Brrr and Bugger

First time the weather's impacted a planned activity today, and mightily pissed off about it too.

Got up early, collected The Herb and set off to Otley to meet the HLBS (or The Harrowgays as The Herb has named them).  Duly met up and set off in glorious sunshine but freezing tempratures, with the intention of taking back roads via Wetherby over to York and back via Tadcaster.

We spun along to Pool, with our hands losing all feeling despite in my case two pairs of gloves, then turned left towards Leathley.  Angry and Wood decided that the right turn indicated by my Garmin wasn't a metalled road, so we carried on up the big hill on the Otley 10 (and bugger me it IS big! I ran up that!) and eventually found a lane turning right with some of the correct places named on a sign.

This very quickly became slippy, and Wood took a tumble.  Things got worse the further we went, until we came to a bend with sheet ice right across the road.

This is Angry looking gingerly at the icefield.  Just after this we met a bloke out walking/skating his dogs, who told us it was even worse down in Huby, so we continued past Almscliff, spending more time sat on the crossbar with our feet down than we did pedalling.

Eventually we made the main road in Huby, with Wood having reacquainted himself with the tarmac, and had a brief recce of the road to Weeton.  This being equally icy we debated doing something on main roads, but in the end a return to Otley was the decision.  A very fast (and extraordinarily cold) 6 miles later we were back at the car, having travelled a magnificent 15 miles.  The Herb manfully decided to cycle back to Embsay, but the rest of us retired to Dunnies for a full English and a moan about the council gritters.

Toyed with the idea of a few miles running, but decided that I could gain more brownie points by doing the shopping, and also spend some more time on the logistics of my post-marathon pressie to myself, a trip to ride the Duva International Sportive in Mallorca.  Flights now sorted, hotel booked and bikes arranged - 4 days of top class cycling in (hopefully) spring-like weather for under £300.