The leith hill north shore challenge - or the OH *$%^ ride

General
1

Today Joe M and I went on a quest - to find the “Holy trail” - better known as north shore - uk style.

A quick report - badly done as I’m Totally knackered

It all started at 10 am at dorking station. With Audioslave on the stereo we rushed off towards leith hill and some surry shore - but first we had to make a little detour.

We parked up somewhere (I can’t remember the name of it) and rode off in search of a “fun decent” that Joe had spotted on an earlier ride - this turned out to be a super-slippery mix of chalk, clay and rocks. we both tried to ride and failed, and failed and failed - not a good start to the day and this was “the easy bit” apparantly.

Actually - to my horror it was.

A little further down the hill was the hard bit - a huge drop into the bottom of a dead chalk quarry, ie about 50 foot of near-vertical cliff. Yes I thought about it. But No my life is more valuable to me than that so we rode on down the hill along the edge and over the side at a more muni friendly height.

A quick play was all we had before the smell of Castrol R floated in, accompanied by two guys on trials motorbikes who promptly rode up and down the cliff to impress us. To impress them there fore we pootled off back up the hill to go find some planks in the sky.

Another short drive (and the first of many navigational errors) found us at the next car - park, only a short muni from the fabled Rad Lane north shore.

This was awesome stuff - I’m sure Joe’ll post some piccies soon - although so rickety it was scary.

we played around on the spiral for a bit before heading off for the HUGE drops etc - just to have a look you understand

that done and a quick play on the see-saw and it was time to head back up the hill for more riding on the only non-rickety bit by the spiral.

Eventually we tired and went off to peaslake - where lies the greatest snack-shop in the world - for a spot of lunch.

More driving and muniing ant it was the other bit of shore - just off some forestry commission land - where we played around with a couple of single-speeders we picked up on the way - more sillyness - more see-saws (I like them) - more body damage and it was almost all over.

All that was left was a quick trip to the top of the hill to ride “Summer Lightning” - Joe’s beautiful unicycle friendly trail - bomb back down again and go home - stopping only for a fried egg sandwich at the station.

  • sorry it’s short - I’m knackered and I know that Joe will fill in the bits that I can’t remember
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That should’ve been to your delight :). Please post some photos Joe! You’re really lucky to have all that northshore near you. I’ve heard rumours that there might be a northshore forest a few hours away from me…I’ll have to look into it.

Andrew

3

The NS stuff we tried to ride was mostly too rickety - bit’s of it were breaking as i rode on them - sometimes dumping me down a way - most of it was not rideable and some of it was just dangerous

The Forestry commission are pulling it all down next week so sadly that’s likely to be my first and last ride on the Surry North Shore - untill they build some more that is

If it was a bit closer to home (it’s 2 hours each way) Then I’d go build stuff and the landscape round where I am is almost all owned by a VERY anti bike family.

4

http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albuo83 is where it’s at for pictures.

The shore stuff is fun, but not as good as it sounds to be honest, there’s two really big sections, one with the spiral in it and the real monster one, both of these are built well enough to ride but still a bit shonky. The monster one is way too big for me to even think about, whereas the spiral is probably possible with practice. There’s lots of long flatter sections, some of which are rideable but many of which are pretty badly made and need complete rebuilding really.

Other than that, there’s the baby shore which is much more me friendly and well built, I’ll definately be down there some more, it’s about 1 foot off the ground rather than 12 - 15 feet and just off a track that I often ride so quite handy to pop into the middle of a ride. That’s not getting pulled as far as I know, because no-one is likely to get badly injured on it and it’s much more hidden.

As far as n. shore in general goes, it seems okay, but once you get over the cool newness of it, the emphasis on hucks and high up stuff seems a bit silly. I quite like the low level stuff with lots of skinnys etc. but the higher things seem just to be adding danger more than actual difficulty.

By the way, anyone in the UK don’t bother heading down this way to look for the shore bits on your own cos it’s too much hassle to find without someone who knows the area, you can’t follow people’s directions without knowing the trail names etc. If you’re going down there, tell me and I’ll go down there with you.

The quarry off Ranmore is indeed a cool area, there’s a bunch of silly downhills round there and I will own that top descent some point, the bottom section I’d like to see ridden on a uni, but it sure won’t be by me!

Have to say, trials motorbikes are well impressive.

Joe

5

Agreed - big is not so clever - I did like that spiral though

The only thing about big stuff if the fear factor - and once you’ve disengaged brain then it makes no difference

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The sign is right, there is a website.

Pictures and videos of the place can be found here.

Phil

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That looks awsome! Thanks for posting the link.

Me too.

Andrew