Last week I attended the Outdoor Bloggers weekend in Snowdonia.  It's been a while since I met (in real life) any random people from the internet, and I've never really done any sort of networking so wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Despite an afternoon off work and good intentions, I arrived in the dark.  Good thing my tent only takes a few seconds to put up!  We were camping at Llyn Gwynant, which rather conveniently features a pizza shop on busier weekends.  Yum yum!

We sat around the campfire telling stories and getting to know each other a bit - though... continue reading »

Another Sunday bike ride from the Cotswolds MTB book - Bredon Hill.  This route is sort of a figure of eight, going up and down twice.

We started in Kemerton and headed up.  Some amount of walking occurred, because hills suck (also I've not fixed my dodgy gears yet).  Having taken a slight wrong turning at a junction we eventually detoured back to the correct route, and our first descent - a rooty rocky path down to some fields and eventually the road.  I stopped at one point because my bike seemed very rattly to find that the rear wheel had... continue reading »

Last Sunday we once again loaded the car up with bikes for another ride in the early Autumn sunshine.  We went to the Cotswold Water Park to do the first route in this book.  I've done this ride (or something about 90% similar) before, but not for a couple of years.

Cycling around the water park is very different to riding in the Forest of Dean because it's almost entirely flat - Strava claims 10m of elevation over 18km...

The scenery is quite different too.  Less forest, more lakes (now there's a surprise!)

It's not difficult riding, although certain places were rather muddy! ... continue reading »