Lovely loop around Hamsterley Forest, Moors, Hilltop, Woodland until my gear inner cable snapped!

 

Well this is the last of the good weather for Co Durham with 14 days of rain forecasted now so I made the most of it. I parked up ta Hamsterley village for a loop of gravel fire roads, singletrack and tarmac roads. I dropped down the hill and into Hamsterley Forest to follow some of the forest drive before picking up the Grove link track, then it was around the back of The Grove and straight through and out of the forest and onto the moors. The sun was lovely and as ever, as soon as you leave the visitor centre end I never seen a sole. The climb out of the forest is a beast and never gets any easier. The long climb onto the road is less steep and you can just grind away at it. I did another small loop on the other side of the road but just when I was climbing back onto the road I went to change up a couple of gears and there was a loud noise and my chain come off the front. I put the chain back on and went to pull away but the chain dropped down to the smallest cog on the cassette. The lever would not move so back off the bike again. I noticed the inner cable was slack coming out of the rear mech so I pulled it and realised it had snapped. Well I had three options - call for a lift but I was in the middle of no where or split the chain and pull it through rear mech and run single speed or crank the limit screw right in on the bottom so gave the lowest gear possible. I went for the last option so I was running 5th gear for the rest of the ride. I knew I had a couple of big hills and one was steep. I got so far up then dropped onto the path on the opposite side of the road and struggled up very slowly. I was blowing out of my arse by the time I got to the top. The rest was not too bad after I reached the top of Woodland. I had done 14 miles in single gear and my legs were pumped right up. Below are a few snaps from the 25.5 mile loop with 2100ft of climbing with an average speed of 13.4mph so not bad going considering! Enjoy and hopefully more soon- 

Once back home I took all the access covers off the shifter and found the snapped inner cable end with about an inch of cable left on. I pulled the remaining inner cable out from the back. Fed a new inner cable in with some thin oil on. Replaced the covers. Readjusted the bottom limit screw and adjusted the cable tension then checked the indexing. Cut off the excess inner cable, crimped on a new end cap and put the bar tape back on. Hopefully this will not happen again soon!