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Went down a trail today that I've not been down for a while...bombed into the top part of it at a right pace, and then about 50m in the nettles got really bad 😬
Pushed on thinking that it opened out a bit further on. It didn't, it closed in. It got to the point I just had to carry on, as there was no way I was pushing back up 2-300 odd metres through nettlegeddon.
My legs are fizzing like anything now. Thank god I had a long sleeve top on.
Aye, lying in the bath tingling away like crazy currently
(Not a euphemism)
It's a nice fizzing though
Nettles bring your legs alive.
Nettles bring your legs alive
Not as much as trying to keep Ebikes honest and sitting at 30kph on flat/down trails to make them work a bit
They bring my ****ing vocabulary alive.
I like nettles, I get my mum to occasionally pick a bag full and I squash them on my legs as they help with the muscle spasms/pain due to spms, for a few hours afterwards I can walk and stand up far easier.
I like nettles, I get my mum to occasionally pick a bag full and I squash them on my legs as they help with the muscle spasms/pain due to spms, for a few hours afterwards I can walk and stand up far easier.
Need a like button for that 👍
Didn't the Romans rub then on their legs to help warm up muscles and help with pain?
I need to make nettle tea again. Anyone partake?
I like nettles, I get my mum to occasionally pick a bag full and I squash them on my legs as they help with the muscle spasms/pain due to spms, for a few hours afterwards I can walk and stand up far easier.
This is interesting as I was recently reading about bee venom therapy. There is growing evidence that this type of therapy can help with chronic conditions such as MS.
I need to make nettle tea again. Anyone partake?
I participated in a one night bushcraft course. We learned how to brew this. It was not distasteful. I've brewed it again on camping trips to pass a while. Apparently lots of health benefits.
I went for a spin with a mate just after putting my new FS ebike together that had arrived that day. Was only going round the block, but we ended up going for a longer ride, no helmets as well as it really wasn’t planned. Went up a steep verge to get to the path at the top when unknown to me the slab the path was made from stuck up a good a good four inches. Ejected straight over the path and into a deep drainage ditch which was luckily bone dry but full of nettles. Oh how we laughed. Legs arms and neck totally covered. As has been said I actually quite enjoyed the tingle much more than if it was a small patch. Lasted a day or so. Bike was unskathed, also could have been a lot worse what with my bare noggin.
And brambles, those are just starting to reach out for you as well
Several entirely insane people on this thread 🤣
I’m absolutely stunned anyone likes the feeling!
As much as I hate nettles, I prefer them to brambles (nature's barbwire) 😖
Yup another tingle lover here. I like strimming them, you get splattered in tiny tingle inducing greenery
I've always believed in the rubbing a dock leaf on the sting to make it go away - and its always worked for me but google suggests its all an urban myth and there is no medical reason why it should work!
I fell into nettles from a tree as a kid. They were head height. I stood there for a good few minutes working out how best to get through the forest of pain. Eventually I just had to go for it. 😭
Seems to be a skin flailing mix of nettles, brambles, thistles and gorse here through the summer on tracks and trails that are wide and clear at other times. Some of youse would love it 🤣
To be fair the nettles are the least of the issue out of the mix.
I have that Beelite Chamois cream which gives a tingle when you first start using it, smells nice too, sadly I don't even notice it now 🤣
I’ve always believed in the rubbing a dock leaf on the sting to make it go away – and its always worked for me but google suggests its all an urban myth and there is no medical reason why it should work!
I find that squirting water from my bottle dramatically reduces the effect of the stinging, no doubt that because it helps to disperse the irritant.
I suspect that when crushing dock leaf the sap has a similar effect. Dock leaves are often found near nettles and dock is fairly abundant with sap.
So crushing dock leaf and rubbing the sap onto the sting probably helps imo, but also would the sap of other plants, or water. Or if water isn't available I use saliva.
Don't mind nettles, as long as I'm wearing gloves. Brambles on the other hand are utter bastards, leaving my forearms looking like I've been attacked by a rabid badger.
Edit: Talking of tingles, gotta love Original Mint Sauce shower gel.
Nettles and brambles you say...
Pfffffts
Gorse wants a word.
Was squeezing little pockets of puss and gunge out of everywhere for a week after this excursion.
I went for a ride yesterday on a new route taking in parts of the Cleveland way and various bridleways, for atleast 5 miles I couldn't even see my front tyre, brambles, hogweed, gorse, nettles and various other crap. It was hell.
Thankfully though I was wearing trousers 😂
Gorse wants a word
Oh, we have that too 😆
Woodbury Common is heaving with it, always picking bits out of my knuckles. Very satisfying when it's gone a bit manky and pops out like a little, sharp blackhead.
I’ve hit a low wall at speed when misjudging a tight corner. OTB right in to a huge patch of nettles. I’m another weirdo that needs to sign up to Tingletrackworld. The intial hit is uncomfortable but I quite like the after effects.
Aah, gorse acne zits. Yum.
Nettles are ok as long as you are properly sweating, which I usually am.
Edit: Talking of tingles, gotta love Original Mint Sauce shower gel
Oh yeh, that stuff is ace 🤣
Fell off a kerb riding my bike circa 10yo just wearing denim shorts, no top - huge patch of nettles, not one bit of my exposed skin wasn't stung.
The tingling was more of a whole body vibration and other than the pain, bloody scary.
You'd think I'd now have some sort of natural immunity. Nope
I went for a ride yesterday on a new route taking in parts of the Cleveland way and various bridleways, for atleast 5 miles I couldn’t even see my front tyre, brambles, hogweed, gorse, nettles and various other crap. It was hell.
I used to have a video up called 'Ride of a thousand gorse pricks'. There was a section of it from Birkbrow to the back of Guisborough woods that was a hell of a thrashing and then to finish it off I went OTB down a steep bank and literally rolled onto and through a load of gorse bushes. Cushioned my fall, but bloody hell the pricks and scrapes were terrible 🤣
Cleveland way from the Guisborough woods to Slapewath was pretty invigorating too!
Many years ago Mrs TJ and I were cycling on our own bikes not the tandem along the banks of the Tweed. She did the comedy low speed topple down the bank into a bed of nettles. I was having difficulty helping her up without laughing. Boy did I get into trouble 🙂
The undergro is almost making me think of getting an ebike so i can wear trousers and not overheat due to not having to work hard
There's a bridleway in the Beacons that is a meter wide between two stone walls and wiggles just enough that you can't see more than 15 metres or so, it also undulates while going downhill so you can see if there are other people on it and can therefore go very fast safely. The issue is that it overgrows with nettles regularly but as it's a popular walker's route it gets regularly strimmed back over the summer. When you get to the top entrance you can easily see if it's overgrown or not and take a different bridleway to the right, easy way to avoid pain.
Except for one hot, sunny day in May 2015. I'm out on my new bike (hence why I know the date) and get to the bridleway entrance to see it's been freshly strimmed, perfect for a blast down it so off I set. Come to the main steep bit and I've got a fair lick going on, go round the fast left sweeper and it all looks clear of people so pet off the brakes. As I come round the corner I noticed that the strimmed area stops in a very neat line and that the nettles left are just below the height of the wall but right across the trail, they've learned to grow sideways the little bastards. You know what the rotating brushes look like in an automated car wash when they do the front bumper, just before they part and go round the car? Well it was like that but with nettles. I blast through the middle getting hammered on the legs (wearing shorts), about 30 seconds of it as I was not slowing down and have to walk out of it! Pop out onto the road at the bottom and instantly collapse in absolute agony as my legs are raw with scratches that are full of the little stingers. I've never felt pain like it. Even sitting down in the river a few hundred metres further along does nothing to calm it down. Eventually my legs go numb so I'm able to carry on riding the 3 or so miles back to the start of the ride and jump in a shower and wash all the stingers out. It was then I discovered that the violence of it all had meant that the little needles had even been propelled through my shorts! Thankfully the nettle line had been below crotch height so I had a red raw line on my legs that stopped just below there.
I've had a horrible hatred of the things ever since that day, not that I liked them in the first place.
I was actually quite grateful the gorse was there in that photo under my arse the flat bit stops and gives way to a near vertical crag not massive but significantly more hurry.
It’s when the fizzing then persists for at least a day that you realise you’ve overdone it.
The undergro is almost making me think of getting an ebike so i can wear trousers and not overheat due to not having to work hard
The threat of rain the other day led me to wear long sealkin socks, they were well appreciated at times
Was worried John Nettles had died it been yew-treed. Or maybe he already has. 🤷
It’s when the fizzing then persists for at least a day that you realise you’ve overdone it.
I'm still buzzing twixt thigh and calf 18 or so hours later. It's more of a slightly pleasant background him now though.
It's been about a year since I went over the bars into a pit of nettles, spent till about 3 am tingling like crazy and not sleeping. Honestly haven't used my MTB again since 🙁
Whenever the topic of nettles comes up it reminds me of surely the most outrageously weird post ever on this forum.
Posted by the (late) messiah some way down the 1st page.
It is NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/stinging-nettles-ouch/
As much as I hate nettles, I prefer them to brambles (nature’s barbwire)
I’ll see your brambles and raise you rose bushes.
I did the glorious gravel event in the Surrey Hills last weekend and spent a little time up to my next in nettles, was really surprised how little I got stung, from what I’ve read above has my propensity to cause localised flooding when exercising in any sort of heat finally got an upside?
Bit of nettle assault on this afternoon's ride...
This place is full of weirdos
Enjoying nettle stings? You make me look normal 😉
KY Jelly works a treat on stopping the stinging.
The GF got stung by some plant, may of been a nettle or Hogwart.
Came up in a nasty blister.
The only thing we had on hand back at the campsite was a tube of KY.
Seemed to work very well.
KY seems to create a film of some kind so it must of excluded the air bit and reduced the stinging.
Hacks & Bodges 🙂 I'll send this to GMBN. Might win a stunt mug 😉
Oh. That's a read and a half!
Now off to find some nettles 😁
nettle or Hogwart
I think you mean Giant Hogweed. it’s easy to identify, it looks like Cow Parsley, but has purple spots and grows from 2 to 5.5 in height, often more. It does cause blisters, due to increased sensitivity to UV, but the blistering can cover quite large areas of skin. A very unpleasant experience in bad cases. There’s even a song about it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum
defo, Hogwart!. I blame Harry Potter 😉
(I hate typing on tiny little phones).
STW needs to conduct a study into KY and nettle stings 😉
Good job we had a 5l drum on tap 😉
PS - Other personal lubes are available.
@cheese@4p
Thank you. That post was astonishing 🤣