Wet Wet Wet – Lake District Classic

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Like the rain? Of course you do. Jenn and Benji go to the Lake District in search of a meander through some proper weather.

Words by Jenn, pictures by Benji.

 

It is a warm, sunny day in the middle of February and we are standing underneath a signpost at the end of Borrowdale. The signpost points to Seathwaite. We’re definitely in the right place. But there’s something missing.

I’ve got the sleeves of my best, most expensively breathable waterproof jacket shoved as far up my arms as they’ll go

We’ve come here to ride because Seathwaite is, statistically, the wettest place in England. (Apparently the wettest place in the whole of Britain is Glen Etive in Scotland, but that’s a bit too far to drive in a day.) Seathwaite accumulates over three metres of rainfall in a year and, perhaps understandably, I thought that if I wanted to write a few thousand words about riding in the rain, then this would be a good place to start. Today, however, Seathwaite has let us down, because it is not wet. Not even a little bit. There’s some pleasingly sticky cloud swirling around the fell tops, but the sky overhead is that thick, paint pot blue that marks the start of spring and there is not a raindrop to be seen. I’ve got the sleeves of my best, most expensively breathable waterproof jacket shoved as far up my arms as they’ll go and I have already come to the conclusion that this is not the day to be wearing the decidedly less best, less expensive and less breathable waterproof shorts. Boil in the bag? Quite. There’s more risk of rain inside than there is out, but that’s the law of photoshoots: you never get what you need.

Accepting the inevitable

If you live and ride in the UK, then rain is a fact of life. You probably don’t even notice it all that much. It’s not uncommon for weeks to go by with – literally – not a single dry ride enjoyed, even if you’re out every day. But most of us are resigned to the fact that if we didn’t ride in the rain, then we wouldn’t get to ride at all.

The number of rides where I’ve been soaked to the skin and ended up frozen greatly outnumber those where I’ve got sunburnt and heat-struck, probably by a factor of hundreds. Still, I know which of those situations I’d prefer to end up in. Getting wet won’t kill you (though I suppose if we’re being sensible about it, getting cold and wet might). As my gran used to say as she kicked us out of the house to chase the dog around the garden for an hour, rain or shine, ‘skin is waterproof’. She might also have added ‘…and you needed a bath anyway’, but we never heard that bit: rain’s noisy, and so was the terrorised dog.

Life as a cyclist has rendered me mostly immune to weather. I’d like to think it’s an adaptation I have undertaken gracefully but in reality although I like the idea of submitting in a zen-like fashion to whatever the sky may drop on my head, when it comes to the moment in a miserable day where I have to decide whether or not to get a bike out and get on with things, I still struggle just as much with it as everyone else. There are few things less appealing on a rainy day than leaving the shelter of a weather-tight roof and four walls to ride around the woods getting muddy, wet and cold. And somehow, it’s many times harder to walk out of the door with your bike when it’s already raining, than it is to stay out when it starts raining while you’re already there. Though I’ve never quite worked out why.

The one thing which can always be relied upon is that regardless of the initial reluctance, once you submit to the weather, it’s invariably nowhere near as bad as you thought it would be. Perhaps because I (and everyone else who had pint-sized red wellington boots slapped on their feet as soon as they could walk) still find jumping in puddles secretly pleasing, whether it’s the feet or the wheels that are doing the splashing. Which begs the question – why haven’t I grown out of this yet? And what is it that makes getting cold, wet and muddy sometimes strangely appealing?

Local colour of certain death

The Lake District is my favourite place to ride when it’s raining. Now: if you’ve ridden in the Lakes when it’s wet, then you know this is a perverse idea. Yes, Cumbria is at its most picturesque when the fells are draped in soft low cloud and the autumnal colours are popping. Yes, there is a warm dry tea room around every other corner just waiting to soothe away the pain of another soaking wet ride. But – the slate. The limestone. The polished, slippery, Lakes-specific rock that sends front wheels shooting sideways without warning and back wheels spinning uncontrollably with every committed pedal stroke. Unless you’re brave (or at least a little bit stupid), then riding here when it’s wet is more than a bit daunting. And every locality has its own bad weather hazard: slick roots, wet chalk. Thick, mech-wrenching clay and brake pad-munching grit. You can try to weatherproof your bike and your kit but all that you’re really doing is adding layers of delay to the creeping, weather-induced failure that, sooner or later, catches up with everyone (and every bike).

White shorts for the UK summer, anyone? No, I thought not…

Our tame Cumbrian local for the day, Tom of the beard, explains his personal kit quirk: wearing his armour over his jacket to protect it from the effects of crashing. I am both impressed that he’s prepared enough to crash that he’s considered the consequences so logically, and mildly alarmed that, in some sort of inverse scale of value, he seems to be just as worried about the sleeves of his waterproof as he is the skin and bones of his arms. In return I get a shrug which says ‘Well, you need a good jacket here, and good jackets aren’t cheap…’. This is kit locality at its most extreme; the way in which riders who predominantly ride in one spot and on one sort of terrain will refine their clothing and equipment until it’s so specifically designed to cope with the conditions in one particular area that it starts to look, well, just a little odd elsewhere. White shorts for the UK summer, anyone? No, I thought not…

Later, on the trail from Watendlath, we stop to look at the crux move: a short, slabby step-down at the foot of a 30 metre stretch of spiky, toothy death-rock. I consider that I’d maybe ride it if it was dry, but with moisture still slicking the surface I’m going to give it a miss. Tom nods agreement, then does my ego no favours by helpfully pointing out that it probably wouldn’t actually be any easier if it hadn’t rained last night: the rock has been nicely polished by the passing of feet and tyres so will be mostly frictionless regardless of whether it’s wet or dry, and the groove formed by the two opposing slabs means that your wheels can’t actually pop out or slide anywhere, even though the usual vague rider’s grasp of physics might lead you to think that they should. All that ‘dry’ would do, in this case at least, is remove the doubt and evaporate the mental possibility of slipping.

Which is an interesting theory. But not one I am willing to test.

 

That’s not rain…

In lieu of ‘proper’ rain, we make a route diversion and head up one of Borrowdale’s tributary valleys where we know that there’s a chance to get some river shots and it looks as though there might at least be a cloud or two. And clouds (usually) mean rain.

The farm at Seathwaite itself is afloat on a sea of liquid which may or may not be mostly effluent from the cows munching on hay in the confines of a barn. It certainly isn’t clear. They stare dolefully out at us as we pedal by in the sunshine, mouths firmly closed against the spray off our front wheels. We track the edge of the cloud’s shadow up the valley; the sun turns the river into a streak of blinding white light and the rays bouncing off the edge of the mist are spectacular. It’s still not rain as such, but there’s definitely the barest misting of moisture in the air as we cross the river. The seasons are still in the pre-spring pause which occurs as everything green gathers its breath, waiting for the moment to jump into action with the fresh shoots and the growing; nonetheless you can’t miss the fact that this place runs on rain. The river bed is a jumbled mass of boulders strewn across the valley floor; in wetter times they’re no doubt submerged but now they just point to the awesome power of rainfall to rearrange the landscape. I’ve been here when it’s rained so hard that I couldn’t see the trail beneath my feet or hear myself think; it’s hard to imagine what that was like now that the air is optimistically warm and the sun is high in the sky, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t enjoy it as much at the time as I do now with the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia.

There are some peculiarly specific pleasures which relate solely to riding in the rain. The tightness of a faceful of mud that cracks as you smile. The – utterly clichéd but still amazing every time – incredible smell a summer cloudburst makes as it hits dust cooked by days of muggy, British summer heat. Pedalling along a skinny line of singletrack, barely wider than a tyre and floating on the inch of water reflecting the sky under your wheels. The simple bliss of coming home from a ride completely soaked, stripping off on the doorstep and leaving little muddy puddles around the socks and gloves on the floor, then pulling on a dry t-shirt and warm socks and towelling the ride out of your hair and instantly feeling ten degrees warmer, well exerted and thankful for central heating…

Like eskimos, only wetter

Rain from the ground up is not the same as rain from the sky. The English language doesn’t have fifty different words for rain, but it’s not doing too badly. Precipitation, shower, downpour, mist, drizzle, mizzle, sprinkling, soaking, moist, damp… I am especially fond of ‘damp’. Those grey days where the sky and the clouds merge into one seamless ceiling, when there’s no freezing groundwater to soak you from the tyres up, just wet air that’s thick enough to condense sparkling on your eyelashes and a line of raindrops havering delicately on your helmet peak. When all sound is muffled. Quiet, silencing rain.

And loud rain: summer storms. Thunder, lightning, blue air, flash floods. Simultaneously scary and exhilarating to ride in. Clothing soaked through in moments, rain not just dripping into your eyes but pouring off your chin too, making the air smell electric, washing the fusty sweat stink out of a helmet that has definitely seen better days, pooling in your shoes and sloshing between your toes as you pedal, pouring off your arms and running down your neck.        Winter rain that falls in the darkness of December and January, thickening to slush and then proper fat snow, trickling down and floating on the surface of the puddles. Un-forecasted rain that arrives the night before a big ride plan, firing its opening salvo sometime after midnight, waking you with the sinking feeling of a day potentially stretched to breaking point by the thought of a day spent pedalling along under the weight of the rain. And those ‘that wasn’t meant to happen…’ spring showers, on and off when you snuck out without a jacket, micro-downpours steaming off shoulders in the woods.

 

Coals to Newcastle

Then there are the ethics of riding in the rain. We joke sometimes that American bike manufacturers should bring their R&D departments over here for Mud Camp. It would be a bit like Press Camp, except in Yorkshire instead of Utah and with mud instead of dust. Then they’d see how much mud clearance really is optimal, and which tyres really do work in the mud.

It’s not their fault, though. Really. The problem is not that it doesn’t rain in America; more that American riders just don’t go out in the rain. This is because the weather on other continents is often clement enough that they can afford to wait. If it rains today, it will be dry tomorrow (and the day after that, and the day after that). No ‘chance of sunny spells’ – they know it will be dry. They can afford to take a rain check. If I tried that here, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t touch a bike for weeks. If not months. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be a cyclist at all. There are definitely better things to enjoy when it’s raining: kayaking, for starters. And Scrabble.

At least mountain bikers don’t have to deal with the whole mudguards issue – unlike riding on the road, where they make a real difference, they’re mostly just a pointless gesture for us – but there’s no doubt that riding on wet trails does cause damage. I’m not that interested in whether or not we, as cyclists, cause more or less damage than any other trail user group; holes in trails are holes in trails, whoever’s putting them there. Like a good, environmentally-minded trail user I do my best to avoid spots I know will suffer, but still I sometimes end up in places I perhaps shouldn’t be when it’s wet thanks to misjudging the conditions or just absent-mindedly ending up locked into the wrong sequence of trails.

And – god, I feel guilty just writing this – when the allure of soaking my legs with freezing water has finally dulled, or I’m just too tired to think about what might be under the surface of a stretch of puddles that I’m approaching at speed, I will every once in a while ride around the edge of a puddle, swinging my wheels sideways and aiming for the margins where I can be certain that there are no half-bricks, wheel sized holes or submerged mopeds waiting to thwart my forwards progress. Safer, yes, and drier and warmer; but almost certainly making that puddle wider for the next rider to pass that way. Which, given that nobody else seems to be out in the rain quite as often as I am, might very well be me anyway.

Shut up and ride. And enjoy it while you’re at it, OK?

 

It’s an inevitability of being a British mountain biker that you have to find your own way to make peace with precipitation. There is no choice and no way around it. If you ride, it will sometimes rain. You can curse at the sky and shake your fists; you can sulk and resign yourself to the moistness, hating the way the water is dribbling into your socks. Or you can just accept that you’re outside, riding your bike and you’re experiencing whatever weather is along for the ride. It’s not like mountain biking has a point anyway, is it?

It’s nothing to do with appreciating the dry days more because you’ve been out in the wet ones. I don’t believe you earn your right to that first dusty berm of spring or the bone-dry miles of an extended Indian summer – just witness the friend (and everybody has at least one of these) who consistently manages to get their week’s riding allocation in on the one dry day out of seven, while everyone else ends up slogging through the misery and filth that passes for normal, British, weather service on the other six.

So maybe it’s just about acknowledging that even rainy days have their benefits. And that even a wet ride is still better than no ride at all.