Sunday at Mostyn dawned, we all slept on. Eventully I wqs roused by my alarm
clock and remembered I had to get up coz it was big Muni ride morning. After a
fair amount of FAFing we got lots of riders and unis loaded into a small number
of cars and headed for the hills, incredibly no-one got lost and we all found
parking spaces, just about. The top of the hill was full of MTB downhill riders,
practiseing for a cnational competition in that woodland area this coming
weekend. We assured them that we were NOT playing on thier precious DH course
and gradully sorted ourselfs out. Paul was going to lead a slower, shorter ride
with a big group, so I got going with a small group of more experienced riders
to try a harder and longer version. We started out with a long decent through
the trees, on a narrow taril, not to hard but fun and it went on for nearly a
km. leaving the woods we headed back up hll for a bit on a stoney track before
contouring around the hill side for a few km. There were fantastic veiws over
the valley. Sam our Mountain bike riding photographer friend had his work cut
out to take pics, get on the bike and overtake us to take more pics, eventully
he setttled for snaping just after breaks.
Our desent into the valley came eventully with a thrilling technical ride down
a rocky track, this was quite tough, but great fun for those who did manage to
ride it, if a tad intimidating to the others. We were releived to think the
other group would come no-where near this track. We hacked back along the
valley on the road, if you could call this 6 foot wide strip of tarmac with
grass a road. Then a section of by-way lead us to a footbridge over a little
brook. We stopped to play , riding over the brigde, and the like, then I
decided to try and ride through the stream. First time I got in acroos and just
didn’t make it onto the other side, so I had another go. Disater, I flew
through the air and ended up sitting in the stream, cutting one thumb and
bruising a few other bits of
me. Thank goodness I had the wrist guards on.
We walked up the hill, damply in my case, as there was no right to ride on that
short section then remounted on the otherside of the field. A short traverse
brought us to the bottom of the woodland and a whole bunch of DH MTB kids. We
answerd inane questions, Leo attemped a bit of their play biking and gained a
few more grazes .
Then it was just the final slog up hill on a good solid logging track which was
rideable, but very tireing as it seemed never ending. Back at the car-park we
waited for the slow group and whished we had been sensible and left MORE water
in the cars than we had, Richards biscuits went down a treat tho.
The slower ride had done some of our route but in reverse. They stared with the
same long desent, then continued down to the footbridge ( where I went
swimming), most of their up-hill was on the quiet road. They then took the
countouring track slightly down wards ( we had been climbing gently on it) and
like us finished with the slog up through the woods. At about 8 km, even the
short ride at BUC7 was no walk in the park. Those riders who did it can feel
very proud of thier achievement.
Back at Mostyn irt was lunchtime and went food arrived in front of us the table
fel silent, on chat. Just heads down shovelling food into us. Boy was that food
welcome, I even had pizza for pudding.
sarah