The first step doesn't commit you to anything - Sherwood Pines

Decided to ride at Sherwood Pines today. The weather was looking a lot poorer than the early part of the week, but waterproof jacket in hand I made a not-so early start; it must have been 11:30 when I left the house after waking up with good intentions to get out and ride.

For the entire drive the time I'd reach my destination per the satnav was 30 mins or so too long. Even when I arrived at 12:15, the device maintained I'd be delayed until 12:45. And yes, the clock was set correctly. Weird.

A friendly guy in the car park who was leaving lent me his ticket, saving £3 in change I'd neglected to bring with me. To be fair I had been planning to wing it, due to the lack of change - something to remember in future!

Some mellow trails at Sherwood
The start of the red graded Kitchener trail was fairly obscure compared to the green and blue trails. The fact that it started from the opposite side of the car park to the more family oriented trails that I'd ridden before at this centre took some figuring out from the not greatly helpful map! In fairness I notices at least three really big signs in the car park after my ride that could have pointed me in the right direction, if I'd only looked about!

The trail itself was a pleasant surprise. The initial section was mildly downhill swoopy singletrack. Nice and flowing. The majority of the trail is on singletrack, but it's not very technical in my opinion. It seemed to be either well worn but flowing dirt, pretty rutted with a fair amount of black mud, or newly reinforced, as a few sections were.

Took my Specialized Hardrock trail centre machine with me today and it ate up the track. There are no real climbs to speak of but equally there are no real descents either. I'd imagine that's what an XC race circuit feels like, if I'd ever competed, and I know the centre does host events of that kind.

Towards the end, on a particularly slippery wooded section, my chain decided to give up the ghost. Not in the way some chains do, snapping and catapulting the rider away from the bike as the pedaling forces are unleashed with the sudden lack of resistance. No it just made a feeble kind of snapping sound, I looked down and thought the chain had succumbed to chainsuck (again) but it lazily slid off the chainset, as if exhausted from the effort.

The death of a chain, this is exactly the position in which it fell off!
I rescued the downed chain, slightly annoyed with myself as only yesterday I'd wondered why, as an SRAM chain, it had no split link and whether I should carry one as a spare. Well the answer is yes I should, although with my luck with bikes a chain will never snap while I'm out on a trail again with a split link handy!

Along similar lines, I always ride with a pump, tyre levers and a spare tube in my pack (and normally very little else) but for life of me I can't remember the last time I had a puncture in a remote part of the trail. Better to be prepared though I guess, as a 10 mile hike out of some trails would be pretty harsh!

I scooted and pumped the hell out of the rest of the track, which was a good technical work out just to keep the bike moving. Had no choice but to push up some of the flatter / uphill parts, but I was probably only 15 mins from the finish at that point.

Overall not a bad trail, considering there are no hills to speak of. Definitely worth doing a couple of laps of if you end up riding it, but personally, I need satisfying climbs and longer descents to put the adrenaline-fuelled grin on my face!

Most irritating bike part of the day: Specialized BG saddle, for creaking every time I even went near it. At least the chain had the decency to die with a whimper.

When a plan comes together - The List is born

Finished the first draft of the list this morning!  There are 69 trail centres or similar locations that I want to ride.

I'm calling it a first draft, as I'm sure it will change over the course of the next year and a half, what with it still containing places like the UK Bike Park and Esher, which I want to ride, but don't really fit the description of a trail centre and in Esher's case, has been ripped down.

I had to leave out a couple of places listed on the internet though.  Some sounded like they'd be very good to ride, but had no waymarked trails such as the Surrey Hills and Swinley Forest.  Other sounded epic, but again were not waymarked and would make a great basis for another series of rides, but not quite in keeping with this one, such as the Clwyd Hills and the Brecon Beacons.  Perhaps that's something to follow up on afterwards when I've got my big mountain legs back!

I've made a quick map in google maps too, to help decide which centres would be good to ride in a long weekend and which are going to take the most effort to get to.  For me the Scottish ones and the South coast will be the worst travel time, and are both areas where I've limited experience of travelling.

This week, I'm on leave from work, so aiming to hit up a couple of centres at least and get my full sus bikes services and ready for summer.


Choose your own adventure - A new start

Spring cleaning.  Time to clear out your old things and chase the cobwebs form the corners.  The corners of your garage and your mind.

Today's Sunday and it's the first day of the year to have really great weather.  The birds are singing and there are wisps of cloud slowly floating past in a pale blue sky.  It's a day I've looked out for every year since I was a teenager, since I took up mountain biking and waited for the new summer riding season to begin.  It's the first day that you know winter's over and summer is coming, even if it still feels far off.

Smells like summer
But unlike any other year, I had a funny realisation this week.  In less than 7 days I'll be 28 and a half.  No big deal right?  Well it means I'll be 30 in 18 months and most everyone has heard of the idea of a cliched list of "things to do before you're 30".  Why 30?  Who knows...

So last Tuesday lunchtime I sat at work and thought, what DO I want to do before I'm 30? The seemingly popular bungee jumping, skydiving, backpacking round the far east and the like didn't really seem to appeal.  But one thing did.  More mountain biking.

I've been riding mountain bikes for a shocking 14 or so years.  I lived in Whistler for the summer 2005 season and had a blast.  Coming back to the UK and a full time job seemed to rob me of much of my time to ride.

I decided that this excuse was getting stale.  I quickly realised that something awesome to do would be to ride all of the UK's trail centres in the next year and a half, before I'm 30.

I had no idea how long it would take to put a worthy list together!  As of right now I'm about 50% through putting together a draft list of centres from Tom Fenton's excellent book "Mountian biking trail centres" and other sources.  I think I've easily got 60+ centres, so if things pan out it's going to be a busy 18 months!