thetford rnd 3

A fantastic day out in Thetford! A beautiful winter's day cold but not too cold and importantly dry! It hadn't rained for most of the week, so the course was fast and grippy.



Paul performs a Vulcan mind meld with a large lowland Pine



It was the perfect course for Jane - smooth swoopy singletrack interspersed with fire road blasts to join them up.



Jane took first place in the ladies and is now lying second overall.

Paul took 10th place and I'm not sure of his overall position yet.

I rode with Jane for a steady training ride :)

Saturday ride

The first snow drops.... hurrah!

Spring is abroad today, although it's blinking freezing :)




Just a short ride today, because we have the third round of Thetford tomorrow. We rode over to buy a wood burning stove from Gomshall, so only 22km ish.

Sunday ride

Today we rode with Stefano whom we met in Italy last year. He is one of the organisers of the Rally di Romagna. Me and Jane rode to Cobham to meet him and escort him back to Dorking where we met Paul. ( JD has damaged herself and so couldn't make it today)



I'd pre-ridden the bare bones of the route with Roger last Tuesday. It hadn't really rained much since then and was reasonably dry under wheel. There were some bits of mud, but the idea was to avoid it :)

I'd decided we should show Stefano some of the best bits of singletrack that hold up well in the wet. Up over Leith to Summer Lightning, which had dried since Tuesday and was fast. From there we went to Friday Street and down by Belmont School to Holmbury. Once on Holmbury we did The whoop di whoops,Telegrafo,a few bits and then over to Ronnie Barker. We stopped at Peaslake for a foto shoot and for Stefano to have a look in the bike shop. Then it was pretty much straight home via Rad Lane and the Roughs.

Stefano seemed quite impressed with the amount of bikers we saw and quickly became the centre of attention on his Niner 29'er. I think it was seen as unusual because it is a full sus with gears, rather than as most in the uk a fully rigid ss ;)

We left Stefano smiling on his way back to Cobham via the A24 cyclepath.

Tuesday mtb

Another warm day for me and Roger on the mtb's. It had rained a lot the day before and so it was a bit splashy in places. The idea was to do a singletrack ride today to check out the rideability of the trails for when Stefano joins us on Sunday!

unfortunately Roger got some chainsuck and twisted his chain and it took some time to sort it out. Don't buy those shimano chains roger :)

Sunday ride

Me, Paul and Jane had a classic ride, similar to last week but on some trails that we'd not ridden for a couple of years. The going was fairly hard under wheel and the overall speed doesn't show the sustained non-stop effort of the ride.

We had blue skies for a bit today and temperatures in double figures - but only just :)

We were barked at by a grumpy fox - he was crossing the road about 3 metres front of us when he turned and scowled and then barked at me, I barked back and he looked at me muttered something and strolled to the road side.

Sunday ride

Me, Jane and Paul did the first mtb ride of the year today. It was cold to start with, but very sunny with beautiful blue skies. Jane had very tired and slow legs and so suffered the whole three hours :) It was so cold that Paul got out the white jacket :)

xmas in ibiza

We spent the xmas in Ibiza getting a few km's in. The weather was generally sunny, but a little bit cool at times - generally around 15' degrees. We rode most days and managed over 300 km's of mixed riding. Rode part of the extreme course and some good singletrack with Bartolo and josh near san Antonio.