State of the roads.....

redddraggon

Often when people are buying new wheels/bike they bring up that they live in London/Edinburgh etc with potholed streets so the wheels/frame needs to be really strong.

From my experience town/city roads seem a lot smoother and better surfaced than a lot of the roads I use in the North Wales countryside.

Some of the roads I use are little more than dirt tracks and I haven't made any special equipment considerations. Perhaps the softie city dwellers just aren't hardcore enough

whyamihere

redddraggon wrote:

Perhaps the softie city dwellers just aren't hardcore enough

Well, we all knew that already...

I've literally been down dirt tracks on my road bike, as a result of getting lost. It's a lot more down to your riding than what equipment you use. I was a mountain biker for 5 years before turning to road, and even now I can ride straight at a pothole and not even feel it (literally). You don't have to perform a full bunnyhop, just make the wheels light and your speed will carry you over. If you're not going fast enough, then you're going slowly enough to steer round them.

Peasoup

maybe they're just much stronger and fitter than us backwater types - simply snapping lots of spokes with their raw shandy drinking power.
or maybe they're just fatter... :twisted:

then again I'm a northern pie muncher who really has no room to speak

Stewie Griffin

I suppose you lot all enjoy riding in the rain as well as brewing your own alcohol in the bath Bunny Hops? I want to learn for those moments when you happen upon a crater at 20+mph but I have this image of the bike Im riding thats made out of the same stuff as milk bottle tops folding underneath me :roll:

Phekdra

redddraggon wrote:

Some of the roads I use are little more than dirt tracks and I haven't made any special equipment considerations. Perhaps the softie city dwellers just aren't hardcore enough

True - I thought the town roads around here were bad until I started doing weekend tours of the countryside. Riding up a single lane one in seven with a centreline inches-deep in sharp gravel, a river flowing down the nearside that had totally removed the tarmac and a 'ridable' width of about six inches is about as bad as I've experienced, but there are some roads that having gone down once, and breathed a sigh of relief when my tyres and rims appear to be both intact at the end, I would never venture along again.

Of course, if I want to get from A to B, where A and B are random locations in the middle of nowhere, then I frequently have to bomb along what I can only assume are roads because they don't have cows grazing in them. One that springs to mind looks like a farm track liberally sprinkled with pebbles, and another requires me to ride in the oncoming lane over almost its entire length to avoid an unfortunate crater-induced head over heels.

Funnily enough, though, I tolerate this madness with the occasional grimace and curses to the god of tarmac (and Wiltshire council), but when I get back in to town and have my teeth shaken loose by dodgy road I'm far more concerned about punctures. Perhaps the environment affects my reaction - I simply expect better for a road that people are actually intended to use!

Phekdra

lloyd_bower

I used to think South Yorks roads were bad, and sure many that I used to ride had patchwork repairs, but having moved to Auckland NZ the roads here are dreadful. There's very few smooth surfaces, often coarse gravel tarmac and the usual cheap surface dressing repairs.

idaviesmoore

:shock: I've been moaning about the state of the roads in North Wales for donkeys years. All the local authorities ever seem to do is cover the roads with gravel. In fact I can only think of one real improvement that has been made to a really bad road (Mold-Eryrys) in 100,000 years.
That aside, the poor surfaces are more than compensated for by the fantastic views/quiet back roads/relatively challenging inclines that you come across on a training ride.

It's probably made me a better rider (I say PROBABLY because some of my club riders may be reading this :shock: ) and it makes you bit more discerning where tyres/rims are in question

Max_Man

Yep, roads round my way (NE Wales) are crap....lanes and views make up for it though.

redddraggon

Max_Man wrote:

Yep, roads round my way (NE Wales) are crap....lanes and views make up for it though.

Yeh, that's where I am. Although the crap roads don't really bother me too much - it just makes me laugh when the city dwellers need to make special equipment considerations for a couple of potholes.

gandhi

I'm not sure, but I think that people riding in cities sometimes have to ride through pot-holes, as they've got a car one one side of them, and a kerb on the other. Also, some people can't bunny hop, especially the sort of people who only ride to commute.

I used to do most of my riding in North Wales, and now I'm around Hampshire, and the roads that are nice to ride on seem to be just as bad in both places.

whyamihere

Again, there's no need to bunnyhop. I can't hop my road bike. You can, however, shift your weight around to make the pothole unnoticeable. Lean back just before you come to the hole to make the front end light, then bend your legs up towards to to make the rear end light. The bike will never fully leave the ground, but the hole will be cushioned to the point that, with practise, you won't even feel the holes.

ean

idaviesmoore wrote:

In fact I can only think of one real improvement that has been made to a really bad road (Mold-Eryrys) in 100,000 years.

That is a nice road, got a PB 46.7 mph before the 17% bit (bottled it) last week. Many of the others in the area are horrid though. My Personal least favourite it the road between Rhes-y-cay/Moel-y-Crio and the A541.

redddraggon

ean wrote:

My Personal least favourite it the road between Rhes-y-cay/Moel-y-Crio and the A541.

I don't mind the A541 - my route goes from Sychdyn to Bodfari - I don't like the route the other direction too much though.

ricadus

Some of the quieter B roads in Wales are much better than most London main road, especialy those in central London that have been repeatedly subjected to roadworks and have a bumpy patchwork of differently textured shapes all at different levels as a result.

The B4391 from Bala towards Blaenau Ffestiniog was silky somooth last time I was there. Pity about the sheep grazing on the verges, though, as the risk of them being spooked stopped me from TTing it along the moorland road. I suppose they're not really much different from London tourists in that respect...

Stewie Griffin

ricadus wrote:

Some of the quieter B roads in Wales are much better than most London main road, especialy those in central London that have been repeatedly subjected to roadworks and have a bumpy patchwork of differently textured shapes all at different levels as a result.

The B4391 from Bala towards Blaenau Ffestiniog was silky somooth last time I was there. Pity about the sheep grazing on the verges, though, as the risk of them being spooked stopped me from TTing it along the moorland road. I suppose they're not really much different from London tourists in that respect...

The London Borough of Brent paid for repairs to my car about 3 or 4 years ago. A trench had been dug to lay "media"* to service new build residential properties. After it was finished it sank as its on a main road. One morning while driving to work I realised that it had sank notably further as I heard and felt the front underside of my car hit and then scrape along the road. I was told that I was the 7th person making a claim against them for that car swallowing Mariana Trench.

*gas and water pipes to you and I

portuguese mike

The roads around here (southampton) are crap in the town and crap in the countryside ( for at least the 35mile radius that i usually ride in). the only decent roads are usually dual carriageways with tons of traffic.

In fact i've yet to find an area of this country where there are consistently good roads. Unfortunately it means you just have to pay attention to the road surface .

geoff_ss

Roads have been full of potholes and gravel as long as I've been using them on pedal and motor cycles (nearly 60 years). Just live with it.

The lanes I use a lot in Derbyshire are somewhat variable but mostly not too bad. The difference between using them and Derby's streets, is that it's usually possible to choose a smoothish route. When there's traffic there's often not an option.

Geoff