Llandegla - Water Wings Required!

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Rain, rain and more rain - given that's all we've had for the last few weeks, its hardly suprising the state of the red trail at Llandegla yesterday.

Dragged myself up there for a 9am start, but bad news when getting the bike out of the car - a small drip of fluid from the rear brake and absolutely no lever to speak of. Thanks to the guys at One Planet, all was sorted - it was great that they could deal with the problem without a booking. Looks like the banjo had loosened so a quick tighten up, bleed and decontamination of the pads had it all sorted in under an hour (not bad, given the need to get the hire bikes out). Thanks guys.

On the main climb, there were viscious head / cross-winds howling across the newly felled area - no protection from the lashing rain which had tiny lumps ice embedded - needed to ride one handed with the other hand protecting the face from thousands of tiny needles. Perhaps the decision to go shorts rather than my Humvee 3/4s was a bad call - legs looking lobster-like as if I'd been out in the meditteranean sun too long.

Once back into the trees, the rain stopped (typical!) and speed climbed from previous low of 4 mph! The descents were about 30% either under water or acting as streams. A few puddles here and there were almost hub deep and some really deep sticky mud just before the short bit of black near the top of the trail. Having just changed from Conti Gravity 2.3s (they came on the bike) to Panaracer Fire XC Pro 2.1s - looking for less drag on hard surfaces - I was concerned about the deep mud, but the new tyres are streets ahead of the Contis in pretty much any situation (but they are nearly twice the price of course).

It seems that all the recent felling demonstrates how much better the ground copes with extremes of rain when the trees are still in place - the water just seems to be running directly off the land at the moment.

A small part of the trail near to the end is closed off due to the rain washing the trail away - you can see lots of boulders but not much trail! The diversion is on pretty much unsurfaced moorland and is cutting up badly with thick (but not yet deep) mud to plough through. The new tyres performed really well here too. No problem with clogging though as you're soon back on the trail and the following 200m or so is pure stream, so the frame is quickly cleaned up again.

There's another closed section of trail and a diversion right near the end due to more felling. The diversion misses out the last bit of forest / downhill singletrack in favour of a smooth fast descent past the skills area, shared with the blue trail.

The newly opened sections on the trail are holding up well and seem to be better drained, but given they're still in amongst the trees its unlikely to flood so easily. So a 1hr 20min ride in what some would consider atrocious conditions, but for me it just added a bit of variety to the trail to make sure it doesn't get too dull.