Sunday ride con Dinsdale

The Mighty Dinsdale out on the bike again so soon!  Qué bien. Pero por qué?  Well the reason is that she's coming to Ibiza to race the San Josep Extreme.....hurrah!  The other reason is that she has a new recipe for wild garlic soup and most of Surrey seems to be blanketed in garlic this year :)

Off up over Leith Hill to see if we could bump into Greg and the guys on the shop ride from Moosecycles.com

As we climbed, so did the temperature warming up the woods for an olfactory smorgasbord of spring :-o The lovely pong of bluebells, the may, garlic, pine and the azaleas. To cap it all just as we reached the highest point we heard our first cuckoo of spring.......yay! :)

We did the usual singletrack stuff, all still amazingly dry. (The forecasters keep promising us a bit of rain, but it keeps moving on.) On the way to the tower we went via 'impossible climb' - a loose very steep climb that takes you up to 'summer lightning' Jane led the way up the left side then scrabbled across the loose marbles in the middle to the  right side. She eased a bit on the grippy bit near the top so I attacked on the left, but she pipped me to the top :)  - her first ever clearance of this climb.......well done Jane :)

None of the guys were at the tower so we rode over to Peaslake via Belmont - at Belmont we went through the school grounds and through the rhododendron woods, which have grown over to form a tunnel. Me and julie got under it but Jane was too tall :)

Next was over Holmbury through the singletrack to Peaslake, where we'd missed them again...doh

We did see Eric, his bro, clive and Dave Fignon out for an mtb ride though.

On the way back we had to go to get some garlic for Julie's recipe. We rode back through the vineyard to the stepping stones where Julie stuffed her backpack full.