Dallas & Romach Loch

With fine weather forecast all day, I headed for the hills for some XC riding with my friend GS. Neither of us has ridden this route before, but confident with the trail presented before us on the map, we loaded the bikes & headed for Dallas as a base for the day. Let the adventure begin....

Grinding up the first climb of the day

I took a slight detour to see if this bog was ridable....well it wasn't. Splash...feet soaked in freezing water, not the smartest idea I have ever had, especially at the start of the ride. Doh!

Swampthing

GS with his new trail guide

Nice autumn colours, not long till there is snow up here

Once a bridge, but long gone

Not the last time I would be pushing today!

GS trying out the fatbike.....

...Leaving me to get the coiler through this muck using my superior bike skillz...aye right!

Well, the map shows it as a trail

GS quickly finds out that what looks like a trail, may not always be ridable!

Nice! Right up to the knees!

Swamp-tastic! Ok, think we are going to have to leave this trail for a moonlander! Back to the map..

Pit stop for rear puncture on the coiler

Yet more forestry work going on

Romach Loch, look nice eh? Well looks can be deceiving.....

Hmmm that trail looks a bit close to the water..

So does that, someone could fall in there...

Oh, too late! GS smiling after climbing out of loch. Bike & rider went for swim after front end got stuck, thankfully it was not too cold today

Quickly turning into trail from hell. Hike-a-bike went on for miles

Not much traffic comes through here!

Other side wasn't any better, where exactly is the trail supposed to be?

Finally off the hill & enjoying a well deserved downhill section

Looking over the Moray coast, with Findhorn Bay & Culbin in the distance

Bike looking as tired as the rider by this point

Things are starting to get pretty muddy, really happy with the nate tyre in these conditions

Finally made it back! Really long day, nearly 7 hrs riding, walking, pushing & swearing! Excellent day on the hills proving how capable the bike is

Mud crawling

Ok, that's me just finished with another great beach ride, testing out the new tyres, so here is my post ride thoughts, from the perspective of the conditions I ride regularly around Moray

I bought the nate to use as a mud tyre & that is pretty much what it should be used for. Think of it as a fatbike swampthing....

Compared to a regular Larry -

It weighs more
It doesn't roll as well....I would not like to ride these for huge distances
I would not use it as an all season trail tyre, I think the Husker Du is going to much better option. Nate has too deep a tread & open spacing for general use
makes your balls go numb when riding on the road 

But.............

It has awesome grip & traction....if you cant float over it, you are going to dig your way through with these! These are the ultimate winter tyre. If Nate had a last name, it should be Crawler! The extra traction in the sand was handy at times

The BFL works really well, I'm very impressed with them. They take everything that was good about Larry & make it just a little bit better. I was running 7psi on front tonight, I think I could have gone even lower without any problem...will experiment another day.

After trying the BFL/80mm combo on the beach tonight, I can only imagine the moonlander will be amazing to ride on soft snow & sand.

So what have I learned from this?.....well I have decided that for the moment, without going to the expense of the moonlander, I can get the most out of my bike with a second set of wheels.

The plan is to get a set of 100mm rims for beach riding. BFL on front, Larry on back
Second set will be my existing 80mm rims, with hopefully Husker Du all round, with Nate being the rear tyre choice during winter.