[Closed] xmas eve ride ...

It had been planned to do this route on xmas eve:

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Russell all the way from Glasgow, me joining at Lochwinnoch. Suffice to say, I am gubbed, totally gubbed. 😀

At Lochwinnoch Castle Semple Loch, it was -9°C when we started out. There was ... and its the first time in my life I've ever seen it .. people skating on the loch ice :

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the ride soon headed out over the clyde muirshiel park area over to Kilmacolm ... the road, well track, well snowy track, well, snowy track with thick sheets of ice which I fall on track was great all the way over. That being said, a lot of the roads had been driven by cars and made for hard packed snow which was great to run along

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From Kilmacolm to Loch Thom was a simple run out along the cycle track, then picking up the Gryffe reservoir road to Loch thom, fantastic roads and tracks ...

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So, as the sun was setting, the last stretch was the singletrack path along the Kelly cut which comes out at the back of Wemyss Bay and Skelmorlie ... the sunset was just lovely which the orange glow bouncing off the snow ...

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however.

our previous turn of pace along roads and tracks was about to hit the wall and come to a grinding halt. Our success so far had relied on cars having hard packed the snow ... our current track had none of this ... so cycling through 4 inches of powder dry snow is like riding through sand and totally sapping. We ended up walking .....

for 4 miles.

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We descended in to Skelmorlie in the last of the light and from there it was a sedate 5 miles down the coast into Largs.

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All in all, thoroughly beautiful in the snow, thoroughly knackering and thoroughly enjoyable. Would make a great summer route too.

The pictures are from the camcorder, so I'll try and edit together a few shots for youtube over the next wee while.