At least where I am in the West Midlands it's 27 degrees at the moment (4:40pm). Went out to do a little shopping this morning and by the time I got back it was about as warm as I could tolerate (23) in a bike jacket and full face helmet. I thought briefly about going out for a ride this afternoon but thought 'Stuff it. It's too hot.' Okay I don't tend to like the heat anyway, but in bike kit? No way. Maybe tomorrow as it promises to be cooler.

Of course like all sensible riders I wear at least a bike jacket and gloves (plus of course a helmet) and on longer rides proper bike trousers. I cringe when I see people riding around in just a T-shirt, shorts and a helmet. Lovely and cool but after a slide down the road they are unlikely to have much left by way of flesh...

Yes, well, if its quite warm in the North East, which is normally freezing, then it must be baking elsewhere! I do have a wide variety of ventilated bike gear for the rare hot days - I've a ventilated leather jacket and also got a Kevlar lined (& armoured) hoodie, which is nice as it lets air flow straight through, plus ventilated gloves etc. Its usually not too bad if you keep moving, but if you stuck in traffic or at lights it all gets very hot very quickly. The snag I find is that any sort of bike jean (I usually use kevlar lined denim, or the single layer jeans with kevlar in the fabric) is fine on the bike but is too hot to walk in any sort of high temperature. The only solution I've found is to have a pair of shorts under the jeans, taking the jeans off when I stop. Its a bit of a faff of course, and you need more storage to stash the jeans when you are away from the scoot. Roll on winter....!

I'm not too bothered by the heat unless it's really hot. I usually wear leather jacket and kevlar jeans which is what I intended to wear tomorrow as I have a trip planned from South Yorkshire to Pontcysylite viaduct in Wales, but having seen the weather forecast I may have to change my plans, thunderstorms and heavy rain is'nt my idea of fun. Decision will be made after breakfast tomorrow.

The thunderstorms are forecast to be in the North East overnight, then move in a generally South Easterly direction during the day, so you might be OK if you don't leave too early

Didn't get above 20 deg C in Aberdeen, even though it was sunny for most of the day. Happy not to have the silly, at times, SE England temperatures up here.

Here in the North East I can say something similar, John A. We get plenty of weather but never quite as hot, cold, torrential, cut off by snow drifts type weather as others sometimes do and I am happy with that. There, that's jinxed it.

REW wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2024 11:17 am Here in the North East I can say something similar, John A. We get plenty of weather but never quite as hot, cold, torrential, cut off by snow drifts type weather as others sometimes do and I am happy with that. There, that's jinxed it.

I moved up to Seaham, on the North East coast, five years ago.
All my friends down South kept telling me how cold it would be (my reply was that I'd put on a thicker coat).
I love the weather here; as REW suggests, it's never 'too' anything although the North and East winds can be a little dramatic at times.

It's now 11am and te roads are just starting to dry out so the trip to Wales has been put aside for a better day. Plan B is a trip to the Goyt valley near Buxton if it's not too muddy I shall visit St Josephs shrine a place I've ridden past many times without knowing it existed.

Yeah I know you can get special ventilated bike gear, but I'm not prepared to shell out for the few hot days we get (and I am free to have a ride). Besides, regardless of whether I go for a ride or not I still don't like the heat. Never have done. It promises to be cooler tomorrow so maybe.

Waldorf wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2024 11:32 am
I moved up to Seaham, on the North East coast, five years ago.
All my friends down South kept telling me how cold it would be (my reply was that I'd put on a thicker coat).
I love the weather here; as REW suggests, it's never 'too' anything although the North and East winds can be a little dramatic at times.

Well yeah - here in Teesside, the place may be a dump, but the weather is often strangely good! Quite often you can see that its Sunny in the local area, but cloudy in all surrounding directions. And we don't get very much snow (unlike County Durham!), just a few sprinkles, and it rarely gets too hot, unlike the South East. And all the Altlantic rainstorms get stuck on the Pennines, and don't reach us. There again, when the wind is in the North and East, its utterly miserable and cold. That said, I'm contemplating a move to Cumbria - yes, it will rain a lot more, but it might be a bit closer to milder air!