MTB Morzine 2015

This was mine and Phil's 2nd time mountain biking in Morzine, but Howard's first time. We returned to the same Chalet La Musardiere as before, and was happy to see that Carl and Sian were hosts again. Excellent hospitality, and ace food all week.

After a week mountainbiking before in Aviemore with a Harley Davidson festival at the same time, it was strange to be on our next trip in Morzine to also have another Harley festival! Nice bikes, and nice sound, but the noise does get a bit much after a while with several thousand Harleys seemingly just driving around for the purpose of making a noise!

Toto playing live in a free concert in town was the highlight of the week!


Phil's bike, Howard's bike and my bike getting a bit cosy at the top of Rochassons, probably while Howard checked out the Fantasticable death slide across the valley...

Long old ride up to Pointe des Mossettes... (the other end of the chairlift is in Switzerland)

That better not fall off...

After a long old slog uphill, in 35C heat, with no shade, no shelter, and only 1 spring/trough after the lunch stop, we finally made it to Col de Cou...

Mont Blanc...

MTB Austria and Liechtenstein

I'd visited Liechtenstein before, but on the hike part of the trip, the weather was bad and the snow and landslides prevented the completion of the intended hike in the mountains. So I decided to use up one of the long weekends and have another go. This time, the weather was much much warmer and sunnier.

On one day, I did a bike ride (CX bike this time), starting in Feldkirch (Austria), riding along the Rhine to Vaduz (Liechtenstein), and crossing a few times in to Switzerland. The day started with a bit of a rain shower, but it soon cleared up.

Vaduz is not a massive place (and I don't think it's even the largest town in Liechtenstein) for a capital city. Only took a short walk around the town, but next time must get up to the castle etc.

The second day, I repeated a hike from before, but had much more success. No snow and no landslides this time. It was basically a round trip to/from Malbun (the only ski resort in the country).

The rest of the photos can be seen here.

MTB Czech Republic and Poland

Yet another long weekend in Germany, and time for me to tick off another country that I've never visited. I'd been to the Czech Republic years ago, but never Poland.

By chance, I'd heard about the Singltrek pod Smrkem MTB trail centre which starts in the Czech Republic, but the trails cross over in to Poland, so thought I'd give it a go. It's actually designed by a Welshman, and you can certainly see the British trail centre influence there. The trail head has a shop, bar/cafe, showers, etc. and even camping facilities by a lake. And payment is possible in Euros, Czech or Polish currency, which is handy.

There's an Endomondo track of my ride here, which should allow download of a GPX file for the GPS. Click the expand icon in the map to make it easier to see.

The rest of the photos can be seen here.

MTB Switzerland

Due to a long weekend in Germany, I combined a quick MTB trip with the ALRS rocketry event in Switzerland.

On the Friday, I did one of the published MTB riding loops, in the Swiss Jura, starting and ending in Saignelégier, not too far from Neuchatel.

Although it was in the hills, it is pretty much up on a plateau, and reasonably easy ride. Mostly on road, track, and farm fields. Total distance was only about 43km, and a GPS track is on my Endomondo log.

More pics here...

MTB Scotland 2013

Following the usual trip to the International Rocket Week, 3 of us headed north to Aviemore for a week of mountain-biking in the Cairngorms.

Day 1
We drove up from Paisley on the Monday morning, to the Aviemore SYHA, and after checking in, went for a quite ride out round the Rothiemurcus estate. This was just a quick ride up and round Loch Morlich, and back down the old Logging Way to Aviemore.

Day 2
On the first full day we did the Burma Road loop again, but with a few small changes to last time. It starts with a steep landrover track ascent, then a fast descent in to a quiet valley.  Then a ride along the valley, where we saw only 2 people and 1 dog.  On the way back, instead of riding back along the main road in to Aviemore, we sussed out a track that lead to the Speyside path, alongside the steam railway line, which is much more pleasant!

Day 3
On the 3rd day, we rode via Loch Mor, Loch an Eilein, and Loch Gamhna, which then lead to some fantastic singletrack. When the path says "Unmaintained", we weren't sure if that meant it would be ace riding or lead to nowhere, or a bog. But it turned out to be ace! After that was some easy fire roads, and an unmissable stop at the Inshriach Nursery Potting Shed tea room for coffee and cake. Excellent cake it was too (as usual).

Day 4
We took a day out from riding, so drove up to the Ski carpark, and then walked up the Coire Cas "blue" path and then the Traverse up to the Cairn Gorm visitor centre. It would have been rude to turn around there, so we carried on up to the summit of Cairn Gorm. I'd like to say the views were stunning, but it was mostly in cloud by then! My first Munro! We took the funicular back down again to save walking.

Day 5
On the final day, we rode out to Loch Eaniach. This was a long mostly easy trail up a valley to the loch at the end, but with several fords to ford. Some were merely a watersplash, but others were quite substantial. Probably not the best route to take if it has rained a lot, but it was fine for us. Just overcast and cloudy.  The weather at the loch was quite a strong breeze, and rather bleak, but my understanding that is quite normal due to the geography. On the way back we repeated part of the first day's loop around Loch Morlich and back down to Aviemore.

All of the other photos can be found here.

MTB Morzine

I'd skied in the Portes du Soleil many times before, but had never been there mountain biking. Until now :)

Stayed at a hotel near Geneva airport, just over the border in France, right by the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Then on the Saturday morning, headed towards Morzine, where we'd be staying at Flow MTB for the week.

Day 1: Les Lindarets
On the first day, we quickly built the bikes and took the lift up to Avoriaz and a trail down to Les Lindarets just as a sighter. That was our first realisation that the braking bumps would be insane all week. Finished with a descent of the Ardent valley, and along the river back in to Morzine. Even the path down to Montriond was rocky, and I was expecting it to be a nice smooth path used by bathers!

Day 2: Mont Chery + Col de Joux Plane
Just one lift up Pleney and ride down to Les Gets. From there it was 1 lift up Mont Chery, and then ride  up towards the ridge. Nice ride along the ridge to Mont Caly (nice restaurant there), and then most of the fun part of the ride is the trail running around the back side of Mont Chery. After this, we took the Chavannes lift back up the Les Gets/Morzine side, and rode round and up to Col de Joux Plane (of Floyd Landis fame).  From there, it was mostly descent, all off road, down to the Nyon plateau, and eventually the traverse in to Morzine.

Day 3: Col de Cou + Arete du Berroi
Up Super Morzine again, and the "Swiss Superhighway", and then up to top of Pointe de Mossettes. This chairlift seems to take forever, starts in France, and drops you and the bikes (or skis) off in Switzerland. From there it's a quick descent, and traverse, dropping almost 600m vertical over about 7km, and then a good old uphill techy rocky slog to regain half of that vertical over about 2km, up to Col de Cou and up on to the Arete du Berroi ridge.  The views up there were stunning, and the path was ace too, even if there was a sheer cliff about 1 metre away on the left!

Descent to Champery was fun. Skipped some singletrack, since we'd wanted to make up a bit of time, so clocked 65km/h on the way down in to Champery.
Took a wrong turn, so ended up on the DH run down to Les Crosets, which was fun. Then it was one more lift up, and the nice long 17km descent to Montriond again :)

Day 4: Portes du Soleil Loop
Startes similar to the previous day, but then went over in to the Chatel valley. The "Panoramique" trail was one of my favourites. Then a long gravel road ride to Chatel itself. Weather closed in a bit going up Super Chatel lift, so we decided to skip the blue loops over by Torgon, and carried on across the border again down to Morgins. Had lunch in Chez Gaby in Champoussin (a place I'd been to many times before when skiing). Then it was an ace terraced trail cut in to the side of the mountain back over to Les Crosets, and another repeat of the 17km descent to Montriond :)

Day 5: Chatel Bike Park
Did Panoramique and Serpentine a couple of times. The former is a bit jumpy, the latter, all berms. After lunch, did some of the GR5 trail, and then a blue run back down from Avoriaz to Les Lindarets. This time to get back, we rode along the ridge from Avoriaz, and did the steep rooty descent to Morzine. Needed to to a road side brake pad change though as things had worn out far too much.

Day 6: Plateau du Loex
Back over the Les Gets side for the last 2 days. Did the "black" XC loop which actually wasn't at all difficult, or long. Mostly was on easy fire road type track, although with quite a bit of climbing at the start.  After lunch we did one of the blue runs back over to Morzine.

Day 7: Mont Chery + French MTB Championships
Did a repeat of the Mont Chery loop, but with a variation from the ridge down to l'Encrenaz which gave lots of narrow singletrack with tight hairpins.  In the afternoon, we dropped the bikes of at the KTM stand. Thanks to Ffion Griffiths (staying at same chalet as us) for looking after them :) and then walked the French Championships DH course. Lots and lots of drops. Spotted Emmeline Ragot (who was also staying at the chalet) twice on practice runs.

All of the pics can be seen here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104347553800437592244/MTBMorzine
Stats for the week: 293km total ride distance (excluding lifts), 33 lifts.

MTB Liechtenstein

I'd never been to Liechtenstein before, despite living only a few hours' drive away, and having driven right past it a handful of times. So I thought I'd use up one of the many 4-day weekends we get in Germany to go mountainbiking there.

Day 1 - Eschnerberg, Austria/Liechtenstein

This is more of a hill than a mountain, that crosses the Austria-Liechtenstein border. The ride was basically one from the the Liechtenstein Tourism site. Started from the Stadion carpark on the outskirts of Feldkirch (Austria) which was a few hundred metres from one end of the tour. To start with, it follows a road round the end of the hill, and then a road winding up the hill to St. Corneli (nice guesthouse and bar there, which would make a handy mid-ride stop if starting at the other end). There are definitely off-road alternatives to get there (I found one that was pretty good as a descent, or a technical rocky ascent).

Then it goes through some forest along the hill top, and drops back down to the valley, where it follows a main cycle path for quite a while, where it crosses the border into Liechtenstein. I think the old border signs have gone and there's a nature reserve landscaping in progress there, so now there's nothing to suggest you're in another country.

After a while it heads up the opposite end of the hill, which is largely off-road, mostly grassy farm track, past lots and lots of cows with cow bells.

Eventually it goes through some forest, mostly on fire road, and eventually descends on the the valley on the north side of the ridge for a bit. Then it heads up a number of hairpin bends off road, through more forest.

Eventually it comes back out on a road and crosses back in the Austria. No passport control these days. I think even Liechtenstein is in the Schengen area now too.

Day 1 - Bregenz, Austria

Stayed in Bregenz overnight, since the hotel there had reasonable prices given that it was a holiday weekend. They have a music festival every summer, with a huge floating stage, which changes every year.

Day 2 - Malbun, Liechtenstein

Given that the weather was supposed to be rain and thunder, and the ride I had planned was going to be a mega uphill leg burner in the mountains, I decided to go walking instead. Again, this was another route from the Liechtenstein Tourism website, this time starting from Malbun, the only ski resort in the country.

It started off as a sanitised footpath, then a bit of landrover track, then heads off a bit more cross country over meadows, and then starts to become a bit of a scramble. Eventually up in the clouds at about 1800m ASL, and still snow patches about in June!

Managed to walk past the Sassförkle, and was heading to the Schönberg summit, but the way was blocked by fresh landslip (I stopped there for a few minutes and saw more fresh rock slides) and more snow. The weather was beginning to turn too, so decided to head back down. Just as well, as the rain properly turned up half way down.

All of the rest of the pics can be seen here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104347553800437592244/MTBLiechtenstein

MTB Odenwald

Thought I'd explore a bit further than my usual loop up to Burg Frankenstein. So went down the other side of the hill and up to the castle on the next hill over. Nice rooty single track on the way, which ends at an 8-way junction.

Tannenburg is more ruins than a real castle, and it seems there's many ways to get up there.

Nice view of the next hill too, which is the highest in the area.

Then on the way back, scaled the climb up to Burg Frankenstein again. So all in all a little hillier than I normally ride, but I really ought to be riding more hills to keep fit.

MTB Scotland 2011

This year we combined a mountain-biking trip with International Rocket Week again, like last year. Except this time we did a whole week rather than just 3 days. First stop was Aviemore for some riding mostly on natural trails, and then next stop was 4 trail centres from the 7 Stanes.

Day 1 - Aviemore / Burma Road
Burma Road is one of the classic walking / cycling trips on General Wade's Military Roads. From Aviemore it's a single steep climb of about 500m vertical, followed by a quick descent, then basically following a river to Carrbridge, before returning to Aviemore.
It took us about 2hr30 to reach the summit, but we did stop off to find a geocache on the way up, and weren't exactly rushing it on the first day.

The river valley is rather quiet, and very scenic. I think we saw a total of 2 people all day - 1 on foot, 1 on a bike going the other way. Sluggan Bridge is not to be missed.

Burma Road at EveryTrail

Day 2 - Laggan Wolftrax
The Laggan Wolftrax is a Forestry Commission trail centre not too far from Aviemore, with a couple of Red Loops (bot were fun), a Black (didn't do that), and some swoopy/jumpy trail down to the carpark (did bits of that a few times). Phil crashed on the last jump, and somehow ripped the brake lever clean off the bars (but was not damaged), and bent a wheel.

Laggan Wolftrax at EveryTrail

Day 3 - Loch Morlich (walking)
Since Phil's bike needed repairs and the bruises from the day before were a bit sore, we decided to take 1 day out and walk around Loch Morlich. Checked out Bothy Bikes shop, and also the famous Inshriach Nursery Cake Shop. This is highly recommended. The cake is superb, and there's a view of numerous bird feeders, and more species of birds, squirrels, etc. than most people could name.

Day 4 - Innerleithen
Drove south to Innerleithen (the first of the 7 Stanes trail centres on out list), and met Howard there. There's really only 1 red trail (plus lots of normal non-marked paths), which basically goes up-up-up, then down-down-down. Saw lots of death-cap toadstools on the way up. Phil broke mech hanger almost at the summit of Minch Moor, which took a bit of bodging in to a single-speed.

Innerleithen at EveryTrail

Day 5 - Glentress
Second trail centre. We did the Red loop with the intention of doing Blue or something after lunch, but we had so much cake and a late lunch that we decided to skip the afternoon riding.

Glentress at EveryTrail

Day 6 - Ae
Is there any other town or village in the UK with a shorter name? We drove to the final hostel and met Jez (Howard's friend) to do the Ae Red loop. Weather was amazing, and too hot and sunny to sit outside for lunch (plus there were huge 2inch long wasps, which turned out to be non-stinging wood wasps).

Ae at EveryTrail

Day 7 - Kirroughtree
Last day and the 4th Red loop.  After lunch we had a bit of time to do some of the Blue loop, although a large section was closed due to forestry work.

Kirroughtree at EveryTrail

More Photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104347553800437592244/MTBScotland2011

Lake District and IRW 2010

This was the first time I'd combined a mountain biking trip and the International Rocketry Week in to one event. I'd had ideas about stopping off in the Lake District for years, but now it was to be reality.

Day 1
The first day was just a long drive to IJmuiden to catch the ferry to Newcastle with a car laden with bike, camping and rocketry stuff. Traffic at IJmuiden was dire due to some Tall Ships event, but the SatNav found me some back streets to avoid the jams and people.

Day 2
Drove from Newcastle to Carlisle to pick Phil up from the station. That was funny, cos they didn't open the door to get Phil's bike off, while some other guy was panicking about getting his tandem on! Eventually the guard opened the door and all was OK. Then it was off to Helvellyn YHA.

Day 3
Was p***ing with rain, but we met up with Howard at Whinlatter and did the Altura Blue and both halves of the Altura Red loop. Although we did have to stop for a warm lunch half way. Blue trail is very flowy. Red had some annoying climbs - the kind where you think there's no more up, but then another hill appears.

Day 4
We successfully rode up to the summit of Helvellyn. Well bikes had to be pushed for many sections, but we made it. I think going up Greenside Mine to Sticks Pass and then along the top to Helvellyn is not the best way. Should be much easier to carry on up the gravel track from Greenside Mine road up to Keppel Cove. That's the way we came back down, in 20 minutes, and that included a few brief stops and passing many walkers.

Day 5
Off to http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-5k2b6b to do the trails there. We hadn't spent much time planning our own XC routes, so figured it best to do another trail centre ride. The red Northface Trail had some pretty good sections, but also some annoying uphill singletrack rocky sections, and also some quite long fireroad sections between the bits of singletrack. In a way it's good - allows some people to to a gentle ride and others to do more techy parts and keep meeting each other along the loop. The last section of Red from Moor Top carpark back to the visitor centre is best, and all of the boardwalk stuff is there to cross bogs, not just for ewok village stunts.

Day 6 - Mon
Drove up to Largs for http://www.irw.rocketry.org.uk/. Only a few rockets were flown in the evening.

Day 7 - Tues
Flew the Qubit on D11-P, and the Saucer twice on Phil's and Dan's microhybrids, with Epoxy/Alumininium fuel grain. Beautiful weather too.

Day 8 - Weds
First day up on the moor, which was also sunny and calm. Flew the Qubit again, and the Saucer on Dan's microhybrid, this time with Epoxy/Garlic. Also flew the VB Extreme 29 on an E30-7T, which shot off the pad like a scalded cat.

Day 9 - Thurs
Saucer flight was attempted twice with Phils microhybrid, this time with Wax/Aluminium. First attempt failed due to injector in the wrong way. Second pretty much was a cold gas thrust.

Day 10 - Fri
Flew nothing

Day 11 - Sat
Flew nothing, but spent half the day helping Tom find his rocket that had spent a night out on the moor. Eventually it was found 1km away in a river!

Day 12 - Sun
Prepped Skyripper Hybrid motor (H124 - PVC grain) for most of the day, and then flew Slightly Scuff the Sky on it. Ignition was strange. The igniter went, and presumably most of the PIC. Then nothing. Still nothing. Then after some seconds, the motor just lit and the rocket flew pretty quickly, much quicker than I'd have imagined for a small hybrid. Unfortunately neither drogue nor main ejected, and it came in ballistic up on the moor, never to be seen again.

Day 13 - Mon
Got ferry back.

Day 14 - Tues
Drove back home.

More pics here...
http://picasaweb.google.com/andysrockets/MTBLakeDistrict2010
and here...
http://picasaweb.google.com/andysrockets/IRW2010

GPS tracklogs are on Everytrail...
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=786546 (Whinlatter)
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=786556 (Helvellyn)
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=786574 (Grizedale Forest)