Where to ride..?

With a winter this wet, the question of where to ride crops up. Anyone who is conscientious about their impact on the trails, be they open moorland or hand cut woodland, has a struggle at this time of year, but especially so in this current climate of lockdown restrictions. Fortunately, I have two choices open to me; the old tramway, running out into the middle of the southern moor, or the man-made trails at Plymbridge Woods. I can choose The Moor when I want solitude (though that's increasingly rare, as people have more time on their hands and seem to spend more of it on Dartmoor), or Plymbridge when I want to get loose. Yesterday it was the latter option. Sometimes it's hard to beat the option of carving smooth, clean turns on a smooth, clean trail!

I'm going to do some more detailed posts about my bike set-ups, suspension settings, pressures, and such, but I have to share this little revelation with you! In an effort to get my trail bike set up for some bikepacking adventures in the Summer (assuming we're allowed to roam wild and free again by then!), one of the mods I made was a wheelset to run plus tyres. They're Bontrager Powerline Comp 40s, with a WTB Ranger Tough Fast on the rear and a Schwalbe Nobby Nic Evo Apex Speedgrip on the front, both 27.5 x 3". My normal wheelset is a mullet set (29" front and 27.5" rear), both with 2.6" Maxxis Minion DHRII tyres. It's a great wheel/tyre combo for my preferred riding locations, but this new setup has blown me away a bit. I'm running the front at 15psi and the rear at 17psi, and the grip I'm getting is insane! These pressures are a lot lower than my normal 20-25psi range, due to the significant increase in volume, so I wonder if that's the trick? Certainly looking forward to playing around with these tyres and pressures a lot more as the year progresses...