A Wintery Day playing in the Woods

Oooh as I looked out my bedroom window this morning it was snowing and there was a canny blanket of the white stuff lying all about. Plan of action, take the Fat Bike out. I firstly had to sort my socket situation. You see I had been down to Pace Rehab's Bredbury clinic in Manchester yesterday. Paul my prosthetist had had a bit tinker with my check socket and fettled it ready to make a final version. This meant I had to leave my socket, so that a copy could be made. That meant this morning I had to revert to plan B



 
I just used my everday socket and swapped out my Rheo XC for my BTK. "Ahh" slight problem. When Paul had been looking at my Bartlett Tendon he must have taken the pyramid adaptor off the top of the knee. Ern to the rescue he remembered there was one on top of my Running blade. Ok sorted.

All ready to go I had put my Shimano Gortex boots on as last time I was out my 5 little piggies were cold. As I went in to retrieve my Silverback Fat Bike I noticed both tyres were soft. Oh dear... I had to come back in the house and grab a valve adaptor so that I could use our compressor in the shed, to blow up both tyres. Then I was off. Man this Fat Biking is canny hard, especially when I have been used to using my electric bike. That said I wasn't complaining as I was out and having a blast in the snow.

I headed up towards the wind turbines and Wagtail Lane, it was proper Baltic up there and the roads as they are not used a great deal were quite deep with snow. After riding about 1.5 miles I felt something just wasn't right with my front end. Upon looking down I saw my tyre quickly deflating. Now I know you don't need quite as much air in your fat tyres but, bloody hell my tyre was flat.

Time to call intERNational rescue. "Hello Ern you know when you said my tyres just looked soft, well they may be soft on the top, but the front one is most definitely flat at the bottom" Ern was out walking wor Baxter, who apparently did not want to come to my aid, as he was having such a good time playing in the snow. I decided to push my bike along the lane to the top of Wilka's bank and met Ern there. We popped my bike in the back of his car, took it home, carried out a quick puncture repair and then Ern dropped me off over at the bus turning circle at Quakies, so that I could go have an adventure in the nearby woods. By this time I was bloody freezing, as I had had a waterproof jacket on and obviously had been sweating. I had taken this off and just popped my Endura hoody jacket on and once I started riding soon warmed up.

It's was a weird day weather wise as one minute the sun was shining from above, then by the time I got around to the next bit of the wood it was full on snowing. This kind of plays havoc when I am using my GoPro as it can appear that a single video was not exactly shot on the same day. It's all the darkness and light.

Out on my Silverback Synergy Fat so much fun

Proper enjoyed playing around in the woods, they appear so different when the well used paths and trails are hidden. It's like discovering a whole new place. I actually lost one of the trails in the second part of the wood and soon discovered I couldn't ride my bike, as there were just so many fallen trees. They must have come down when we had that bad wind a little while ago. Not only that I ended up surrounded by bramble bushes. These were a nightmare as they kept tangling around my prosthetic foot. Good job there was no one around at this point as I was swearing my heed off.

Getting this year off to a good start

Dead excited we got a bit snow to play around in

Finally I managed to head out onto  the proper trail and as I looked over from where I came I thought to myself, where the hell did I go wrong there. Never mind I knew my way home from here. It was easiest to head through South Moor Park and this is the route I took. Man it looked so pretty with all the snow both on the ground and in the trees, snowflakes gently falling. It may sound weird but it's at times like these I just love being outdoors, taking everything in and thinking how fortunate I am.