A break from road bike training.

Last weekend saw winter return with a vengeance! So for a nice change and to avoid the inevitable pain of peddling into rain at 1 deg C Andy and I headed to Whinlatter for a spot of Mountain biking.

I'm also in the middle of a challenge ('Strava' driven) to ride for 31 hours 51 mins in 16 days. So a nice easy day was the plan and to get a few miles/hours in. We did all the dedicated mountain bike trails (about 15 miles) before lunch (soup in the cafe) then headed up and over on the fire track to the West side of Whinlatter for another 5 mile loop.

Whinlatter has 2 man made mountain Bike trails, the red route that is split in two - North and South side, plus the blue route. All are really good riding, the red route has some serious climbing on both sides. There are also miles of Forest tracks to ride, I still don't think I've done them all!

Andy then left me to it to ride for another 3 hours while I tried to ride everything I could off road in Whinlatter, including the track up and onto Lords Seat. 40 miles later and a good few hours in the saddle I'd had enough!

The top of Lords Seat, mud now frozen to the bike!

I think it snowed lightly all day (well at least when it wasn't raining) we were however very lucky with the wind as we managed to be in the shelter most of the day.

I got back to the car as it was getting dark to see the Whinlatter Head Torch race set of from the other side of the Valley. It was very impressive seeing 40+ lights head up the fell at various different speeds.