Haha! 😀 What a stonkingly good ride! 8) Big up and thanks to Batimaeus for excellent guiding, forewarning of the trail to come, snippets of local information and for riding so effortlessly up the “nice climbs” 😉
My phone app made it as 27miles and a bit, with an average of just under 9.5mph – which I’m pretty chuffed with over such terrain – although I’m sure Barimaeus and Frostomp would have easily done it quicker, so thank you both for waiting for us at the tops 😀
The route contained a fab mix of everything, wooded single track, SDW, tiny bit’s of road linking, rapid descents that required concentration, the downhill trails at Stoughton that were preceded by all of us admitting that we were definitely in the ‘wheels on the ground’ type of riders and rad gnarr was duly shredded with finesse and maturity 😀 . We had climbs that ranged from ‘nice’, to ‘very nice’, to ‘incredibly nice’, just because it maintained its sharp gradient for so very long… Definitely the Hors Categorie climb of the day – which was all very quickly forgotten with the 2km descent that followed, even though DV picked up the only puncture of the day. We did the decent thing and carried on, safe in the knowledge that the bears would be more apprehensive of him than he of they 😉
Yep, continuous litigation over broken camera lenses and loss of pixels, means that unfortunately, my visage must no longer be captured without due consent, never mind! However, I feel everyone else is fair game and I produced my camera for the main reason for the ride in the first place – namely the cream tea stop 😛
In no particular order, the happy crew include Dom (riding buddy of mine for the last 20+ years 8) ), Bartimaeus, Daftvader and Frogstomp.
And here are our bikes taking a rest during the stop
I think the locations for DV’s pics are:
Looking over Stoughton
Top of Kingley Vale – bit hazy for a really good view of the Channel and IOW
Lunch stop in I think Stoughton
The next two are Harting Down
Cream Tea in Compton.
Bartimaues, Frogstomp, daftvader and my mate Dom, thank you all very much for a great ride with great company, gorgeous weather, dry trails and no injuries! 😀 8)