the BOB juggling convention is on in Bristol on Dec 6th, any one fancy
going for a muni ride at Ashton Court on the Timberland trail on the 7th?
Its an 11km loop, largely single track. If your interested make contact
and we can see about arranging a suitable meeting time and swapping phone
numbers as the weather is somewhat unreliable at that time of year.
see
Sarah
–
Union of UK Unicyclists
By and for UK riders
<finds post>
Count me in!
Phil
Count me out only got 2 20" on me 
i need sum nice freshair riding 
Trev
<finds post I forgot to reply to last time I saw it>
Sounds cool. I’ll try to be there.
Eeeeeeeeeeexcellent…
Phil
So… who is actually going to BOB this weekend?
Fingers crossed for nice weather on the Sunday (and Saturday, for that matter…)
Phil
sarah would you be able to take me on saturday?i would have to arange a lift home on the saturday but i am still not sure i am going as i am in the middle of the mocks
> So… who is actually going to BOB this weekend?
I have to try to get to Cardiff for the evening, so I will have to leave in the afternoon, but I should be there for a while. I’ve never been to any kind of unicycling event, so it should be cool.
Re: Muni in Bristol after BOB
redwelly wrote:
>
> > So… who is actually going to BOB this weekend?
>
> I’ve never been to any kind of unicycling event, so it should be cool.
Hi guys,
It’s great to know that people are coming along to BOB tomorrow, but
just so that people aren’t disappointed, I’d like to point out again
that the main focus is juggling and general circus skills. It’s quite
crowded and there isn’t a lot of opportunity for unicycling.
If lots of people want to do unicycling, I can schedule an hour or so
in the workshop room for unicycling tricks, etc. And of course you can
probably find somewhere outside to do some trials, etc, although the
venue is not on the university campus, so it’s mainly just streets
immediately outside the union.
So your best bet is to come along and enjoy some of the stuff going on
that’s a little bit different (e.g. Dance Dance Revolution, Body Popping,
Pub Tricks, Table Football, etc). And then go on this Muni on the Sunday.
Full details about BOB at: http://www.bristolcircus.co.uk/bob/
Incidentally, if any of you want to stay over on the Saturday night,
can you let me know so we can sort out crash space. Remove Doesn’t Like
and Spam from my email address to reply.
See you tomorrow,
Re: Muni in Bristol after BOB
phil <phil@noemail.message.poster.at.unicyclist.com> wrote:
> So… who is actually going to BOB this weekend?
Its currently looking a little doubtfull about weather Paul and I will be
there or not. Both been ill and not feeling too good. However the
decision will be made on saturday morning so we might be there.
MInd you Muni on sunday doesn’t NEED us anyway. Any muniers who are at
BOB will soon find each other if you offer to run a Uni workshop. The
Timberland Trail is over the suspension bridge, ask a local ( there’s a
bike shop or two in town if the locals don’t ride mtbs!) or do a google
search for it.
Still hoping to have re-discovered some lung function by tomorrow
morning.
Yours
Sarah
–
Union of UK Unicyclists
By and for UK riders
Re: Re: Muni in Bristol after BOB
I have a map of the place, and the start of the trail is already programmed into the GPS… so I’ll be there, even if I end up doing it all on my own…
Phil
I plan to be there Phil, so unless I get lost/abucted you won’t be alone. What time do you plan to start on Sunday (and Saturday for that matter)? I’ll be getting to Bristol on the bus both days, so will have to find my way from the centre of town somehow…
On the saturday it apparently starts at 10… so it’ll depend on what time I can drag myself out of bed… 
I’ll prolly be there not too long after that.
As for the sunday, I’m free all day so I don’t mind… we can wait until we know who is interested before coming up with a time (unless you have a preference, of course).
Phil
We’ll probably sort it out there on the Saturday, but I may as well say, I’d prefer about 12-1pm on the Sunday as I have lots of traveling beforehand. I don’t know how long one needs before dark to enjoy the place, but I’d guess that would be enough. Forcast is for sunnyness. Which is good.
Bristol Indiana?
The original Bristol, in the UK.
Tch… things would be a lot less confusing if you lot didn’t steal all our place names…
Phil
Muni in Bristol after BOB - The Aftermath…
By sheer luck today was the first day for ages when it has been sunny at the weekend, so it was a great day to go for a muni ride. An excellent ride it was too!
Sam and I got to Ashton Court at just before two in the afternoon; with the nice weather there seemed to be a lot of people and a good few bikes about; there was even an optimistic ice cream van!
The first bit of the trail was a pretty decent warm up… nothing too extreme but enough to keep you busy. Then the trail leaves the trees, crosses the road, goes down a fast, slightly downhill path and dives back into the woods… and that is where the tricky bits start!
It’s impressive how much trail they’ve actually managed to squeeze into a not huge patch of wood. The trail twists all over the place so it feels like you must be going round in circles. It winds its way around trees, over log piles, roots and rocky bits for ages… very tiring, but excellent fun if tight, technical trails are your thing; this bit definitely isn’t for people who like their singletrack fast and swoopy. (That came later…)
The trail ended at a road on the far side from where we’d gone in, right next to a large rocky outcrop which was just crying out to be ridden on. Here I came to the conclusion that Sam is insane; if anyone had suggested to me to try drops taller than I am within a few months of starting riding I’d have laughed; yet here he was launching himself off huge great rocks and plummeting earthward. I think we got some videos of that bit on Sam’s camera, which I presume he will make available if they’re worth watching…
By this time the afternoon was getting on, and the sun was getting lower, so we moved on. The trail crosses the road again, goes along a smaller road alongside a quarry and then back into the grounds of Ashton Court for the ride back to the start. According to someone at BOB there are two routes from here, running almost parallel to each other alongside the length of the quarry. We chose one randomly and dived into the woods again. This part was much faster, a section for the Swoopy people.
From here we may well have lost the trail, for it was properly dark by this time. We ended up on a forest access road or something which led most of the way back to the car park. The view of the last rays of sun through the trees, and then the lights of Bristol below, were nice to see.
We’d been out just over three hours in total, but I suspect there are a lot of paths and trails there that we didn’t go on. Definitely worth a return visit, especially if we can arrange a time when a few more people are available.
The picture below is the route we took according to the GPS gizmo. The triangle at the far end was me forgetting to reset the GPS on starting; the bottom end is the car park we started from, the top end is the car park I stopped at briefly while scouting around waiting for Sam’s bus to arrive. The trail goes anticlockwise; the crazy twisty section is very apparent, the rocks we stopped to play on are in the bottom left corner, and the smoother run back to the start is up the right hand side.
Phil
Thanks for that write up Phil, and thanks for a great afternoon’s riding. I don’t really need to desribe much, as Phil has covered it well. We met quite a few Mountain M*kers (seemingly all going in the opposite direction to us) with their suspension bouncing away, making it look absurdly easy to go cruising over all the lumps and roots. Ah well, I bet we had more fun. 
A few parts of the single track got fairly quagmiric, with frequent UPDs, causing an exclaimation from Phil of “these seat handles make rather good ice cream scoops!”. Mmm… mud flavour…
The rocky bit was very cool, and it was unfortunate that the light was failing. We only just got back to the car by the time it was completely dark, after stopping for about 20 minutes, but it would be quite possible to spend many hours dropping off those rocks (assuming time is not cut short by hideous injury). Making a successful drop even once would have been nice, but alas it was not to be. My uni made the drops a few more times than I did, including once when I panicked just before take off, and ended up grabbing an overhead branch while the uni disappeared below.
My few pictures and video clips are here. I trust you will be uploading your photos too Phil…
I’d forgotten about my camera… some of them didn’t come out very well, unfortunately… but the rest are here: http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albut62
The handles would make excellent ice cream scoops because after several UPDs I ended up with a handleful of rather gooey mud… not nice to stick your fingers into! Ewww…
Phil
