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Road RidesOur standard meeting place for road rides is the bus lay-by at the top of Melton Brow, between Dalton and Lindal-in-Furness. See our Meeting Points map. Riders meet there on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday mornings at 9am. There's usually also a ride on Saturdays, but on Saturdays riders set off from the Abbey Road meeting point in Barrow at 9am, so it's usually a bit later by the time they pass the standard meeting point at the top of Melton Brow, where they pick up anyone waiting there. If the weather is bad, or a lot of people are away, then there might not be anyone turn up that day. Or maybe just one or two turn up, in which case they just do whatever ride they fancy themselves. We don't generally have the rides pre-planned, so we don't have a 'runs list'. Instead the ride is usually just decided on the day by the people who turn up that day, according to how far they want to go, what the weather is like, etc. The rides almost always start by riding through to Ulverston on the A590, so riders from Ulverston sometimes meet up with the ride en route to Ulverston if they don't make it to Melton Brow in time. Typical rides go up to places like Coniston, Langdale, Ambleside, Grasmere, Thirlmere, or out to Grange or Arnside, often with a cafe stop for refreshments, and then back via a different route. Mountain Bike RidesQuite a few members are also into mountain biking, and groups organise evening mountain bike rides during the week. In the winter these are in the dark, of course, but the modern powerful LED lights that are available now make mountain biking in the dark quite practical. Training RidesThe club rides described above are useful as training rides, and are sometimes pretty hard, but on these club rides we try to keep the group together, for example by waiting at the top of a hard climb to regroup. So riders who want to do a more serious training ride often do their own ride, maybe getting together with others who want a similar training ride, or else they just set off with the normal club ride but then extend the ride, or else peel off at some point to do a harder ride on their own.But in addition there are usually chain gang training rides on Tuesday evenings, starting in early March (lights are needed before summer time starts) and going on to mid-summer. The standard meeting point and time for these is 6pm at the Abbey Road meeting point in Barrow, where the minor road leads off into the back of Furness General Hospital. See our Meeting Points map. |