes our interests co-incide with the powerful voice of the redsock fraternity, the mighty Ramblers Association. If you really care about your riding, consider joining IMBA or the CTC, and even if you don't go that far, it's certainly worth contacting the local representative of one of these organisations, if there is a right of way issue you know about. You can of course contact the relevant person in the local authority directly as well, as we as tax payers and voters should be able to make our voice heard.

I have been noticing a few of these dead end bridleways during the process of putting together this site. The National Park people are pretty good about sorting these out, so the North York Moors is not a problem area, but once you get outside the national park there are quite a few of these. Here's a few to start with:

Fridaythorpe to Huggate (East Riding). Bridleway turns into FP near Glebe Farm, at SE 857 575. There seems to be a few other illogical BWs around there, as the BW to the south west of Glebe farm turns into a footpath at the road, and the BW which runs from Painsthorpe towards Fridaythorpe, turns into a footpath at the road by Gill Farm.

Between West Heslerton, Staxton and the river Derwent (North Yorks), there seems to be a load of orphaned and disconnected bits of bridleway. This is probably more of interest to horse riders as the flat boggy carrs are not pleasant to ride a bike on away.

If there's any more, please tell me. Then at least the list can be passed onto the right people, in the hope something might get done.

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:12:20 GMT

Just checked on the sloe gin, and it's turned a lovely red colour like a young red wine, after being left alone for 3 weeks. I have shaken the bottles to make sure it's all mixing and I'll just leave it and see how it looks in another few weeks. This might not be as complicated as some other reciepes, but seems to work given time.

Upgrades and traffic

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:22:16 GMT

It's been a busy time coding wise. Web site are always changing, and this one is no exception. The trouble with incremental development is that bugs come with the new features, and there's always a period of settling down after some new features get added, and when they settle down. Hopefully things have settled down now.

I completed the URL change, and it all seems to work, although there were a few minor bugs that needed sorting.
I also recoded the image stuff, to allow more flexibility in the icons which are used. You'll notice more icons on the Virtual Earth Maps now. In doing so, I broke a few other things in doing this but they are fixed.
Routes should display correctly in all versions (including the current betas) of google earth, as previously was doing the line stuff wrong, which still worked in the current version of GE, but not the betas.

I have also got this site listed on the gallery on www.viaVirtualEarth.com, in fact it's the featured site today which is cool. Without wanting to give away exact numbers, traffic has risen a lot. Most of the traffic is of people looking at the technical aspects, not the bike routes, but hey, a link from a site with a good PR can only help search engine placement.

I'm also starting to spec out a new site, which will use much the same technology, but allow users to upload and annotate routes, so you can share your own routes using this site. Think mySpace for mountain bike routes. Still too soon to be more specific, but hopefully something will be ready some time soon(ish).

Hardware failure

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:00:00 GMT

If you have tried to access this site since about 19:00 hrs GMT yesterday (the 20th of Nov), you will had some difficulty. The motherboard of the webserver died, and swapping a new motherboard caused a few difficulties with persuding Windows 2003 to run on slightly different hardware. To cut a long story short, the IP address that www.mtb-routes.co.uk points to has changed, and some people may have difficulties as the change trickles it's way around the internet.

For those oh you think didn't understand a word of that, heres a summary in english: The computer broke, and altough it's better now it will take a few more hours for things to settle down.

Sorry! Computers do that sometimes, and this site doesn't make enough money to pay for industrial strength web hosting.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 22:29:55 GMT

As I parked the car and started to assemble the bike, I noticed the last of the day's ramblers were getting into their cars. The wind was getting up, and the long shadows told of night not being far behind. Ramblers might not like being out after dark, but mountain bikers, armed with a stadium's worth of lighting, need not fear the coming of the night. In fact, night riding lets you keep riding through the winter, but brings it's own particular pleasures.

What would be a fairly boring gravel track in summer, becomes a scary roller coaster of slippery corners, hidden drops lurking in the shadows, and unfathomably deep puddles. Leaves and mud make each turn and dab at the brakes an exercise in bike control, as the laws of inertia attempt to over rule your attempts at going where you want to go. Puddles become dark lakes, with absolutely no clue as to how deep they are. Do you risk going around them, only to slip back in, or do you just try to plough on, and hope for the best, knowing that once you commit, you really don't want to stop, as putting a foot down is to risk a boot full of cold muddy water? Wet mud is dark, and seems to absorb all the light you can give it, so judging the ground is more by feel through the bike, than seeing through your eyes. Navigation becomes more challenging too, as no matter how bright your lights are, you are in a small bubble of light, in some very dark countryside, and you have to guess where you are based on where you have already been, and no matter how you strain your eyes, you can't see any landmarks outside the range of your lights.

Speed seems different too. In dry summer conditions, 20 mph is fast, but well within you ability to mentally keep up and control the bike. On slippery mud, in the dark, on a rigid bike, and suddenly 15 mph is too fast for your brain to process the narrow tunnel of flickering light you are heading down. Mud and roots hidden under leaves threaten to unseat you, as you attempt to keep the bike from sliding out under you. The photo above shows what sort of range you can see with a good set of lights. The blurry attempt at a photo whilst riding (below) is probably closer to how you actually see the world on the bike in the dark.

There's also the slight frission of being just slightly afraid of the dark. Humans are basically not used to being outside in the dark, and it doesn't take long before the nearby hoot of an owl, or wind whistling in the wires starts to make you think of the 'before' bits of a horror film. The abruptly stiffled cry of some unseem animal being pounced upon makes you think of the 'after' bits of a horror film too. Although your are probably not going to meet a mad axe man, or chainsaw wielding nutter, it's not always easy to convince yourself of that when you ride through some dark wood.

The ride I did was only about 11 miles. There were no major hills (just as well on a single speed) and the track where really not that technical. Despite this, I felt I had pushed myself harder than 25 miles of summer riding. So much so, that when I arrived back at the car, cold and very wet, in my haste to get back in the car, and away, I managed to remove the front wheel, and leave it behind. Luckily it was still there the next day, so I got to ride the same ride in reverse, rather than the longer ride I had planned.

If you feel the urge to try a night ride, here's a few suggestions:

Group rides are certainly best for getting your confidence up.
A winter hack bike, with mud tyres is a good idea. You really want a bike that is simple, and reliable, and tyres that stand a chance of gripping the ground. I usually ride a singlespeed bike, with rigid forks and Panaracer Trailraker tyres, as the bike seems to cope with mud better than anything more complex. And trailrakers find grip when nothing else will.
Your lights should have a battery life of at least twice the time you intend to be out, as winter riding at night is always slower than you think. Usually a 10 mile or so ride is more than enough. The 'Rudston loop' ride is a great route for a night ride.
Take a head torch with you, such as a Petzl Zipka, as trying to fix a puncture in the blinding glare of your main lights is no fun. And if your main lights fail, it's better than nothing as a reserve 'get you home' light.

Perils of upgrading - VE4 and MS Ajax Beta 2

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 22:17:07 GMT

If you don't care about the technical nuts and bolts of mapping, ignore this one.

This site uses Virtual Earth for mapping, apart from the routes maps for non IE users which are done with Google maps, as the mouse over stuff doesn't work very well with FF and virtual earth (note to self - see if it works better in VE 4). VE has better detail, and I guess I'm used to the MS way of doing stuff.

Everything used to work fine, until this weekend, when I upgraded from MS Ajax beta 1 to Beta 2, and suddenly the route maps died with IE7.

I think I know what is going wrong, and will detail it here. Why it did work before puzzles me, although as it seems to be related to stuff loading, it may have been a timing issue.

If you want to use MS Ajax and Virtual Earth, with MS ajax providing the stuff you are drawing, here's how it should be done (in pseudo code).

//inline scrpt to call the map load event
addLoadEvent(MapLoad);

//does the on map load stuff
function addLoadEvent(func)
{
var oldonload = window.onload;
if (typeof window.onload != 'function')
{ window.onload = func; }
else
{ window.onload = function()
{ oldonload(); func(); }
}
}

//the page has loaded so init the map
function MapLoad()
{

mymap = new VEMap('myMap');
map.onLoadMap = OnMapLoad();
map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(54.40, -0.85), 9 ,'r', false);

}

//this gets called when the map is fully loaded and ready to be drawn on
function OnMapLoad()
{
rtn = my.webservice.mapData.GetStuffs(args, OnStuffRequestComplete, OnTimeout, OnError);
}

function OnStuffRequestComplete(result)
{
//code which renders the return values from the call back

//yada yada

}

This is a bit complex, as there are several steps, but ensures you don't get errors caused by doing stuff before it's ready. Ie. don't load the map until the page loads (the javascripts may need to be loaded - so don't assume this is instant). Only when the map has loaded (and of course MS Ajax is loaded by this point to), can you attempt to call the webservice, which returns and draws stuff on the map. I guess it worked before as IE6 was slower and everything was ready by the time the webservice worked. I'm pretty sure the problem I had was timing related, as it would usually work if you hit refresh, ie all the scripts and map tiles were loaded into cache.

In the end I have made a work around (to buy me time whilst I examaine this in more detail), which uses server code to dynamically generate javascript, which draws the route. This increases the initial page load size, but doesn't seem to be any slower, as there's a certain overhead in doing stuff via Ajax anyway. When I'm sure I fully understand what is going on, I'll port the map code to load it in the way I described above, as I'm doing it this way for something else, and it seems to work.

Postscript:

The reason I was using VE 3 was that the first time I used VE 4 and MS Ajax it all went horribly wrong and didn't work. Since then, I have had better things to do than chase what may have been an insoluble problem. After the recent fun and games with upgrading to Ajax B2, I noticed a posting on the forums about the loading order being critical to making Ajax & VE 4 play nicely. So, I tried again, and it seems to work. To make it work, there's a couple of things that need to be just so, whereas before you could get away with them being a bit more haphazard.

Make sure the Script manager is before the VE reference. When you use master pages, it can all get a bit confusing, as to what is happening when. You can stick the VE reference just before the control at first just to get it working. As the script manager is usually somewhere in the page inside of the form tag, and may consider it good practice to reference JS file in the head of the document, or at least as far up the page as possible, it's pretty easy to make this mistake.

The stuff I mentioned before about waiting for each component to initialise is still important.

Oh, and one other thing, if you get some odd javascript errors about certain items not being as expected, check the names of clientside objects in your HTML. I had CSS which refered to a DIV called body, which seems to mess up VE. Changing the name of the div to 'pagebody' and it all seems to be happy.

Post-postscript:

The IE7 issue didn't go away, and I was getting 'unexpected call to method or property access' errors when I tried to draw points. It looks like the onLoad function is getting called too early in IE7 with MS Ajax Beta 2. Having spent some time trashing, I found the solution on the virtual earth forums. The trick is to hook the event for the page loading, not the MS Ajax onLoad event. I have changed the example to reflect this.

MS Ajax RC (17 Dec 2006)

Just updated the project to MS Ajax RC. There's a lot of changes to name spaces, and the webconfig, but there doesn't appear to be anything breaking. I also noticed that whereas previously I would get various errors including 'unexpected call to method or property access and other errors with VE getting upset when trying to draw ploylines, these seem to have gone anway. If you are using VE and MS Ajax, I would recommend using the RC as it seems to be more stable than either of the two betas.

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 01:10:54 GMT

Yikes. Looks like the map code is throwing an intermitant error with IE6, but not IE7. Must look into this in more detail. I think it's our old friend timing, as refreshing the page making it go away.

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:59:26 GMT

Now running against MS Ajax RC, the upgrade seems to work, but updating the webconfig is a headache with an existing project, as there's lots of changes to namespaces, which all have to done, or bad things happen.

Scottish winter walking

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 23:32:38 GMT

Just been for a bit of a walk in Scotland. Dalwhinnie to Corrour to be exact, over several days, carrying everything I needed. I'm a mountain biker at heart, but I'm more than happy to put on a pair of walking boots sometimes. Just because I go for a walk doesn't mean I'm a rambler... Proper backpacking is a very distant relative to gentle country walks, in the same way that a full day on the bike is different to a gentle pottle to the shops. Walking along flat tracks gets boring, but walking can be technical too! In winter, a steep mountain path can be every bit as technically challenging and downright exhausting as the hardest stuff you've ever done on a bike.

Scotland has very different access laws to England and Wales. Basically, open country is fair game on bike or foot. This means that the highlands offer everything from easy gravel tracks to the sort of 'carry your bike' stuff you get in the lakes without the crowds, and the silly distinction between trails you can legally ride and those you can't. Combine that with bothies, which are very basic huts in remote locations, and you have the potential for some really challenging walks or rides.

Whilst walking, my inner mountain biker couldn't help noticing the miles of flowing technical singletrack that stretched from Culra to Ben Alder cottage. The drainage channels might be tricky to ride over, but the ribbon of smooth singletrack would more than compensate for the occasional stop to hop the bike over a gap. There were a few tyre marks around, even on a nasty steep climb (I can only immagine how difficult that must have been to push a bike as even walking was hard work). Using a mountain bike is actually quite a popular way to get into the more remote areas furthest from the road, although some care in route selection is required, as just because it's legal to ride, doesn't mean it's sensible to ride.

Anyway. I got to really push some new kit to it's limits, and if time permits I'll try and stick a few reviews up. In the meantime, here's a few opinions:

I brought along a Terra Nova Voyager tent, and I'm pretty impressed by it, as manages to combine great performance in pretty harsh conditions with an decent weight (the ideal tent would of course weight nothing and take no space!) to carry. Lots of nice, well thought out details like titianium pegs - who says Ti is just for bike bling!, and well enough made to keep you comfortable in high winds and very cold conditions. I spent a lot of time looking at tent reviews, and details. You can find tents which are lighter, cheaper and sometimes both. Cutting cost or weight seems to lead to compromise, so I actually wanted something where I could be be sure that there was enough quantity of materials, and materials of sufficient quality to cope with 3/4 season use. I'm glad I did as a slight navigational cockup (a long story), led to me being forced to camp on a very windy and cold col at 800 metres. Despite picking such a rubbish place to camp, the tent kept me sheltered in some really quite strong winds, and low temperatures. Greater ranges it wasn't, but it was pretty nasty for the UK.

As ever, my MSR Expedition stove. I've had it years, and it's still going strong. The wind shield and heat reflector look a little bit home-made but no less effective for it. The stove is reliable, once it gets going. Lighting is trick when it's really cold (and boy was it cold), as coleman fuel doesn't seem to light when you prime the stove. Once going, the stove will heat up stuff in pretty short order. It is a bit more complex and heavier than a modern gas stove like a JetBoil. However fuel for several days of fuel is pretty light compared to more than one gas canister. Better yet, it's easy to see how much fuel you have left. I took about 600 ml of coleman fuel, which left a comfortable surplus after 4 dinners and breakfasts. I could have saved a bit of fuel had I been able to prime the stove with less flaring. Prehaps I should try priming paste? If I was travelling to remote parts of the world, I'd take this one, as it will burn just about any flammiable liquid. I have used both diesel, petrol and parafin (kerosene) before. Coleman fuel is still first choice as it burns cleanly.

One other big priority when camping in a cold climate is to be able to stay warm when you stop moving. An Alpkit Filo down jacket does the job very well. It's almost identical to the North Face Nuptse, only a lot cheaper. It packs down to a very small size, and keeps you toasty warm. The big disadvantage of down is that it needs to stay dry to keep you warm, so it's really best to keep in reserve for when you are safely inside your tent. Once inside your tent, taking off your boots and putting on some fleece boots makes a huge difference to morale. Being able to take your feet out of your damp socks and boots and into something warm and dry means your feet recover so much faster than keeping them in wet socks.

I'm a big fan of alpkit stuff. Pretty well made and great value. As I said earlier, I already have the down jacket, and was suitably impressed to try more of their kit. I guess now that just about everything (including the big brandname stuff) is made the China, smaller 'microbrands' like Alpkit can source kit from the same factories, and by dealing directly over the internet, can sell it very competitively, by removing several intermediaries in the supply chain. Net result: globablisation has given me a titanium mug (which is great for minimalistic cookware), a Ti spork (which I took but usually used a plastic spoon instead) and a 'slim airic' self inflating sleeping mat for 25 quid, rather than 60 quid for a thermarest. I already have a very old thermarest, and despite having the same pack weight and size as the new mat, it's both thinner and shorter, so it has been relegated to car camping duties, where comfort over weight counts. Nobody likes to carry more stuff than they need, but scrimping on a sleeping mat, and sacrificing a comfortable night's sleep seems like a poor idea. Having spent many an uncomfortable nigth on a closed cell mat, which lets you feel every stone and bump, I'm happy to carry the extra bulk and weight of a self inflating mat these days.

My Berghaus Pro Shield softshell has become something of a favourite of mine. It's great on the bike, and when walking. I found the cut long enough to be comfortable on a bike. If you are doing fairly high intensity exercise, it's often far more comfortable than a goretex jacket, as I find I tend to get way too hot in goretex. Unless it's raining heavily, or you are moving very slowly, the main source of wetness is your own sweat (nice!), so something which breathes very well is a good bet. Unlike a fleece it's windproof, so you stay warm even when moving quickly on a bike, or walking in high wind. I found I'd wear this much of the time, when previously I'd have worn a goretex jacket. You still might need the goretex jacket for really foul conditions, so this is a more of a substitute for a fleece rather than a 'hardshell'.

Winter is here and so is ASP .NET Ajax RTM

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:51:31 GMT

Well, after several months of rain, greyness and wind, York has finally seen some snow. It's pretty rubbish snow, consisting of a dusting of snow, which soon vanished. It looked like there might have been a bit more on the hills. Under the snow was a nasty suprise. I was cycling to work on my very skinny-tyred fixed wheel bike, when suddenly the bike and I took off in different directions. Both the bike and myself were OK, but my trousers bore the brunt of the impact. Next day found me riding to work on something with a much thicker tyre. Nothing grips ice very well, but 2.1 trail rakers beat narrow road tyres everytime.

I was hoping for a nice ride or walk in the moors in deep snow. I'm not sure that's going to happen, which is a shame as riding is snow is great fun, and makes a nice change from the usual mud.

On a more geeky note, ASP .NET Ajax 1.0 (formerly know as 'Atlas') has shipped yesterday. I have updated this site to use the RTM version, rather than last month's RC version, and it looks like a no-brainer upgrade, unlike the previous . A few things worth noting:

Validators. The release notes tell you to remove the references to the special Ajaxified version included in the package. If you do that, validation will not work in update panels. See Scott Gu's blog for more details on that one.
Make sure you restart IIS, or the old scripts still get served and things don't go as you expect.

clear that trail and fill that hole

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:32:26 GMT

Those nice people at the CTC have been busy bringing some web based tools of interest to us riders. First, there's http://www.fillthathole.org.uk/, which lets you report road surface problems to the relevant authorities, and an offroad sibling, http://www.clearthattrail.org.uk/.

Both allow you to report blockages and other hazards, and let the website provide an interface between you and the great slow moving machine of officialdom. It's too early to tell if it will make a real difference. But, the CTC have a good record in agitation on behalf of cyclists, and they can only do something about it, if you report it. All too often stuff doesn't happen, because nobody got the ball rolling by reporting the problem.

If you find a problem with any sort of blockage on any of the routes here, please stick a note in the route comments as well, so others using the route can make a note of it. Stuff does change, and what might have once been a nice zippy section of singletrack, can turn into a waterlogged western front like hell, or a branch strewn bike carry. The National Parks people are actually really good, and will do their best to sort these things out. I have been really impressed by the fact that I commented about the dififculty in finding a bridleway in Broxa forest, after some tree felling, and they told me they had sent a ranger out to install new waymarking. Nice one.

Beta testers wanted for new route sharing site

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:29:14 GMT

I'm currently working on a new route sharing site. Instead of just downloading routes from this website, you'll be able to create and share routes with other users of the website. Others will be able to download the routes to a GPS, and see maps and descriptions, just like this site, only you'll be able to choose from a much wider selection of routes.

Initially the focus will be on UK mountain bikers, but as work progresses, there's nothign to stop people adding routes for other activities, such as walking and mountaineering, and just about anything which involves following a route. And, you'll be able to upload routes from anywhere in the world.

So, if anybody is interested in becoming a beta tester, please contact me. I can't promise any rewards just yet, as the site is being run on a very limited budget. But, you'll get to have an influence over the development of the site, and a chance to help shape what may become an important and useful site for the UK mountain biking community.

I hope to be in a position to start giving out beta access in the next week or so. So, if you are interested, and want to start sharing routes, contact me. You never know, you might discover new places to ride.

Spring is here

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:51:07 GMT

I dusted off my nice bike, and to do a loop up in the Howardian Hills, as the ground seems to have dried out in the last few days.

Conditions are great right now. The lack of rain for a week, and strong drying winds seem to have really dried out the ground. The majority of the muddy bit have dried out, and instead of coming home with both me and the bike covered in crud, I hardly had any mud on me and the bike only needed the briefest of cleaning. It's not quite dusty summer trails yet, but certainly better than slogging through miles of mud. The Howardian Hills are mostly well drained and dry out much quicker than other areas.

The riding was lovely. Most of the farm tracks are pretty ridable, and it was nice to ride on rocks rather than mud. Doing 25 mph downhill over a rocky trail is such a nice change. If you get the chance, get you bike out and go for a ride. Even if you are a fair weather rider, it's good enough. One small thing to remember though. It's head cutting season, so make sure you have plenty of spare tubes, as you can get a lot of thorns in your tyre, and fixing more than one puncture at once is no fun.

Incidently, the route wasn't on this site, but can be found here http://www.sharemyroutes.com/routes/United-Kingdom/Terrington-North-Yorkshire/Terrington/details.aspx on my new route sharing site. The descent from Slingsby Bank woods is worth doing: very steep and pretty technical. The ride along the ridge of Caukley Bank is also worth doing. The track climbs up onto a ridge, before gently descending. You can get some really impressive speeds up. Just don't forget to look at the view, as the views across the hills, and over to the Moors are impressive.

EXIF GPS properties

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:09:01 GMT

I'm parsing Exif data in images for ShareMyRoutes. I'd already written code to parse most of the well known properties, but could find out how to extract embedded lat/longs. Some cameras can add GPS location to photos, and post processing by applications like Picassa can add them. This is really useful, but I couldn't find an example. So, if anybody is having the same problem, here's a skeleton of how to extract these properties. Obviously, in the real world, you'd need to clean the code up, and check the values are populated, but for the sake of simplity this has been left out.

'which file to read

Dim FileName As String = "d:\temp\exif\PC300008.JPG"

GetBitmap =

Dim GetBitmap As System.Drawing.BitmapDirectCast(System.Drawing.Bitmap.FromFile(FileName), System.Drawing.Bitmap)Dim propItem As Drawing.Imaging.PropertyItemDim latSign, lonSign As String

Dim latitude, longitude As Decimal

propItem = GetBitmap.GetPropertyItem(1)

If propItem.Value Is DBNull.Value = False Then

Dim intlen = propItem.Value.LengthDim bytValue(intlen) As Byte

bytValue = propItem.Value

'get the sign for the lat

latSign = Trim(ByteToString(propItem.Value))

End If

propItem = GetBitmap.GetPropertyItem(2)

If propItem.Value Is DBNull.Value = False Then

Dim intlen = propItem.Value.LengthDim bytValue(intlen) As Byte

bytValue = propItem.Value

Dim latDD, latMM, latSS As Decimal

latDD = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 0)

latMM = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 8)

latSS = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 16) / 100

latitude = DDMMSStoDecDeg(lonDD, lonMM, lonSS, lonSign)

End If

propItem = GetBitmap.GetPropertyItem(3)

If propItem.Value Is DBNull.Value = False Then

Dim intlen = propItem.Value.LengthDim bytValue(intlen) As Byte

bytValue = propItem.Value

'get the sign for the lat

lonSign = Trim(ByteToString(propItem.Value))

End If

propItem = GetBitmap.GetPropertyItem(4)

If propItem.Value Is DBNull.Value = False Then

Dim intlen = propItem.Value.LengthDim bytValue(intlen) As Byte

bytValue = propItem.Value

Dim lonDD, lonMM, lonSS As Decimal

lonDD = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 0)

lonMM = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 8)

lonSS = BitConverter.ToInt32(bytValue, 16) / 100

longitude =

DDMMSStoDecDeg(lonDD, lonMM, lonSS, lonSign)End IfEnd Sub

Private Function DDMMSStoDecDeg(ByVal DD As Decimal, ByVal MM As Decimal, ByVal SS As Decimal, ByVal sign As String) As Decimal

Dim decDeg As Decimal

decDeg = ((SS / 3600) + (MM / 60) + DD)

If sign = "E" Or sign = "S" Then

decDeg = decDeg * -1

End If

Return decDegEnd Function

private sub ReadGPSdata

7 weeks of dry weather - get it while you can

Mon, 07 May 2007 23:27:28 GMT

I managed a few miles this weekend on some of my favourite bits. Conditions at the moment, after 7 rain free weeks, are excellent. Even in the forested areas, the trails are bone dry. The ground is so dry that even a few showers next week will just be soaked up by the thirsty ground. You can ride on semi-slick tyres and take the crud catcher off the bike now! Not having to clean the bike after a ride is so nice after the horrors of riding in winter.

What's not so good for the farmers, who need a bit of rain to keep everything growing, is great for us mountain bikers. Just please be aware of the fire risk out on the open moors.

Binary fileupload in NET 2.0

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 01:20:44 GMT

Been going nuts over this one. I have just been adding the ability to add custom waypoint icons to ShareMyRoutes.com, and couldn't, no matter how I tried, get a stream created by the fileupload control, to copy to a byte array, in order to be inserted into the database. Dead easy. Right? I got some old code, and changed it around and it didn't work. I tried code samples, which just didn't work. no errors. But nothing in the byte array either. The stream had data in it, as I was able to do other stuff with the stream.

Well, it looks like it's changed in CLR 2.0. Now, there a few extra properties on the fileupload control, which deal with the stream. If the stream contains a binary file (like an image), you'll need to use something like this:

Dim intFileLength As Integer = CInt(FileUploadImage.PostedFile.ContentLength)Dim bytIconImage(intFileLength) As Byte

bytIconImage = FileUploadImage.FileBytes

You can then do what you will with the byte array. Don't forget to check hasfile first, to make sure there's a file. In fact as you are allowing anybody to upload a chunk of potentially unknown binary data, it's good practise to check the extension and the content type, to make sure it's what you expect. Otherwise, you could be opening yourself up to trouble, as uploading nasty stuff is an easy attack vector. All very nice, and less lines of code than the previous way, which involved grabbing a stream from the uploaded file and using stream.read(byteArray, 0, contentLength). Shame the old way of doing it break silently.

Anyway. It's all here, if you need an example:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.webcontrols.fileupload.filebytes(VS.80).aspx

Dead end bridleway in Robin Hoods Bay

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:53:43 GMT

If you have read this blog, you'll know I take an interest in local rights of way issues. Dead end bridleways are a particular pet hate of mine. For various reasons, when the rights of way were recorded in the 1950s, stuff got left off or wrongly categorised. Sometimes this means you have a right of way which stops in the middle of nowhere, yet an obvious path or track continues, as somehow only part of the route was recorded. These anomalies are annoying, as it means that the remaining section of right of way is fairly useless, unless you want to ride to the end and turn back.

In the National Parks, the rights of way people are sympathetic towards these issues, and will help try and correct any errors, if it can be proven that there was an error. Generally, the North York Moors are have very few dead end rights of way compared to the surrounding area, but one of two anomalies remain.

The particular bridleway I'm talking about starts at the A171 near Whitby, between Hawsker and the junction with the B1416 (OS grid ref NZ 924 052) and heads along the edge of the moor, in a south-westerly direction, crosses over the road to Fylingthorpe at Brow top, and then carries on in the same direction to a point near Partridge Hall farm (NZ 931 043) where the right of way ends, where it joins a footpath. However, a reasonably good track carries on in the same direction, to join a BW at NZ 933 040. It's fairly probably that the actual route used by horse drawn traffic, didn't just stop where the bridleway ends (as there is no 'destination' it serves), but carried on along the track to join the other bridleway.

So, if you are a local horse or bike rider, who has previously used this track, or you can produce some evidence of others using it, please get in contact with me, or directly with the National Park Rights of Way people. Any evidence of use can be used to allow a right of way to be recorded (or rather correct a previous error). With a new bit of bridleway, it would allow local riders to form some new routes, and avoids the busy and hideously steep hill at Brow Top, which has easily got to be one of the toughest hills in the area, other than Chinney Bank in Rosedale.

Upgrades

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 02:18:41 GMT

Just upgraded te site. It now uses a much more friendly URL for the routes, which is better for search engines, and nicer for you, the users.

I did test everything, but a bug is bound to have got through, it always does, and quite frankly, I'd be suprised if it hasn't. At least the upgrade happened during a time nobody was using the site.

I'll check all over properly tomorrow.

Riding today

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:03:41 GMT

Got out for a ride today up in the Hambleton Hills. Starting from up on the Cleveland Way, near Kepwick, I tried a track I hadn't tried before in Boltby Forest. I actually ended up going the wrong way, and having to ride a few miles to get to were I wanted, but it was worth all the extra effort, as I found a lovely bit of moorland singletrack.. Starting with a fast descent through the forest, before running across wooded heathlands, on some sinulous singletrack, it was perfect. Just enough downhill to keep the speed up, and lovely dry (nearly all dry anyway), twisty, rocky singletrack, that just kept on going. Pure pleasure!

After a hideous uphill into the wind, I got to try my favourite trail which runs from the base of Black Hambleton, down into the valley above Hawnby. That trail was in great form too. I eneded up going up near the huge mast at Bilsdale. I failed to find the bridleway I wanted to ride, and was running a bit short of time. I got a bit lost trying to follow it, and ended up riding some random gravel track. The random track turned out to be a good one. What I did get was several miles of fast, technical descent that was fantastic. Taking a full suspension bike was worth it, to soak up the bumps and rocks, which at the end of a long ride can be painful.

As I rode up the hill from Arden Hall to Kepwick my chain broke. I was quite happy about that, as it saved my having to ride the whole hill, which is fiendishly steep. Once at the top, I fixed the chain. I couldn't risk riding hard uphill on a chain that has just bust could I? That's my excuse anyway.

Anyway. I'll write it up properly, and stick it on sharemyroutes. As some of the ride is a bit dull, I don't think the ride as a whole is good enough to go on this site, as I like to only publish well packaged routes.

If you haven't got your bike out, and gone for your first spring ride, what are you waiting for? It's damn near perfect out there. Dry, fast and none of the undergrowth and stinging nettles that curse summer riding.