Friday, September 14, 2007

Riding in Grizedale Forest...again!

Jo and I headed up into Cumbria for another day's riding in Grizedale Forest last Saturday. We almost have the packing down to routine: helmets - check, pads - check, tools - check, ...... Once we arrive in the car park at the Forest Centre Jo goes and rents her bike while I set up mine (and generally mess around :-) ).
Our hope has always been to ride as much of the 'North Face Trail' as possible - a moderately technical, mostly man-made, trail that climbs through the hills around the car park, but we've always missed bits out and walked a lot of the tough bits.

Not so this Saturday. Jo just stood up and rode off into the distance; up the goat's trail, up-and-over the rocks/roots/wild boars (almost) without even a dab (placing a foot down for support). Couldn't believe it.
We followed the whole trail as it climbed and dived around trees and down through gullies, stopping occasionally to catch our (my) breath, before diving back into it.

Jo even managed a bit of a stack; before getting up and re-riding the same section, just to prove that she could do it.
From what we could work out, Jo's front wheel just skidded out coming through a right-hand corner; it's a frustrating stack (one that I've done a *few* times). You're usually going relatively slowly and you feel the bike lying down and you know that you're going to loose a bit of skin off your elbow and there's not much you can do about it. Jo actually did contain it all rather well. Check out the photos (can't have a stack without photos...).

Once we rode back into the car park and swapped Jo's bike over (Jo snapped her first bike chain - about 20 yards from the bike shop - Praise God...), we climbed back to the top of the fateful downhill run - with a new bike and elbow pads from the car - and re-rode the same sections.

On the last downhill section I stopped and filmed Jo coming down and across a bridged gully. Enjoy!


Running Time: 24sec

Jo here: The video of me is on the last down-hill section of the day, so I was feeling pretty tired and slow. (That was the only reason I allowed Matt to get far enough in front to stop and shoot a movie :-) ).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You crazy people! Still, its probably safer than dodging cars on Sydney's roads...

Glad you are having fun. I wouldn't want to mess with Jo, wearing that look that means business.

Rob T