Home





Lost Password?
No account yet? Register
Lake District Mountain Biking
Lake District Mountain Biking

Welcome to RideTheLakes.com a website and forum for Lake District Mountain Biking to help arrange rides and talk bikes.

Use the site at your leisure to chat to fellow bikers and, more importantly, to arrange some epic (and not so epic) rides!  There's no membership or formalities, just bikers getting together and riding quality trails in the Lakes!  Oh and we're not all hairy bikers, we do have female riders and more are always welcome.

It's all about riding so there's a regular night ride every Wednesday, meet 7.30pm at Hawkshead YHA, but apart from that rides happen throughout the week all over the Lakes.

Happy trails!

SIGNING UP:

There have been some issues with some people not being able to sign up with a hotmail address.  Sorry but we haven't been able to get around this just yet.  Please use a different address in the meantime, if you have any problems please email us This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

FACEBOOK - Pridds has got a ridethelakes facebook page going, just search for ridethelakes.com and join in! 

 


 
A Nice Gentle Ride...

Started out at Seatoller Farm NT carpark and headed up the honister pass as a warm up. When we got to the slate mine we followed the bridleway (still going up) to the left of the road heading to the quarry at the top. Once at the top we went down to Buttermere on a track that made last Wednesdays ride look like a walk in the park. Rocks? Pah, these were boulders :-) I nearly endo'd over a rock when my front wheel got caught - I was balanced for what seemed like an eternity before somehow bringing the back end down - we sat down, half laughing, half in shock of what had nearly happened before continuing our descent. I managed to get a little wall ride in too - the track swung round to the left and there was a handily placed slate slab on the right so I just let the bike ride up it to send me round to bend.


Once at Buttermere, we went up the bridleway to Scarthgap Pass, some of it was rideable, but not much, so most of it was spent with our bikes on our shoulders whip Still, we made it from bottom to top in only 45mins - quicker than all the other walkers who were out, who were giving us very strange looks (rightly so if you ask me).
From the top of the Scarthgap Pass we went down to Blacksail Youth Hostel (mostly rideable, but maybe not quite as much fun as the last one), had a spot of lunch and then went up the Blacksail Pass. However, it would appear that we were a bit late on this one, as someone had nicked the trail so we had to just head up the side of the hill, with bikes on shoulders once again.


From the top of the pass we headed down to Wasdale head, where big boulders, rocks and waterbars were the order of the day before we were hit with a glorious section of singletrack descent that actually flowed and we could get some speed up!
At Wasdale head we had a bit of a break for more food before heading up to Styhead Pass. The first bit was ok, but it got steeper and steeper and before long the bikes were back on the shoulders. Legs were feeling very tired now and wishing it all was over, but the reward was worth it!
Heading down from the top was great - a little bit of track that was unrideable but then it was big steps, rocks, boulders and the rest down to Seathwaite, but all mostly rideable and really good fun. Very steep at times too - saddle was way down and my arse was grazing the rear tire!

It took us 6.5 hours in the end to cover about 25k and we were riding for less than half of it! I'm not sure I'd do it again, but I'm glad I've done it!

My arms feel worse than my legs today though - they took an absolute pounding on the descents!

 

Vince