Seems like quite a few people got in a cheeky weekday ride today.
I have two last rides, so two pictures.
Yesterday afternoon I headed out for a quick play on my local trails - I was out for an hour or so, and I think I basically rode a km to the trail, and then a 500m-ish trail, a bit of a loop round to the top, rode the trail again, and then poddled home. I spent about 45 minutes riding the 1km of proper trail, which is a little run that is called ‘bus stop’*, I think I have ridden every section of it except for three bits, the first is an annoying drop-in at the start, that is only about 8 inches, but somehow catches me out every time, secondly, there’s an inconveniently angled log to hop or roll over, I think I could roll it, but it is a bit slippy, and I never seem to get the angle right for the hop. The third impossible section is a horrible rock garden where there used to be a stone wall, followed by a steep corner heading down a set of decent sized root steps.
Tonight, I rode home from work on the bike, and discovered that the batteries for my new fancy night riding light (cost me £40 - 4 times as much as my last ones) had turned up. And it turned out that the light was stupidly bright, incredibly bright, with the ‘low’ setting being as bright as my old light, and the high setting being silly, silly bright in a huge beam of light in the sky kind of way. So I couldn’t resist strapping the light to my helmet, and going for a night ride. I rode bus stop again, but this time with a ton of dismounts. What a great trail for night riding - it has a bit of everything, steep twisty stuff, sharp little uphills, rocks, roots, bits you really need to hop through, bits where you just have to put the power down to blast through, wide rocky sections, narrow singletrack, a little skinnyish ride along the top of a wall to finish (plus a final 3 foot drop for those who like that sort of thing), and best of all, it’s only 10 minutes ride from my house. I’m hoping some people will bring night riding lights on the Peaks Muni Trip so we can go play on it. There are some easier bits too, for those who are less night ride crazy (or don’t have such fancy lights).
Joe
p.s. apologies for the phone camera picture quality
*because if you get to the bus stop, you’ve gone past for the (non-obvious) trail entrance
