This time of the year is always a lottery in terms of weather and trail conditions but spring is still a brilliant time to ramp up your riding.
Even in the past few days we’ve had frosty mornings, hammering rain and scorching sun. What Storm Dave did to the Dales Divide ultra riders isn’t long in the rear view mirror either. However, there’s no doubt that once the lambs and bluebells are out, things are generally looking up.
For a start the flip of the clocks means evenings are longer, so after work rides without lights are on again if you’re organised enough. Even if it’s frosty when you crack the curtains, temperatures rise quicker now the sun actually clears the trees rather than hedge hopping most of the day. The trees and hedges themselves are still in their pretty rather than painful or just a pain in the arse era too. Blossoming boughs, snowdrops, primroses and bluebells don’t just scent the arc of nature’s progression through the early months. The spreading leaves need a serious amount of water from the ground too, so even when it does rain, puddles are hoovered up faster and mud can dry overnight. It’s definitely not time to pack away the mop and bucket or swap a grippy front tyre for something that looks sketchy for gravel. But you can realistically hope for faster rolling surfaces some of the time and maybe a couple of rides between bike washes if you’re lucky.
Nettles and brambles are also still low enough not to toxic tingle your knees or rip open your forearms. Gorse is still reviewing its door policy on moorland trails rather than refusing entry to anyone without armoured glove knuckles. Heather can’t fully hide sniper rocks, and bracken hasn’t even started to curl green tips through last year’s brown die back either. That means not only is spring riding a lot less prickly, filthy and painful but everything is wide open and fast rather than choked and impassable. Even trails you’d forgotten about under the weight of summer growth are now obvious again, ready to be ridden with just a bit of trimming and tidying here and there.
Apart from territorial towpath swans, spring animals are amusing rather than antagonistic too. Lambs hop about like wooly trails riders. Calves are curious rather than chargey. Wasps and ticks are definitely starting to stir, but they’re an occasional ambush rather than a full on attack. Houseflies are zombies rather than having the zoomies and horseflies are still content to stick their staple gun jaws in cow poo not human flesh as well. Apparently even the midges in Scotland are mostly still laying low outside of the sunniest days. That all means less stings, itches and paranoid searches of sweaty crevices or sugary drink tins to be concerned about.
Even the couple of hotter days we’ve had so far haven’t threatened to turn your ears into bacon rashers or tan lines into tattoos if you get slapdash with your SPF. They’re still at the ‘oh that’s nice’ warm sun on back, solar power thawing cold winter bones level. In turn that means climbs are less likely to cook you, sweat won’t make your eyes sting or your pits stink and you can go within a meter of your kneepads without gagging.
Obviously in the time you’ve taken to read this, the weather could have changed from tropical to tundra, dusty to deluge and back again. But again, at least that’s acceptable in spring, rather than it being something to rant about in summer. Just remember to take spare layers and be ready to laugh at the randomness as you make the most of the best riding months of the year.
