Thia wekend just gone Roundhlls campsite in the New Forest ( Hampshire,
England for those outside the UK) saw a gathering of Cokerheads , six of
us got together to ride the forests gravel based trails on saturday and
sunday. Things worked out incredably well after a ropey start.
Friday afternoon Joe and Alan made their seperate ways to a campsite near
brkenhurst ( Hollands wood). About 9pm Paul and I ( sarah) arrived at the
same site, only by this time it was full and we were not allowed to join
Al and Joe. So we headed off for another campsite. Eliot (coker head)
Duncan and Anna ( MTB riding friends )got to the Forest in the small hours
of the morning and pitched up at the first campsite they found.
Saturday morning , after a flurry of phone calls, Al and Joe switched camp
sites, Barry arrived at the site we were now all at and Eliot and friends
were bumped into as by a minor miricale they had ended up on the same site
as the rest of us.
As we headed off site about 11am the rain started. Eliots mate Duncan
started to have problems with his bike ( two wheeled) and the desision was
made to head for Lyndhurst and a pub for lunch ( about 5 miles away). Six
cokersheads and one biker made it to the pub, we lost Duncan compleately
and didn’t see him again till mid afternoon! It was great cokering through
the forest in a group, even in the rain. Great fun to see the looks on
people faces as they realised that there was ANOTHER one coming round the
corner. One of the best bits was overtaking a huge line of queued back
traffic on the way into Lyndhurst, unicycles were the fastest moving
vehicle on the road.
The rain continued to fall, heaviest while we were in the pub fortunatly.
In the afternoon we took a different route back to the camp via the
village of Brokenhurst and a ride through a ford ( but it was only a
little ford, barely noticeable on the big coker wheel. It was on this part
of the ride that I suffered my first ever Coker punture, a shard of flint
stuck into the tyre , I realised something was wrong when I started to
feel the stones I was riding over hitting the rim, I looked down and the
tyre was flat as a pancake. One brief stop for repairs later and we were
back on the move.
In Brokenhurst we stoped at the bike shop to oggle the toys and try out a
Pogo stick ( the acrobat v-800, great fun, apartently unicycle.uk.com sell
them too) and meet up with Duncan again. Then a spell of road riding
including a bitch of a hill brought us back to the camp.
Sunadys ride was a smaller group, only Joe Al Paul and I were able to stay
around for it. So we went over to the western part of the forest and took
in a cirular route with a pub stop for lunch again. Again it rained, and
again we suffered a puncture, Alans coker this time with the culprit again
a shard of flint ( tooth shaped and about 10mm long). This route had
bigger hills than saturdays and was a bit challenging to legs already
tired from the day before. Oh and the rain was harder and more of it .
Our arival at the pub caused some comments, but were we really any odder
than the group who had their horsed parked in the car park. I don’t think
so. The post lunch ride was quite short, about half road riding,
including a km on the A35 main road! mercifully there were no more
puntures to come and we ended up back at the cars all together.
In short, it was great weekend, thanks go to Joe who organised it.I think
there might be some more coker head gatherings in the future.
sarah
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Euro-cycle 2001 Results now on http://www.eurocycle.org