Wow, that must have been fantastic! Great pictures!
Help and assist us in our project and campaign to stamp out and abolish redundancy and repetition.
nice drilled KH moments Jogi.
Just about an hour ago at the local trail. In the first pic you can see Santa Catalina Island poking up through the cloud layer, 26 miles away. 
Hey! No bicycles allowed! :D;)
Yesterday I took my N36 for a long ride. 73km in 3:41h riding time and about 4,5h including breaks. I didn’t hurry and occasionally took some interesting single track paths too. This massive building of a former radio station all of a sudden appeared in the middle of nowhere. Kind of impressive. The state of the Netherlands built it in the 1920s in order to be able to communicate with their colonies in India. It is built entirely out of armored concrete right in the middle of an otherwise pretty empty landscape of forest, heather and sand. Apparently they are trying to turn it into some kind of location for concerts and other performances. It is called “Radio Kootwijk”.
![P260609_14.42[02].jpg](https://cdn.unicyclist.com/uploads/default/original/3X/5/9/5915493c4a3eeb177a20230905465e5f07b68b01.jpeg)
![P260609_14.53[01].jpg](https://cdn.unicyclist.com/uploads/default/original/3X/f/5/f5a50072dd72838981a3a56ab283a2bc2ea5cd72.jpeg)
That’s no bicycle, it’s his V-frame uni!
Today I threw my new Nimbus into the car and went over to Fish Creek Park for an early evening ride. It was a blast speeding down all those narrow single track paths and testing myself on some of the steep hills, both up and down. One hill where I entered the park used to intimidate me on my bike but at the end of my ride I did it tonight on my new uni - twice, because it was so much fun!
Well, I’m persuaded. How much money should I send?
Wow she/he/it has really got you hook, line, and sinker!!! Lol
The world famous Mikefule on our big beginner muni ride yesterday - 8 people, and everyone got most of the way round the 7 mile trail, even those who were on their first muni ride. Some of us rode about 10 miles somehow too, thanks to running sections multiple times.
I overtook a bike, which I was proud of (not counting the poor woman who was obviously being taken out riding by a friend, hating every minute of it, and appeared to be pedalling about once every minute). I fell off my unicycle 3 times though, 1 of which was just because I suck at riding scary things, the other two though were due to paying no attention on easy stuff which is annoying.
It was a cunning way to organise a beginner ride, in a forest where you can go back on the fire-roads and ride the proper trail sections multiple times, so the fast people don’t get bored, and the slow people don’t worry too much about holding people up.
Joe
World famous? Just a shameless self publicist. I’m the one in the red shirt, grimacing in the picture Joe posted.
What an excellent area to go riding (Cannock Chase), but the rare opportunity to ride with other people reminded me not only of my limitations as a rider, but also of my rapidly declining levels of fitness.
I have to say that if that is a “beginner” level Muni ride then I can only assume you have several levels below “beginner”. Most of my riding has been more cross country than Muni, but I’ve done a few hundred miles off road over the last few years and some of the early stages (in the gravelly roller coaster bit) were at the limit of what I could achieve.
Last time I rode there was with Arnold the Aardvark (Alan Chambers) when I was very new to Muni. In fact, I think it probably counted as my first ever Muni ride. If I compare my riding to then, I’ve made big improvements.
Good to see you’re making use of the leg armour.
That tyre looks enormous, what is it?
Yeah, but to be honest, it looks pretty tough to do the whole thing carrying a small Roger on your back!
By the way, I’ve uploaded the GPS track now.
STM
The standard one that came on the KH24. It perhaps looks strange because it is blurred by the speed. 
I’d say it is at the easy end of xc muni riding.
It is easy & great for beginners because:
It’s short, only 7 miles, so anyone can get round it, even if they have to walk some of it. There aren’t many easy linking sections / long drag climbs that would split up a group.
At all points, it is pretty obvious how to ride any particular section, because it’s narrow and there’s not much line choice.
Nothing needs any hopping (one root on the last section we rode was easier as a hop, but it would have been rollable).
There are no unrollable drops, and the only drops are all small and to soft landings.
If you crash it is soft. No rocks.
There are no major hills, all the climbs are very short, and most of them aren’t very steep.
I can’t see that you could make it massively easier without just riding on the big wide forest tracks, which would just be road riding with a fat tyre.
Joe
Joe,
It was a good morning out and I really enjoyed it so thanks for the chance to see how the pro’s do stuff.
I’d agree Cannock is a great place for Muni. But with hindsight I didn’t find 7 miles that short or some of the hills that “very short”. Hence the long waits you had for me to emerge from the trail. Usually hoping one of you was better at CPR than MJ’s Doctor;)
I can categorically confirm that 7 miles of Muni is a lot harder on the legs than the 25ish miles of the Yorkshire 3 peaks!
Not complaining, really enjoyed it but I’d suggest that a shorter session might be more appropriate to newbies or the less skilled and fit i.e. me. I’ll be fitter next time. I’ll also attempt the reduce my UPDs by an order of magnitude into the hundreds:D
Gary
Out of interest, did you run or walk the 3 peaks? I’m thinking I’d like to have a go at running / walking it quite fast at some point, but I reckon that’d be a whole lot harder than follow the dog!
I always figure that if you’re not feeling a bit broken after a day of muni, then you could easily have ridden further, so you might as well have done so!
Seriously though, it was pretty tiring for most of us (to be honest I was a bit achey after all the sections we rode twice), but I don’t think the distance was really overkill, as we didn’t have to drive round and pick anyone up. I think riding a longish trail like that makes people improve much faster than riding somewhere with a load of short trails like Bramcote, as you will tend to push themselves to ride the whole lot, whereas at Bramcote rides, people tend to drop off after three or four climbs when they start getting tired. Over the time you spend continuously riding a longer trail, your technical riding ability improves, by the end people tend to ride over stuff they wouldn’t have dreamt of at the start - a long ride is a much better way to get better at riding than just doing short rides.
Erm, basically what I mean is - it hurts, but it’s good for you, or something like that!
The most important thing I’ve found in leading beginner rides, is not to make it any longer than someone could happily walk. There is no place for a beginner on anything much greater than 12 miles or so, certainly not 20 mile plus rides. I’ve had to ride back to the car with someone on a ride before, after it was clear in the first mile that they wouldn’t manage the full ride on a loop with no convenient shortcuts. But something like this ride, the furthest you’d have to walk if you gave up is 3 miles, a bit less than an hours walk, which isn’t really a problem.
The neat thing about the Saturday ride was how we split up into people who rode things twice, and people who wanted rests at the end of each section, with people drifting from one group to the other through the ride. I think if it wasn’t for the three beginners (you, Roger and Tom), John & I would quite likely have pushed the pace a bit more, and ended up knackering the not quite so fast riders in the middle who wanted more rests. So don’t worry about holding people up, they wanted a rest too.
Another favourite beginner loop is the Chevin Loop, near Belper where I live, only 4 miles of riding, but it does have a nice (long) climb on it, and the descents are a little bit more technical than most of Follow the Dog.
Joe
The beauty of Cymru
Pic1:
Here we go again on the dam at Lake Vyrnwy really pleased with myself 
'cos I’ve learnt how to ride the coker holding the handlebars with both hands now - so going slightly faster and easier. Second half of 24 mile run that ran into heavy rain. The hotel behind my head in the pic is this:
http://www.lakevyrnwy.com/
Pic2:
Picnic site on the lake. humid heat and water created a little mistyness in this shot.
Pic3 & 4:
The Dovey Valley where I live. En route to the lake and sorry to say I could’nt ride down…or up this. But I could walk 
Pic5: Road runs along the top of a mountain range - brilliant day for it!
