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Reading a few posts recently made me realise some people have problems I'm fortunate enough not to have had neither locally or anywhere I've traveled. The rocks aren't especially slippery, the mud isn't too sticky, and it isn't gritty either. So my tyre tread doesn't clog up, never have to worry about mudguards clogging up, and my drivetrain lasts pretty well.
Where do you ride (home or away), and what's it like there?
I've read that the Peak District has both gritty mud and limestone which is slippery when wet.
Local riding is Glenmore/Rothiemurchus/Northern Cairngorms.
In general the soil here drains really well. There is a lot of sand and fine granite in it. Mud isn't too much of an issue unless it also contains a lot of pine needles which can then coagulate into a bit of a mess.
My previous house was just outside Edinburgh where I'd usually ride the Pentland Hills. That had a lot of very sticky mud and the trails would stay wet through until May. In many cases folk were just avoiding riding some of the trails due to the damage. The more they are ridden when soft, the longer it generally takes for them to get "good" again.
One thing I have noticed since moving is that jockey wheels have become a consumable. Must be the fine granite particles up here.
In "proper" winter when there is a lot of snow, my bike often comes back cleaner than it left. Even the tyres look like new! 🙂
I used to wonder why people moaned about mud until I moved to the Mendips for a few years.
Grew up in the Beacons so got used to gritty mud that rarely clogged and really grippy rocks, was a bit of a shock when I started riding in places that got slippery when wet! Current local conditions can be anywhere between a complete slippery mudfest to the grippy stuff I grew up with, sometimes all in one ride, so I just choose where to go depending on the weather and my mood. Sometimes plugging away in the mud can be just as much fun as flying along a fast trail centre route in the rain.
British Geological Survey maps are your friend here.
I'm lucky enough to have sandstone in one direction, so that way when it's been wet.
APF
Clay and chalk have got to be the standouts, I'm so glad that my main riding spots don't include much of either. Clay for clag and chalk for slippy death. Neither has much redeeming feature imo
And on the other hand, redonkulously grippy trails- big granites with good runoff so they don't go slimy, most sandstones, that random perfect tweed valley mud-and-stone concrete mix that you sometimes get, or fort william's magic limestone mix that glues the rocks together and is like riding on sandpaper. (and when it gets on you, is like being sandpapered...)
North East Northants. Clay country.
We have Schrodinger's mud for most of the winter. Simultaneously slippy as ice and claggy as concrete. Fun bit is you never know which until your tyres touch it.
Moved from East Kent to Fife and the difference is pretty dramatic. Kent was clay so in the summer it was baked hard and in the winter was horrible claggy permaslop. See Colournoise’s pics above.
My main riding now is on the ochils and it’s well draining soil and rock. The winter riding here is much better. We had rain for most of November including local flooding recently and after a bit of dry spell since, the trails are drying out quite nicely.
It does make me think differently about ‘what tyre’ threads for sure.
Regularly ride at Woburn, sandy mud that eats drive trains.
Now riding more at Delamere on the gravel bike, just slippy moss to deal with. Todays ride was exploring some of the “off piste” areas, the roots were strangely less slippy than I expected. (By off piste I really mean not the main gravel roads, I have no idea where I was!)
The bike took seconds to clean, so even though we’ve had a fair bit of rain lately, wasn’t anywhere near as muddy as I expected.
A lot of variation where I am in Queensland.
A lot is sandy, which is good in the wet, but after prolonged dry spells can be nasty.
One place we go just gets closed after rain as it’s black soil. I’ve been there when it’s not quite dry enough before and at the bottom of one of the downhill runs the front wheel was so blocked it just wouldn’t turn any more.
Pushing (more like having to push) a fatbike across an insanely claggy Cotswolds field is something to experience.
You don't know what mud is until you've experienced this.
A couple of feet of roll and wheels stop, seatstays and fork crowns jammed solid with mud despite huge clearances.
4 inch tyres become 8 inch tyres. Carrying the bike is near impossible due to the weight of the clag.
You genuinely start to think you might need helicopter extraction.
Awful. There are not enough words to describe the horror.
I still have night terrors about winter riding in the Chilterns. Heavy chalk and clay soil that would cling to every surface and double the weight of your bike, along with razor edged flint and chalk bedrock so slippery that in some places even putting your foot down was courting disaster. At the very least it taught me how to ride roots, because as unbelievable as it may sound, those are the bits of trail that in the winter in the Chilterns that offer the best grip.
It took quite a while for me to trust wet rock in Winter in other parts of the country
West Yorkshire - grey, muddy, miserable and wet.
Enough about the locals,what are the ground conditions like 😆 🤣
Keilder in the wet versus Keilder in the dry can be a 4 sets of brake pad difference 😉
Sydney area here. I’m still yet to get my head around the insane grip levels of the local gritstone. On steep stuff my head says no, but tyres continue to say yes, even when wet.
Came from Sheffield. Am scared of going back and having to relearn how to ride slippery conditions.
Moved from the Chilterns to the Cotswolds in the last year and have been appreciating the differences. I don't miss the claggy clay! The limestone of the Cotswolds hills drains well, I keep expecting the trails to be a quagmire after rain but it's steep locally and drains fast compared to what I'm used to. Some slippy rocks at times but tbh it's good to have rocky sections in the trail. No flints here is a real bonus too, tyres might get worn out rather than the death of half a dozen cuts.
I can ride from home on the Greensand ridge including Woburn. So However wet it gets it never seems to stick. The East Chilterns has lots of armoured farm trails which are fine. The rest of the Chilterns can be a nightmare but was fine yesterday
I’ve read that the Peak District has both gritty mud and limestone which is slippery when wet.
But mostly not at the same time, though sometimes on the same ride. The Dark Peak grittier areas have the advantage of also having grippy rock and watery, slurry-like, grinding paste 'mud'. The limestone bits, from about Castleton southwards - White Peak - tend to be slippery when wet, hello Cavedale, and more prone to proper mud. Fortunately limestone has been designed with a distinctive white warning colour making it easy to spot. The slippery stuff in the Lakes not so much, which always confuses me initially.
I rode in the Chilterns once, in winter, with narrow mud tyres. It was unremittingly awful. The Dark Peak may wear stuff out fast, but at least it's enjoyably rideable all year round and you don't need mud tyres 🙂
I grew up on the edge of the Berkshire downs. MTBing up there in winter was pretty awful. You might as well have just rubbed your frame with sandpaper and jammed a stick in your wheel 😆
Rims were a consumable item if rode on the Ridgeway with rim brakes.
Living in East Devon is mostly delightful. Sandy and pebbly, so it drains well all year and never gets too sloppy.
Very Northern Peak District which is gritstone so bare rock is your friend in the wet. However most terrain is a mixture of peat/bog on top of the gritstone and so the prevailing conditions are pretty sloppy come autumn/winter. The clag’s not quite as bad as ‘central’ Peak District (Kinder/Ladybower) which tends to be clay gloop and can get so bad it stops wheels turning. I’d take either of those over the south which as others have said is polished limestone death.
https://www.landis.org.uk/soilscapes/ is good for getting geeky with soil types
...only 2 carrot fertility for my house but at least the freely draining slightly acid loamy soil is good for the riding
Oxfordshire, near the ridgeway.
Mixed - some chalk, some clay and some gloop(very sticky mud), the worst is overhorsed tracks, where the entire width of the track is horsed and the grass is mixed in with the gloop in ankle deep potholes so it’s stiction and clumping strength are massively increased leading to wheel stopping mudguard jamming building blocks.
Pembrokeshire is quite diverse. We have upland bogs, lowland bogs, field boundary bogs, woodland bogs and cliff top bogs.
The good news is the bogs only exist for 3 months after any rainfall at all.
We had dust in August. Dust!
It’s generally unremitting in wetness with a tendency for clogging mud everywhere.
On a micro regional basis, Sussex has its own variations - both in locations, and nomenclature...
https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/sussex-mud/
But the green, mossy, chalk has to be the worst - it's like riding on a wet bar of soap.
Spain Murcia/Andalucuia border, the difference I find here to my native Brizzle is that if it’s going to rain I don’t bother riding as it goes full mental storm whereas I’d previously just ride.
Also there are those devils head thorns which mean that tubeless is pretty mandatory and dry lube seems to be the best seller here.
Although the winter is way warmer it brings a lot of wind which actually reduces the air quality in my area and can make for a grim sand blasted rides and we have sandstorms and rain from the Sahara which can be very pretty but covers everything in red sand.
But I do enjoy not having so much mud and a nice winter day is like a summers day in the U.K.
And the lack of black ice an snow,I’m not missing the winter commute 🙂
Kent here and on the edge of the North Downs which is a chalk ridgeline, so basically off limits from autumn until spring.
Sloppy mud with a chalk base which is like ice when wet, a lot of the trails are off camber too so it's really not fun!
Locally, Leeds West Yorkshire, we have a bit of a mix.
Head east and you tend to go into clay-y territory. Fantastic woodland buff secret singletrack in the dry, but a nightmare in the wet.
Head West and it tends to get grittier and better drained. But you still have to be careful which trails to choose.
I'm originally from Macclesfield which has awesome grippy gritstone and generally drains well. My first winter in Leeds was a bit of a shock!
One place we go just gets closed after rain as it’s black soil. I’ve been there when it’s not quite dry enough before and at the bottom of one of the downhill runs the front wheel was so blocked it just wouldn’t turn any more.
I've read that in the US it's frowned upon to ride wet trails due to how damaging it is.
Interesting, and usable for a layman too.
West Yorkshire – grey, muddy, miserable and wet.
Enough about the locals,what are the ground conditions like 😆 🤣
Fair. Both posts 😁
Mid-Cheshire here, basically a lot of sand and sandstone and rooty forests with sandy, gritty mud. One advantage is it dries out very quickly and is rarely muddy for too long - if you avoid the hollows where it can be wet all year round.
It's basically pretty grippy but as above there are a lot of roots and plenty of sniper roots to catch you out, of you venture into one area in particular there are granite deposits from where a glacier melted on its last journey down from Scotland, so totally different.
That soilscapes site only covers England and Wales - is there a Scottish equivalent? I'm trying to think how I'd describe the mud where I'm riding...it seems to be copious, can be thick but isn't claggy, but the volume of the stuff does tend to block things.
QECP on the south downs is my main riding spot
Mostly a chalk hill.
in the summer you end up with bare chalk with smoothed stones, as the weather changes you get a nice coating of grippy soil on the chalk.. as it gets worse it turns to slimy mud on chalk, in the cold the polished chalk gets an invisible ice surface which may as well be a mirror. And to top it off, the fireroad climbs get this several inch thick sticky horrible heavy claggy mud/chalk/clay combo over slipper chalk which is just relentless on your stamina
However.. my more experience riding mates tell me we benefit from the conditions as we are used to riding them, which i can relate to, as when we take a newbie to the area out they seem to always have a steep learning curve
Chilterns here. Relentlessly muddy from early october to june but we do get plenty of variety from wet slop through muddy mud mud to wheel stopping clag. Then there’s the off-camber slippy chalk with flints and a barbed wire fence run into latimer. In the autumn the leaves, roots and rain combine to add treachery to the mix. Theres no sign of grippy igneous or sedimentary rocks but there is the odd erratic farm road brick. Mid winter it freezes making the offroad going a lot easier but the roads lethally icy. For 4 months of the year it bakes hard and the landlords look a lot happier to see us. We love the chilterns!
Tyres wise, I tried some narrow mud tyres a few years back and broke several ribs on the root they failed to grip. Currently on bontrager xr4s, great in the mud, roots and leaves but the flints shred them so it’s bontrager se4s next.
Hello o/ interesting thread this one. I live a Derbyshire mining town called Wirksworth which has a complex geology. To the east is sandstone and gritstone (the last traces of the Pennine mountain chain). Which affords great grip, though the mud is that gritty damaging type. To the west is the White Peak with those slippy albino limestones.
I’ve switched to flat pedals this last year and am finding it less stressful in slippy conditions.
My house is on a lump o’ clay. So unfortunately for the Guinea pigs the lawn is a quagmire for 6 months of the year : )
South Downs green chalk may be the most frictionless substance ever. Absolutely terrifying stuff to ride on. Also that red brown clay that parts of bristol have. I remember pretty much sliding a big chunk of the old Still woods DH track on my butt because of that stuff.
The Dark Peak may wear stuff out fast, but at least it’s enjoyably rideable all year round and you don’t need mud tyres 🙂
👆 Truth. I love the Dark Peak for that - you get loads of spray and everything is coated in a fine grit which I'm sure destroys bikes very effectively, but it's much nicer than claggy mud. That said, this only applies if you stick to Bridleways. A lot of the cheeky stuff has plenty of mud.
I'm glad there's a thread about this - local geology is a big factor in how we ride, what we have to ride on, how long our gear lasts and what our trails actually look like. Fascinating subject. I've got a mix of sandstone and limestone around here, with a lot of glacial till topsoil. Some of my local climbs are just rubble, which is hard to ride on - and some are fine.
The geology also affects the local industrial history. A lot of the trails I use are access tracks to small scale Victorian workings, now leafy and overgrown. Not coal in my immediate area but small quarries and limekilns and the like. The coal mining areas are close, of course, and they have given us large areas of waste ground that no-one cares about so MXers and MTBers can do what they want. Some of the more modern ones still have their modern access roads in place so you can get back up to the top.
Clay and chalk have got to be the standouts,
Yep, there is no part of hell deep enough for this in the winter. Looking at you, Chilterns
Someone's mentioned it already, but Cotswold winter mud is a thing to behold. And behold is all you can do, as your bike ain't f_____ing moving.
Even around there though it's quite location specific, because it tends to be the northern bit, from kinda Cirencester northwards, that's horrific. Further south, Stroud-valleys, way, it's more like just 'normal' mud.
One of the things I like about the move from there to the Peak is that a post ride bike clean is now five minutes with a hose, not an hour with brushes and various things to poke mud out of other things
@shermer75 are you thinking in particular about ashridge or wendover/coombe hill by any chance. Utterly miserable this time of year. The difference between good ground conditions and bad here is quite astonishing.
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@shermer75 are you thinking in particular about ashridge or wendover/coombe hill by any chance. Utterly miserable this time of year. The difference between good ground conditions and bad here is quite astonishing.
Surrey Hills. The most popular riding area, around Peaslake and Holmbury St Mary is Greensand, so holds up pretty well in winter, despite the puddles, but the sandy soil plays havoc with drivetrains, bearings and brakes. Head north across the A25 and up the other side of the valley on to Ranmore, and it’s chalk topped with clay, which can be lethally slippy when damp, but becomes sticky and near impassable once properly wet.
That soilscapes site only covers England and Wales – is there a Scottish equivalent?
@DickBarton - how about a National Soil Map of Scotland?
https://soils.environment.gov.scot/maps/soil-maps/national-soil-map-of-scotland/
Volcanic soils here are great for growing pineapples... but I don't recommend riding on pineapples.
But riding on wet volcanic soils without pineapples growing in them can be treacherous too.