Aaah thats baby Sam for you!
Nick, I would’ve marshalled at SSUK but as Gil already knows, I’m away that weekend and am missing the whole thing 🙁

*Practices his “Sorry Alan I must’ve taken a wrong turn” line and look 😆

Race report and results from the weekend HERE if anyone’s interested. 🙂

didmatt – Member

on a side note, is any of the new course ridable on non race days?

Officially no – FE will be closing the sections off, but I can guarantee there’ll be cheeky rides on the course itself – we’re off for a play tonight when everyone else has gone home!

Bear in mind, the Worry Gill section is ridden in reverse to the actual red/black route section it uses so care needs to be taken, that’s why we’re doing a late ride so we avoid other riders 😉

Yeah – I guess because all the groundwork got sorted out by the at fault party the same day whilst I was in hospital that it was sorted quicker.
Hope you get a good result from this, and quickly too, keep pestering and make doubly sure the insurers are chasing the at fault party to push the claim along.
Good luck, fingers are crossed for you!

Wow. I must have been very, very lucky to get my bike replaced within a week when I got cleaned up by a car.
I guess it must have been due to the driver accepting responsibility for the accident there and then to the police, and only living a few doors away from me at the time. After being in hospital overnight, I’d come home to find all the other party’s insurance details sat on my desk, so phoned the insurance company, they had obviously been speaking to the driver soon after the accident, and they had a bike supplier contact me quickly the following day. After sending them an email with a picture of the damage to the bike, I received the new bike 3 days later! The downside was that I was off work and unable to ride for around 4 weeks due to injury, and it took a good 10 months for the insurer to pay out loss of earnings and a compensation amount even though I was constantly phoning them on a weekly basis.

As has been said before. it’ll all be dependent on how the at fault party is actingto how quickly it’ll get finalized

Great weekend out!

I got the unenviable job of marshalling Worry Gill drop which after all the carnage on Saturday didn’t cause us any problems come race day.
And yes, you could tell who the roadies were at that point! 😆

Obviously marshalling didn’t allow for any photography time, but did manage to get a few rushed photos of the better riders coming through, even one riding a Halfords special!

Couldn’t tell you, never used them, I’m a WTB tyre user myself

Just come back from Dalby, marshalling at the NPS.
As has been said before, there’s no access to Dixons Hollow or large parts of the red/black past Adderstone.
The weathers been great, and the riders have had a fun practice, two points of interest have been Worry Gill drop (where we’ve been extra busy marshalling) and further along the course at Medusa’s drop.
If you do decide to come and have a look, you shouldn’t be disappointed, there’s a load of impressive talent on display.
I’m goiung back in for day 2 of marshalling tomorrow, I can’t wait! 😀

There is another option, and the money won’t go to FE, instead it’ll get put to better use….

Join SingletrAction for £15 a year, then attend a minimum of 2 dig days at any of the sites (Dalby or Stainburn for instance), after which you’ll be eligible for a free Dalby pass!

A little bit of free time used to help maintain/improve/build new stuff on the trails you love to ride must be a good thing surely? 😉

Yes there will be closures on the red route around Addrstone field. I’m helping marshal at the event and have had a look at the course. It will use a section of the red after Adderstone as a climb so there’ll be a few closures and diversions in place.
Should be a good weekend providing the weather doesn’t get any worse!

Yes and no.
Yes if I’m wearing shorts.
No if I’m wearing my full length downhill pants.
To be truthful, I aven’t really had any major shin/pedal connections, and I’m still running my old Rob Warner Basejump shinrippers. I get good grip with these and a decent pair of trainers without having to spend a fortune on 5:10 footwear.

Before Farscapes Moya, we had The Lexx! 😆

Pah spaceships are so yesterday! This is what you need for those faster than light trips around the galaxy…

But my favouriteship has to be this, none of this super advanced high tech malarkey!

Daedalus from Stargate SG1

There’s a huge amount of building work on-going, including just after Dixon’s Hollow.
Stu (the head Mtn bike ranger) has BIG plans for Dalby over the coming months and years.

Yeah.
But don’t waste your breath trying to get permission to build a quality downhill in the forest – it just aint gonna happen, which is one of my big annoyances, especially as there’s plenty of quality terrain for one. I just try and push Gil et al for extra descents on sections we’re building. 😉
There is one option that is going to ge started on soon – I’ve already marked out an initial line on a black optional descent at White Cliffs and hopefully will be allowed (within reason) a bit of free reign in building a really techie and sphincter tightening descent to run off to the left of the red White Cliff descent 😀 This’ll get a good look in after we’ve finished the new red section at Crosscliffe.

For more info on Crosscliffe, check these links;
Crazy Blokes Throwing Rocks

April Dig Day

The moors got a good soaking yesterday – poured it down all day in Pickering, nand my little trip in the car over the moors to Whitby and back showed no sign of dryness anywhere which made my mind up about going ut for a ride last night. I like to ride my biike for longer than it takes to clean it.. 🙄

I’ve got a 2 year old set on my big travel Faith.
For budget forks, they’re ace! Nice and stiff and will track through almost everything and will even get you out of those “oh bugger” moments.
They are a big fork, and they have a large weight due to that.
This does transfer more of your weight forwards, and you’ll have to compensate for that, as well as a possible increase in front end height.Check out how high the front end is on the picture below. I’ve now altered the front end to use a lower rise bar and less spacers under a 0 degree stem to get a better feeling front end.
Would I change them for anything else? Not likely unless I do something silly to destroy them.

Trailbuilding in Dalby on Sunday, and a post dig ride/playabout on some of my favourite forest singletrack descents, as well as test riding the new section we’re nearing completion on 😀

works okay for me on Firefox

Tomb Raider.

My lovely old Faith, great fun to ride and sticks to the trail like brown stuff to a blanket.

Only able to ride on BH Monday, am going to have a day tweaking and tidying my local secret downhill spot.

Get there as early as you can, it’s bloody madness up there at the moment!

Cold, windy and cloudy. Normal Yorkshire weather then.

I’m not too fussy on speccing stuff, it’s usually put on what I can afford at the time.
I would make sure I had Saint stuff on, so bombproof and easy to set up and use, and I’d stick with my tried and tested Easton bars and post. Oh and a SRAM chain and powerlink. And Lock On grips. This is on my 8″ tank – for my hardtail, please read the first line 🙂

There’s a field that the Scouts and Cubs use for camping, just after the descents from Dixons Hollow. Don’t know any details further than that, who owns it etc.
Oh and all the fireroad sections are boring in Dalby! 😆

She’s got to be joking with you!
Get her parents to do a ninka stocktake of her current music collection and report back, then choose something accoedingly appropriate for her tastes.
God help you if they come back with stuff like Sarah Brightman and Lloyd Webber musical stuff 😆

If that happens its brainwashing time – As previously mentioned, Prodigy.
Also try Marilyn Manson, Avenged Sevenfold, hell anything loud and shouty to snap her out of it! If that fails, you can’t go wrong with an Evanescence Nightwish or Within Temptation CD for those wannabe Goth 15 year olds.

They obviously haven’t heard of that ruling round here 😆

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had 2 variants of Seaking, numerous low level window shaking flyovers from F-15s, Typhoons, Tornados and Tucanos.
We’ve also had a lot of high level transits from C-17s and AWACS to name a few. Plenty of civilian airliners too.

This Seaking was interesting, totally different from Big Bird we’re used to seeing.

Seaking out of Leconfield…

I guess I’ll have to get an aircraft sounds CD and play it to my nipper while he’s sleeping 😆

Sherbet dip dab for me.

Snap!
And cherry liquorice laces 😀

I thought that, but it’s the camera pod that has me puzzled.

Nope.
On zooming in there’s too much pixellation on the distance shots to get any info off the airframe.
(Cheapo camera, none of this DSLR stuff in my house! )

Hmmm. Nothing of interest to film round here.
Unless it’s Google doing low level shots for maps.

Sinnington strawberries.
The best I’ve tasted, and I work in the fruit and veg trade where we sell tons of the feckers.

Great. I now have the same name as a fish. 🙄

Strangely enough, my nickname at work is Nemo… 😕

I personally haven’t signed anything like this for vehicle usage in Dalby whilst trailbuilding. If it’s something the Chairman and secretary have sorted out in advance then all’s well and good. We currently drive along part of the red route trail to reach our current digging area but it’s not as if we’re doing WRC style driving. All the FC seem to ask us is that we don’t attain speeds above 15mph.

Oh dear. Where to start.
I must point out that I do watch these with my 1 year old son, but still am strangely glued to the screen when he’s asleep….

Johnny and the Sprites
Imagination Movers

No excuses on these though….

Primeval – but at least we got a shot of Hannah Spearit in her undercrackers again 😀
And I’m currently watching the Alan Titchmarsh show….

Sweet, looks like a Saturday afternoon ride may be in order 😀
Aye Jingleby Cafe is outstanding – cream scones are to die for! 😀

The only closed sections at the moment are the new section at Crosscliffe, and the optional black up at Whitecliffs. Also, there’s still the closure of the final switchbacks into the visitors centre area as the contractors are still busy with the WC course.

Its definitely the black. Most of the black is made up of the old red route before Dalby got loads of cash ploughed into it and the trail centre style trails were born.
There’s still plenty of good cheeky singletrack dotted about the red rout too, it’s just a matter of knowing where it starts and finishes to incorporate it into a ride 😉

Out of interest how busy was it on Sunday? I’ve been avoiding weekend riding due to the large number of trail users and have been riding midweek, but fancy a weekend ride/playabout this week 🙂

Yeah the black gully climb.

Drop out of Dixons Hollow and take the switchbacks to the bottom fireroad. Turn right and follow it along until you get to a really bad cut up descent going off to your left. At the bottom of this, immediately turn right and head back up that gully climb which joins back onto the red just at the top.

Nice photos btw, and glad you enjoyed it.
On a further note, SingletrActionvolunteers are nearing completion of a really nice section of singletrack up at Crosscliffe which follows the side of the hillside and then will pop up somewhere near the black board section. For the eagle eyed amongst you, on the red section at White Cliffs, there is a preliminary mark out of a really nice technical black section, something which will be started on properly later this year (4foot rock drops with sweeping berms and possible slalomy/jumpy bits anyone?)

I suppose it depends how you define a power ballad.

For me it would be Ghost Love Score by Nightwish. That must be right on the outer fringes of what a power ballad is…