A small selsct group of unicyclist meet up for a muni ride yesterday on
Woodbury Common in Devon.We were a little late seting off as two of our
number got hopelessly lost trying to find the right carpark, but
eventually
all 5 of us were assembled and ready. Paul and Myself ( sarah)
were on our 26 inch Pashleys , Phil H had come down from
Yeovil with his 24x3 Yuni, Rob and Ben had come over from
Seaton with their fat tyred 20s.
The ride started out with an easy ride on mixed single and double track
down hill acroos the open heath as a warm up. A short, loose up hill
section was then followed by a SHARP ( in every sense) right
turn into the wood and a single track beauty with holly and gorse lining
the way. This trail heads gently down hill twisting through the trees for
about half a mile. It is a joy to ride having rooty bits, swoopy bits and
twisty bits and at the bottom evryone had a grin on their face and Ben was
talking about getting a 26inch for his next uni.
We wended our way onwards in the woods, Phil proved to be something of a
goat when it came to hill climbing and Bens hopping ability got him
through some of sections of “Root Beer” which were hard to
roll over on 20.
In the section we call Soda Stream I decided not to try riding through the
stream again ( I got soaking wet last time and it wasn’t a hot day) but
that didn’t stop Phil and Ben doing it. Both managed it first time. Phil
did however get a wet saddle when he didn’t quite make it back the other
way and landed his feet on the bank but dropped the uni.
After soda stream, we split into two groups, Paul and Phil wanted to
continue around the edge of the woods and go fast along some swoppy
single track, while Rob was getting very tired and wanted to take the
shorter route back over the heath to the cars.In our zig zag route over
the heath we found a fun little trail carved out of the heather which
contoured round a valley and saved a little bit of climbing. We finished
off by riding through the iron age hill fort “Woodbury Castle” now almost
totaly over grown with trees but the earth work ramparts are still
visable and very large and steep. We decided not to hurt our selves
trying to ride down them and had just got back to the car park and
broken out the chewy bars when Paul and Phil arrived having raced round
their choice of route and riden up all the hills.
wqe had been out for about 2 hours and the shorter route had been about 5
miles, P&P had done about 6-7. Every one was tired but interested in doing
it again. For Rob it had been a very challenging first muni ride, he did
realy well, especially as he was only on a 20 inch wheel. Next time I’ll
try and give peole a bit more notice about it happening.
Sarah
Union of UK Unicyclists
By and for UK riders
