Biking It: 400 to Tally Ho - Swords Road (Part 2)

The puddles are either part of the fun, or no fun at all. The photo below shows one of the 'fun' puddles. You can ride through them if you want to pretend you are eight once again, or simply go around them. Riders choice.

A little one.

More challenging are the couple of deeper ones on the trail. You can't ride around them so you need to go through. That takes a little, just a little, bit of courage and some speed. You can't see what's under the surface and you don't want to get 'stalled' in water that might be knee deep in the middle. My strategy was to ride close to the edge where I suspected it wasn't so deep and keep moving. I wanted to be going fast enough to bounce over a rock rather than get stopped by one. My feet were under water at the bottom of my peddle stroke if that provides some sense of the depth on the edges.

I headed out a day after we had a big rain the day before so the deeper puddles might well not be quite so deep as summer progresses. They were certainly much deeper on the "Do It For Dads" ride ("Mario Kart - Living the Video Game" post). Walking around the puddles is probably an option in some cases, but wasn't an obvious choice for me.

Overall the ride back and forth took a bit less than two hours with stopping to take photos and admire the scenery. It's a highly recommended bike ride, not too tough and not too long. The bugs weren't too bad, I didn't even bother to slap on any insect repellent. And if worse comes to worse you aren't far from help.

I would gauge this section of the Park to Park trail as a 2.5 in difficulty, with a 1 being a flat paved or packed trail, and a 5 being a very rough trail with lots of inclines and descents.

Here are a couple more views from the ride.

Further along the trail.

On the way back.