Ice Watch

For what it's worth, I was working in a school playground (in London) today that had patches of ice throughout the entire day. It was in shadow for the whole morning and midday. Still icy at 1330.

I wouldn't bank on Richmond Park, it's been icy all week with a lot of people coming off.

Are Regents or Richmond the only options?

There is also the Loop Road.

Good tip off, thanks dude. I should have thought Regent's will be ok given it's in the middle of the city and super open and exposed...

My brother has planned a route of mainer roads out towards north Essex, I'll let you know if we make it back alive. Maybe it'll be the new LFGSSRD* Ice Loop.

*Roadie Douchbag

Be interested to hear how this turns out^

I'm going to turbo this morning instead.

Todays Top Tip

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yellow warnings of ice on the met office website

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/warnings/#?tab=warnings&regionName=se&fcTime=1452902400

Clapton Pond has frozen over:
https://twitter.com/hubvelo/status/688288340957769728

This useful link was posted on the Grumpy forum.
https://mobile.twitter.com/GrittingKent

Thatth lithpitht that ith.

I did 90mins in regent's just now and it was fine. A bit dull obviously, but I'd rather that than a faceplant. Not horrendously busy either (at about 9.30-11).

Judging by the latest Tweet, this seems to be a consistently interesting Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/hubvelo/status/688375938485239810

:)

So we made it back alive. Only a couple of bits of ice, Roding Lane and then at a one of the fords we went through (!).

There's a section of dual carriage way that needs edited out, but generally pretty good. I definitely can't say it won't be icy but it was ok yesterday. Nice fast main roads until about 11am when it had thawed out a bit, then smaller but pretty much ice free B roads, though everything looked very dry so it'd be a different story if it had rained in the proceeding days.

https://www.strava.com/activities/471545260

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/11822656

Awesome, I'll have to give that route a go asap, thanks!

Chapeau on braving the treacherous lanes. I'm considering the equally exciting options of more park laps or turbo right now.

The thing with riding in this weather is it takes so ruddy long just to get dressed!

Waaaaa it's got worse, what's all this 'white stuff' outside, is it everywhere or just SE9

Hit a load of ice in the lanes yesterday, about 6 people in our group ended up on the deck. Ended up doing laps at the Olympic park which wasn't too bad. Nice and quiet.

I am NOT responsible if you fall off and break something, but I think you're worrying too much. As @dbr said the roads were too dry yesterday for it to be a big issue on bigger roads. I've been out with him and our riding buddies in Hertfordshire before when whole lanes were covered in ice and we had to get off and push to a main road, that's treacherous!

I would have gone out yesterday and not really worried about it at all, but I'm sick this weekend (annoyingly).

It rained overnight and definitely hit zero, at least outside of London, so today might be a different story. But if you avoid lanes and keep a careful eye on the road you can normally anticipate where there might be ice and avoid it, in my experience.

Also, ride fixed. Definitely helps.

^ N.b. I wrote all that before I saw @upstart had posted!

Do you want to name and shame the lane in question?

Woodgreen Road, just after it goes underneath the M25 - heading out into Essex.

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/11828632

This was fine this morning.

I can confirm that the Sussex lanes are a little slippery, I sailed my 4wd pick-up serenely into a ditch yesterday and had to be tractored out..... It was the only way of avoiding the totally panicked driver coming the other way at 15mph with zero traction!

The timing of those posts made me do a LOL.

You do have a point to be fair, it's just that after two painful and expensive offs in Kent last winter I'm really paranoid now.

Also, I tend to find Essex is less treacherous in this weather; the roads are quite open and exposed compared to the more wooded and shady lanes of kent - which is where black ice thrives!

I do think today would have been pretty dodgy though - my strava feeds has lots of 'icy ride' type comments. I ended up going to RP for the second day in a row and was bored as fuck.