It's been raining quite heavily across the UK and most of Europe for the past few weeks, so I decided to go to Epping forest which is a woodland just in the north east of London. It's known for it's trails and is popular with mountain bikers so I chucked on my knobblies and headed down.
The wood itself is 19km long and about 4km long, it features lots of unpaved fire trails as well as plenty of singletrack. However as it'd been raining for the past week, most of this had turned to mud. Strangely enough this was probably not a bad thing as the mud was more wet and tended not to stick.
The forest itself is mostly flat, with only some very minor descents. Most of the singletrack is fairly simple, however the mud had made some bits slightly challenging, particularly when you only have 34mm tyres...
Post ride, the bike was covered in mud. Not too bad as I had my mudguards fitted, not really a problem with clogging as the mud wasn't too sticky thankfully. The disc brakes got a bit noisy once they got mud on them but still performed brilliantly, noticeably though the pads on the rear wore through enough that I could feel the lever position change slightly. All in all, I will definitely have to go back as I only had enough daylight to check out a small part of it. Now for some pics of mud...
Thanks for reading.
pretty funny riding a bike plastered in mud around London city, heaps of street cred.
ReplyDeleteyou sure the brake cables aren't just stretching a little as they wear in?
Are those mud guards only good to use with the nobblies, or can they stay on all the time?
Heh, it was only briefly, washed it the next day. I suspect it was the pads as the ride I went on previously I did a much much longer distance and braked a lot more, although it wasn't anywhere near as muddy. This ride was quite mucky as we've had quite heavy rain recently. The knobblies I have on there are 34mm which is about as big as you can fit under those guards
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