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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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