Photography by Markus Stitz “If you sort of straighten one of your legs, push the bike upwards at the same time and immediately apply both brakes, you …

By terrahawk

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Dunoon Dirt Dash or Bramble Bash?

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I pre rode the hike a bike on day one at the Surly Dunoon Dirt Dash, and I think I was the first to use this old trail this year. It took a couple of hours to put a Charlie shaped cutting through there. It actually tore my socks to shreds.

It’s was beautiful in there, very much like Costa Rica and it’s rain forests. Well there was rain, and forest.

No matter what your favourite part of Hike-a-biking is: the brambles, carrying your bike up hills, carrying it down hills, getting your feet wet, up to your knees in mud, scratchy plants, stabbing plants, huffing and puffing…. Getting on the bike and riding 10 foot before getting off again… Dunoon has it all. No one was disappointed.

So this is actually a trail on the map, that gets very little use. 50 people have now hacked through, and hopefully more will follow. It’s a beautiful trail, and I hope it will become more established, more passable.

For the lochside bit it was definitely a team effort in places. Some of the ravines were do-able on your own but a lot more fun with others.

Also – how often do you get to wear your bike like a particularly uncomfortable Carmen Miranda style hat?

Lochside was 2 hrs of type 1,2 and 3 fun – but it was certainly a conversation opener in the bar.

Also Mr Winston Churchill (catering and deer wrangler) is a wonder. That only 50 of 80 or so riders rocked up at the event meant we were spectacularly over fed. Awesome.