Clarkys 150 mile winter marathon ride

Well where do I begin? A bit of this with some of this and a lot of this
Cheers Clarky, great day!

wolfy wrote:

I forgot my sd card but Rob got plenty
I thought the faces captured the day perfectly mind

It was fucking Baltic out there!

Well it was a cold start to say the least, then it got colder as the day went on and the higher we went up the mountain.

First crash of the day we to me, a little off camber corner at a medium pace and hard as F**K covered in frost and ice.  A good winding and a snapped peak later and we were off again.  The first of the daylight hours spent waiting for a victim to get back on the bike.

Tough conditions as the ground was so hard and unbelievably slippery all day long, even when the sun was out and it looked defrosted it was still like black ice everywhere.....

We headed over to Cwn Owen and dropped into Builth and took the usual route up towards Rhayader and stopped at Llanwrthyl service to find our first petrol stop of the day they had NO PETROL at the pumps.  Pete was so concerned with his new stroker that he had already filled up in Builth previously.

We headed over to the Elan Valley via various routes where Gareth and Dan had to depart due to technical issues with Gareths bike, they limped back to E T James where the got a mate with a van to pick them up.  

Next we were at the byway below the dam and crossing the river heading south, quite nice to do this lane in that direction as we always do it the other way.  We then took a little detour into the unknown and ended up at the start of the Strata Florida, with a few tasty bits in between and some over the bars action and some nice little BOGS. On arriving at the start of Strata 2 bikes had just switched to reserve....... nearest petrol being Tregarron or south to Beulah.

Arriving at Tregarron to the garage that was closed, we hung around for ten mins or so, then the owner turned up and opened up for us where between us we managed £60 of petrol.  Now we were behind time by quite a fair bit, so a bit of a road blast up to Devils Bridge to pick up the route home.  A bit of forestry shenanigans and some new dead ends  (trying to save a bit of time.)  I am sure they were calling me all sorts of names by now.....

Before we left Mel said he wasn't going to ride in the dark and it was 3.30pm gone at Devils Bridge.

I could sense some fear of being lost in the forest in the dark coming from the Southern Shandy boys as their fingers and toes were getting cold as the day light was fading..... before we knew it we were back on track and out of the forest of doom and onto the tarmac at Cwmystwyth.  A bit of  a road burn to cool us down before stopping for lunch in Rhayader at 5pm.  Cracking coffee and cakes had by all and the banter was flowing again. Group decision to road burn back to the van from the lunch stop as it was now completely dark.

A cracking day out with some new lanes and mountains despite the conditions.

Next time we will do this route once the clocks have gone forward I think.

thanks guys, I am sure there will be some good pics and vid to follow

Cheers Muffy for sweeping

I'm going to name it "Clarky's frozen fat fighters club"
I seen more ice than the titanic - and not so much as a sniff of bacon !!!

We had a bit of bad luck really - none of it was clarkys fault ...
I mean who expects a petrol station to have no petrol ??? - in the middle of nowhere !!!

And once we were there it was hard to recover the route ...

but on the upside we did explore a great stretch of land where we saw the SAS in action - that was pukka...

Cheers clarky for the lead - and extra thanks to Muffy for sweeping.... especially that last leg on the pitch black road - that was tough

but hay ho - thats trail riding !!

I got some footage ill put together later (when i can feel my fingers and toes)

OH and PS...
I was not one of the "southern shandy moaners" - mainly because i didnt realise where we were... 
but I was moaning about the fact that I had not been fed - I mean come on I had some faggott cereal bar all day - 

and 5PM is not lunch time !!!

crm250dude wrote:OH and PS...
I was not one of the "southern shandy moaners" - mainly because i didnt realise where we were... 
but I was moaning about the fact that I had not been fed - I mean come on I had some faggott cereal bar all day - 

and 5PM is not lunch time !!!

Dude you did well on less than 10 fags and no food all day.... you be giving up the fags and going on a diet next

Great right up... keep that route in mind for the summer Lee tho! think you may have been lucky the bogs were frozen

wolfy wrote:Great right up... keep that route in mind for the summer Lee  tho! think you may have been lucky the bogs were frozen

+1
Exactly what i said in the van on the way home ... if it was in summer that would have been a great day out 

even a 15 minute road burn in that bollox weather is enough to put Elsa from Frozen off bike riding