The way to Rochdale was pretty much riding through slush and was fairly easy going, ashworth valley was still frozen and the usual river crossing was frozen solid with aot of snow lying on it.
Gaining height onto the moors was fairly easy, it was now not thawing and was below freezing, 3 inch's of fresh snow was lying on the trails and i was making fresh tyre tracks. Once onto rooley moor road it started getting interesting it was very hard, 1st gear all the way to the top it seemed like it took forever. The wind was blowing hard on the moors and it was getting cold, parts of the road its self were free from snow due to the wind, other parts were lying in snow drifts upto 3 feet. Once into cragg quarry it was sheltered and a good 6-7 inch of snow lay on the floor which made it extremly hard to ride
Once i had rode through the quarry it was a slow decent to the gate through deep snow drifts and snow free trail, every snow drift meant getting off the bike and wading through them.
The gate was unable to open due to a foot of snow around it but i was easily able to stride over it. The decent now down to edenfield proved to be the hardest stretch of all, it usually takes less than 5 minutes but i battled my way down in 20 minutes stopping and starting all the time, once back on the road i rode home quick as possible to get warm. The ride usually takes me uner 2 hours in the snow it took me 3 and a half hours.
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