With Easter weekend looming and hopefully people planning some good biking, I thought this would be a good thread to put people in the mood.

Describe your best day or weekend with bike related activities as the focal point.

For me, it was August 1998 – I’d recently graduated and went to The Gower with three other mates. One of them grew up there and his parents still lived there so he knew the area really well and we had free accommodation. It was also his birthday that weekend.

We drove down on the Friday then got up early on Saturday to fantastic weather and spent the day riding some brilliant trails with some of my mate’s local friends joining us for part of the ride.

Saturday evening was spent in Mumbles – first at a couple of the pubs drinking far too much then Cinderella’s (IIRC) for some cheesy nightclub action, ending with Tom Jones and Delilah…

Sunday started with a fry up for the lads with hangovers and then more great riding before heading back home.

A great weekend with great mates. Haven’t topped it since.

So, what’s yours?

As requested:

Had a fantastic time with my club (NATS) in Afan this weekend. We booked the cabins (link) for the club and some stayed at the bunkhouse.

Friday we went up the Whites Level en-masse. We have a wide variety of skill levels in the club so it was quite a trek! Seemed to go on for ages getting to Windy Point. The downhills were scary and went on forever, compared to Sherwood Pines, my local forest centre.

Saturday we did an absolutely glorious route (and contender for my best day ever!) around the Gower Peninsula – here is the GPS. Brilliant warm day, wide paths on parts which allowed me to play and practice the skills taught to me by Jedi the Wednesday before. A nice pasty in Rhosili too.

Sunday was a bit of the Skyline and then coffee before going up the Whites Level again (somehow easier this time?!) and because I had a rough idea about the Windy Point section I flew through it. Singletrack heaven. I bounced off any steps, I carved the berms and turns and it was sheer delight and a smile bigger than a big thing when I got to the bottom of that section. Rain/tiredness called time and I went back to the cabins.

Had a brilliant social time too (that’s a major part of MTB for me). Very easy-going crowd of great people.

So yes, this was my best MTB weekend I can think of. Still smiling!

This weekend is right up there.

Saturday I finally reached my goal for average power output for a particular interval session on the rollers, and Sunday was a two hour blast over new tracks, (new to me anyway), with a club mate. Minus 5 when we started, clear blue skies, hard dry frozen ground, patches of light snow, nobody on the trials, great feeling in the legs.

Still buzzing from two completely different sensations. Perfect.

It’s hard to narrow down… First day at Glentress was a big day for me, I think it was the day I went from enjoying riding to loving riding, I could even tell you the exact spot it happened 😆 Second time at Kirroughtree, when I was fit enough and good enough to enjoy it… Most of the innerleithen enduros… At least one of our days out in france with AQR…

But I guess it was the No Fuss endurance downhill race, for me. Mountain biking’s more or less about burning a day just that bit brighter than usual, and that one burned 😉 I was still bouncing a week later.

adamw, awesome! 🙂

Best single day probably the FOD uplift where I nackered my shoulder. It was awesome up until that point!

Other than that the summer I spent in Whistler has been the best time I’ve ever had on a bike, don’t think I’ll top that unless I somehow manage to get back there.

Can’t remember the year exactly, probly 1998 ish, 4 of us stayed at the YH at Laggan Locks. Did a glorious 65 miler up to Ft Augustus, over the Corrieyairack, down to Roybridge etc. We were absolutely goosed after that but went down to Ft Willy & stayed at Glen Nevis hostel then went to Kinlochleven & back the next day.
Top drawer weekend that was.

Jesus, I’ve still got those gloves! (& that blue bike)

. First day at Glentress was a big day for me, I think it was the day I went from enjoying riding to loving riding, I could even tell you the exact spot it happened

Coincidentally, this for me too. First time I did Deliverance!

Jeepers? One day? Or a weekend?

*Ponders*

can’t be done – too many too different and great days.

A weekend in the Quantocks a couple of years ago being shown round by sharki and knottie amongst others some of the best and most intense riding I have done.

Riding with intro the mountains to camp up near corrour – a great couple of days scenic riding

First time round Glentress red on the tandem when it all flowed smooth and nice

How can you decide which is best of those?

How do you

Probably this year at the Innerleithen, racing the Fetish Gravity Enduro. Top trails; I was feeling pretty relaxed about it all; there were some sound guys in my category and I came away with a result I was happy with.

Forgot about the Loch Etive ride we did a few years after…

TJ’s right though. I couldn’t decide which was ‘best’, there’s been so many.

Whistler and Sun Peaks 2008.
Words would not do it justice*
Pure unadulterated awesome.

*supposed to be working

I’ve always enjoyed my mountain biking but there’s been a couple of days recently that have been quite special. The first was a trail I rode in the Trossachs that was so nice that I had a bit of a ‘Isn’t life bloody great’ moment afterwards. Then I did a bit of the WHW a couple of weeks ago during that really dry spell and rode all of the bits I thought I’d never be able to ride when I first tried about 2 years ago. I’d never ridden so well and had the bike sliding about on the loose dry surface right at the very limits of control. I’ve had equally good weekends away with friends and rides with the club but for the sheer joy of riding a bike it’s the above.

August bank holiday in the peaks, or was the snowdon weekend with mlehworld, perhaps many a weekend beasting dartmoor, then again there’s also been weekends at Afan and glentress…

Hold on, recall a certain 24/12 weekend being up there as well as loads if weekends guiding on the ride with visitors and locals alike..

14 years later looks like not much has changed except perhaps picture quality..

With you on this one, The Gower, the Gap and Afan. Accomadation and food served up by the green lantern. Superb weekend also in August, so good its scheduled again for this year.

I appreciate that it’s sometimes difficult to pick one ‘best of’ (I have 5 bikes afterall 🙂 ) but let’s accept that’s the case and put this test in – if you could replicate just one of those days/weekends, which would it be?

Probably a half-day at Pila last year, with three or four consecutive runs of the freeride track where I was riding my fastest ever (it felt like).

Good times.

🙂

2002-2003 – some amazing Summer rides that took most of the day up. I remember leaving home circa 9am and not returning before 6!

For anyone wanting to struggle in picking a best day and having to choose a best week instead…go on a biking holiday to somewhere warm when it’s cold and miserable here. That’s if you haven’t done that before.
The first time I went biking abroad was to Spain a few years ago. We were flying out on NYE, the weather was that bad in the UK we weren’t sure we were going to make it to the airport. The next morning though, we were the side of a mountain, wearing shorts and t-shirts. It felt quite strange coming to this, it was almost like a dream. None of us had been on our bikes for at least a month due to the ice back home! The riding was more technical than we were used to, our skills improved fast though and each day just got better, I think? By the end it had all blurred into one long ride and we couldn’t remember what we’d done on what particular day…excellent!

I think for me it was out in the Alps last year, we were in Morzine to do the PPDS, but a friend spotted a route in an old guidebook, which we did the day before the PPDS event, it just had the right mixture of everything. The weather was fantastic, riding was a mixture of the right side of scary technical in places, some flowing singetrack, a Tour de France road climb and some lovely riding through high alpine pastures with just the cows for company and dunking our heads in a very cold little lake.
Bumped into Matt and Tom(?) from Singletrack as well doing the same area and had a little chat with them, finished the day with half a dead cow steak on a plate and a few bottles of Mutzig and Leffe Rouge.

heaven!

one of my best day’s on the bike happened about 3yrs ago.
a large group of us had booked a bunkhouse at buckden.
me and 2 mates decided to ride up on the roadbikes from my house. a mate would collect my van loaded with the mtb’s and drive up later.
we rode up through leeds on to otley for a breakfast at dunny’s cafe.
then we went up the north side of the river to the tea rooms at bolton abbey for a brew.
we continued up the dales way up through wharfedale.
lunch was had at a cafe in grassington. from grassington we headed for the pubs at kettlewell, sinking our 1st pint at 3pm, we left kettlewell at 6pm and headed to the pub at starbotton where we managed another 3 pints.
from here we headed to the buck inn at buckden where the rest of our group were encamped in the pub to meet us.
by this time we had been drinking and talking the world to rights for 6hrs.
another couple of pints were had in the buck as a night cap.

this ride may seem pretty boring and crap to some, but with the company i had on that journey it will always b remembered as one of my best and most enjoyable days riding.

cheers trout and noggin……. 8)

2007, long weekend in Morzine.
3 weeks previously we’d spent a week riding in Chamonix, but the weather was very poor for most of the week, so we didn’t feel satisfied with the trip.
So, 3 weeks on I drove solo from Sweden down to Geneva to pick my mate up from the airport. He’d sorted some seriously cheap accommodation out. Spent 3 awesome days riding in Morzine and one day in Chamonix. The sun blazed, the trails were blasted, beers flowed and many laughs were had.

Bubion with Switchbacks, on a run called Grumpy French B******* (they’d run into this bloke several times, it seems)….I was going faster and faster down a very rocky path, wondering just what damage was being done to the downtube by the flying scenery, until I got to that state of speed when you absolutely know that momentum is your friend and that you’ll get through/over all the obstacles, regardless of how large they are.

All done in February, with the sun on my back, when it was rubbish weather back in the UK.

Glorious, just glorious.

d45yth where was it and who was it with? From what I heard about switchbacks (company) its pretty full on and scary.

OK, who’s stolen Hora’s login – perfect thread title and he keeps his smut to himself 😀

Binners – is this your doing?

Hora – I was staying in Lajaron and riding in the Sierra Nevada and Alpujarras regions. It was with Freeride Spain but they’re doing more trips to Morocco these days, I recommend going there too as I was there a couple of months ago with them. Five days of biking across the Atlas Mountains…quality stuff!