Sneaking a couple of hours of mountain biking between the showers in Grisedale Forest on the North Face Mountain Bike Trail… The woodland is so beautiful at the moment – all the leaves are bright bright green having just unfolded and the woodland floor is covered in the vibrant purply-blue of bluebells contrasted against the fresh green growth and last year’s crunchy brown leaves.
A few weekends ago we were in the Forest of Bowland on the Gisburn trail thinking a) our biking skills are getting worse, b) we are getting less fit, c) walking up Scafell the day before makes for weak cycling, or d) that trail is a far harder red graded affair than the North Face trail. Having now ridden the North Face so soon after I can easily confirm that (d) is the definite answer; the Gisburn trail is way harder! It is also probably slightly better from a technical mountain biking point-of-view as the North Face trail actually has too much easy and wide open forest trail. In my opinion the best sections of any purpose made mountain biking trail have minimal board-walking and are the slightly downhill single-tracks with lots of drop offs, swooping berms, humps and bumps, etc.
Here’s a couple of shots to help remember the wonderful spring colours…
