exo : rides

Recently there has been a spot of snow here.

Given there’s not too much snow and there’s not been any fresh snow in a while I go out hoping for a mixture of hard packed and reasonably shallow fresh snow. This goes fairly well for the first fifteen minutes until I reach the cycle path. Here the snow is a bit deeper but not too bad, a bit more work that I would like but I figure ok for the duration of the path.

And then I reach the exposed bit and the start of the drifts. Initially these are small and surmountable with brute force. They rapidly increase in depth. It turns out above about six inches deep snow drifts are bad news for cycling. The pushing starts as I figure there can’t be much of this. I am also idiotically stubborn about changing plans.

Half an hour later I get to the end of the cycle path, having ridden maybe 50 yards and spent more time that I would like knee deep in snow.

The rest if the ride is pretty much fine. Right down by the beach there is more or less no snow and though the forest it’s only an inch deep. It’s slightly harder work than normal and a bit slippier but fundamentally ok.

Returning by the road is seems the wiser choice as I can’t imagine the single track is going to be much fun as chunks of it are pretty exposed. And even the road isn’t entirely plain sailing as it’s been half ploughed but there’s still a lot of snow. Certainly more snow than the SUV that people are trying to dig out can cope with.

Even the detour home up the hill is a bit more complicated as they’ve only cleared one lane through the snow so I have to pull over for cars.