……..on the Q’s

Well yesterday i searched in vain for the ellusive winter sloop, for 5 hrs i rode around and around up and down.
Starting at DWD i rode along the DRY gas line and traversed the hill dropping into the cheeky frog combe descent, the rooty left hander was dry and i unusually made the corner, without pedalling i picked up speed on the FIRM woodland floor, dry leaves being scattered as i passed over them, joining the main track i headed on downwards via a slight excursion around a fallen tree, holford combe ran fast, though a fallen branch forced me off the trai and through some drying gloop through the village i joined hodders and ascended willoughby’s cleeve then up longstone to Bicknoller post, reaching beacon hilli heard smith’s combe calling my name, so off i bimbled, down, down, down to the carnage below, fir tree branches littered the roughest section of trail making my slalom journey a bit errr different than the ‘pin it down the middle’ style that usually works best, passing a few dead sheep i found my way through the stream blocked by a tree, meh! so after some off piste riding i rejoined the singletrack and went to meet my favourite climb, hmmmmmmmm, after a short while………..i re-joined the ridge and pootled along the top till i picked up the DRY singletrack traverse of black hill, edging around the side of higher hare knapp i knew what i wnated next……

…then horror filled my eys as i crested hare knapp…there in the distance rising out from shervage woods area was smoke!…..forced skywards by the 20ft licks of flame…………arrrrrrgh! that doesn’t look very controlled so…………nailing it downwards off higher hare, drifting on the endless twists and turns as tyres fought to find traction on loose rock and dust, a short climb put me at the entrance of the holly bush trail, damp in places i swooped downwards to the bottom and cursed at yet another fallen tree across the stream, then up through the gate climbing out to pick up the track to dowsborough, endless climbing(pushing) brought me with view of the fire, a sigh of releif as i saw the rangers trucks and a NT landy, it was a controlled gorse burning session.

After finding the rangers and cursing them for making me ride in panic mode to beat down the fire, i headed down again, the trail was teasingly fast, fist sized stones were best tackled at moderate speed till the left hander was passed then a flat out descent to the bottom, now which way up????? a perfect THAT one….. after carefully selecting the appropiate gear i headed up over horizon, well for a moment at least, my one and only gear was not the right one! so a short walk took me to the top.
Back to hare knapp and straight over down into hodders, not fancying lady’s edge i carried on to holford and rode the combe back up, eventually reaching the bottom of the concrete block trail, carrying on straight up through the DWD gully run i pushed my bike with tired to the top, my car now with in sight….so just one thing left to do, turning left i picked up sheep tracks through the trees, the sound of branches snapping and leaves crunching fuelled my legs as i aimed for the concrete block trail, on finding it a crossed over and wound along more unridden tracks till lady’s combe, a short climb back up and it was time for the real test of trail conditions…’the great bear’ god this was fast, i’ve not seen it this dry since the summer of 08 (a week in march and september), not a wet patch to ride in, awesome!

By contrast today, i spent a couple hrs ragging it around ashton court and 50 acres wood, what a mess, gawd i’m so glad i’ve got the Quantocks on my door step…roll on thurday night…and the weekend!

ss/post/quantocks pic……..

dry trails

Gardening

Numpty roadie opening velodrome wounds on a tree……lol

Nice gash!

It looked painful, a lovely healing scab, then a quick brush with a tree and it were scrapped off, funny thing was he thought it was a leaf as he pulled it off…..ouch!

There now nice drops of blood in 50 acre now.lol

I think tonight rain will have sorted out any dust issues for the weekend…

It was getting a bit drifty, so all good…

Better than todays ride, my god, awesome in the dry i’m sure but bristol in the wet…….Hmmmmm!

Sharki, that’s about three times as much Quantocks riding as I’ve got in me at the moment.

I bet you’d have had to pedal in Slaughterhouse though…

Only a few bits need pedalling through, but on a single speed sometimes the legs don’t go that fast…:-(