Cold!
It snowed last night, and this morning it was round about freezing. Most of the club were sensible enough not to go out in the cold, so it was just me and one other mountain biker this morning. I put a couple of extra layers on and thought that would be enough, but that turned out not be quite right. Not only was it snowy, the ground was also very swampy, I guess because it was either frozen or saturated lower down. To make matters worse, the snow acted as camouflage for a number of quite deep puddles. So that meant that, on several occasions, my foot went down into a lovely mixture of water/snow/ice, deeper than the top of my boot, allowing icy water to seep in around my feet. Add to that a spray of damp snow from my back wheel onto my backside and I was very forcibly reminded of just how much colder damp snow at zero feels than much lower temperatures. My wife made it clear to me before I set off that she thought I was insane going out in such weather, so was she right? Well, maybe a little, but it was incredibly beautiful despite the cold, with the fresh snow lying everywhere, the snow gave some extra technical challenges and yes, despite the cold it was well worth it.
