This is just a short clip used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

This is just a short clip used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

Full length video comprising of footage from various rides in a number of cities and towns in the north of England.

Huge thank you to those who push me to get better, and those behind the camera.

This is just a short clip used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

From 2–6 August, Suze and I took a short break in Wales. I say break, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like going somewhere and doing nothing, so it was a given that we were going to climb Snowdon whilst we were there.

The Blue Lake at Friog

Before we tackled Snowdon, we wanted to check out the Blue Lake at Friog. The lake is pretty well hidden, and quite a climb up the hillside, but well worth finding.

Pictures really don’t do the blue water justice…

Mount Snowdon—1085m

I dragged Suze up Scafell Pike in the Lake District last year, so she’s now no stranger to mountain climbing, and considering last year we took a decidedly dangerous (i.e. not marked and near-vertical) route to the summit, she’s no stranger to a bit of fear and adventure either.

We weren’t sure which route to take up Snowdon, there are several of comparable difficulty and we were undecided on which one to take. That was until we I got to hear of a route known as Crib Goch…

“This first part of the ridge is very exposed and serious, having resulted in several fatalities, even of experienced mountaineers; the Snowdonia National Park Authority describe it as ‘not a mountain for the inexperienced’”—Crib Goch

That’s what I like to hear…

The ascent

Setting off from the start-point was an enjoyable and really easy walk with some great views.

Suze got some absolutely amazing photos of the trip!

The path snaked round until we reached a fork and, on the right, the foothills of Crib Goch, where a sign reading simply ‘Caution, route to Crib Goch’ was our only marker… From this point the views of the lower lakes were amazing.

After taking the much steeper upward path at the fork, we soon got to the base of the Crib Goch ridge.

The path leading up to the base of Crib Goch.

Unbeknownst to us, the path to the beginning of the ridge itself was in fact a vertical climb. A climb that took us up sheer faced with hundreds of feet of drop below us, and only out hands and feet to keep us secure in the gaining wind. Fun!

The route up to Crib Goch was a climb up a sheer cliff face.

After what seemed like an age of us scaling vertical faces (and a moment of ‘don’t look down’ panic) we reached the edge of the ridge. Knife-edge is honestly the only way I can describe it.

“The highest point on the arête is 923m above sea level.”—Crib Goch

We climbed up, along and over the ridge on the knife-edge.

Unfortunately as we got further along the ridge, the cloud really closed in. This meant that a) the views were non-existent and b) things suddenly became a whole lot scarier. You could only see a few metres of the massive drops either side of you, nor could you see where you were heading to beyond the cloud. Very scary.

Me emerging from the thick cloud on the ridge.

We finally, after a terrifying pass across the ridge, arrived at the summit. Apparently, on a clear day, you can see England, Scotland and Ireland from the peak. We saw a little less…

Horizontal rain and gusting wind made the summit a little nasty…

For the full set head to Suze’s Flickr. Next up, Nevis…

This is just a short clip used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

This is just a short clip used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

This is just a short clip of a personal best of mine. The biggest pedal up I’ve managed to date. The clip was used as part of a ‘Post a clip of today’s riding’ thread.

“Unless you put your foot through your computer screen at the end of every day at the office, you are not a HTML Rockstar. Nor, unless you sit at your desk in all black with two swords crossing your back, are you a CSS Ninja.”

People calling themselves Rockstars and Ninjas is really really starting to annoy me. It’s nothing short of childish and unprofessional, please stop it!

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

1. Firstly, I needed to do some maintenance work on my bike. My bike cost well over £1000, so any work I do on it, I do carefully. That said, the particular task I was carrying out requires a 5p bodge—placing a 5 pence piece over a certain hole in the inner workings over the pedal system in order to get yourself some leverage to remove the pedals. This 5p got stuck, and it got stuck bad. Lodged in such a way that it wouldn’t come out, nor could I get anything back on. It was a definite rock-and-a-hard-place moment! Luckily I managed to bash the coin out with an allen key and a spanner!
2. I live in an apartment right in the centre of Leeds, so naturally it’s not that big. The upshot of this is that instead of having washing machines in the apartments there is a laundry room in the complex with washers etc in. I put a load in and went through the above ordeal whilst my clothes were washing. I then went down to the laundry room when my phone timer went off to find that instead of having cleaned all my stuff, the machine had in fact broken down, and was slowly filling with murky, nasty water in front of my eyes, with the clothes sloshing round and no way of opening the door. I managed to get to the mains switch and turn the machine off and get my stinky wet clothes out, before waiting over 20 mins for the next machine to come free. Waste of time and money.
3. After popping the washing on again I decided to sync a load of Suze’s photos to my iPad, only for iTunes to decide to do its own thing and sync all my iPhone apps over to the iPad. This is the same thing it did first time I synced it, and the same thing I spent an age undoing.
4. Being a bit of a fatty lover of food, I decided to look to my epic meal of chicken pittas with lettuce, cucumber, cheese, onion and salad cream and hot sauce as something to look forward to. The lettuce I bought yesterday also went out of date yesterday, making the meal pretty dry and distinctly less tasty than it should have been.

That was all within a few hours of each other, from getting in from work ’til about 8pm. I’m not sure what else is going to happen to me today, but I’m not looking forward to it :(