Evening all,
Decided to take a day off work and drive over to Hadleigh Park which was the Olympic venue for MTB.
Sun came out and was pleasantly surprised by the course - ended up riding around for a good couple of hours the ensure all the tracks were ridden on. Some of the black runs were well beyond me to be honest but a very nice course for all abilities, covered over 400 metres of climbing which isn't bad for the land of mountains known as Essex! Plenty of fast switchbacks and very tight berms to test your nerve as well as some pretty steep rocky descents. Blue run to take it really easy, red if you want a bit more danger and black if you are not afraid of hurting yourself.
Facilities are good (shop and cafe on site) and only a few quid to park the car (or park in town and ride in I guess?). Also nice to be sharing the tracks with only half a dozen bikers and not worried about getting mowed down by a downhill rider going flat out at any time. You could easily arrive as a group of mixed abilities, have a ride around each at your own speed and still end up at the same place at on time or another.
If anyone was to consider a retrobike get together I'd recommend it as a venue purely for the fact it was so well laid out, even though my friend and I sort of got lost in terms of our bearings you are never more than a mile or two away from the centre.
Klein performed well, Hadleigh Park performed well, my legs not so much so here's to some winter training maybe!
Mark
Decided to take a day off work and drive over to Hadleigh Park which was the Olympic venue for MTB.
Sun came out and was pleasantly surprised by the course - ended up riding around for a good couple of hours the ensure all the tracks were ridden on. Some of the black runs were well beyond me to be honest but a very nice course for all abilities, covered over 400 metres of climbing which isn't bad for the land of mountains known as Essex! Plenty of fast switchbacks and very tight berms to test your nerve as well as some pretty steep rocky descents. Blue run to take it really easy, red if you want a bit more danger and black if you are not afraid of hurting yourself.
Facilities are good (shop and cafe on site) and only a few quid to park the car (or park in town and ride in I guess?). Also nice to be sharing the tracks with only half a dozen bikers and not worried about getting mowed down by a downhill rider going flat out at any time. You could easily arrive as a group of mixed abilities, have a ride around each at your own speed and still end up at the same place at on time or another.
If anyone was to consider a retrobike get together I'd recommend it as a venue purely for the fact it was so well laid out, even though my friend and I sort of got lost in terms of our bearings you are never more than a mile or two away from the centre.
Klein performed well, Hadleigh Park performed well, my legs not so much so here's to some winter training maybe!
Mark
. Whilst there we saw two others crash on black run descents - Oak Tree Drop was scary looking - pretty much vertical rock drop of about 5 metres leading into a fast left hand berm.
