right then! my turn
dragged my bum out of bed at 615am :shock: painful on what is a day off!! :shock:
drove for 2 and a bit hours and turned up in the Haldon forests carpark, immediately spotted some of the usual suspects!
as usual there were the introductions and the what are you riding questions
after refitting a chainring on the big foot/smokestone as it was back to front we all headed for the Ridge Line trail, initially it follows a singletrack gravel track but then drops in to a nice little downhill section that just flows really nicely. it then pops out on another bit of fire road for about 50 metres then it drops into another piece of really nice flowing but pedalling singletrack between trees and roots that if you are giving it a bit of welly can really test you!
eventually the trail heads upwards and then levels out, the group re-assembled itself just before another bit of trail that is like riding a rocky BMX pump track, initially you pedal a bit then just use the ups and downs to take you through the section, awesome! until paulie (maksters mate) launched himself over the bars :shock: turns out he only had a hurty knee and elbow, then came the comments of "you've got red on you" to much laughter (sean of the dead reference
) after a quick repair to paulie's bike and once Jimbo had fixed his "xtr" rear mech off we went again, straight into a really nice downhill at the bottom of which we stood around and talked rubbish for atleast half an hour!! :roll:
anyway on we carried up a hill that tom (ajantom) went up like it was flat leaving everyone else for dust :shock:
not long after this we hit the cafe at the visitor centre where the bikes caused quite a stir simply because most people didn't know what they were!
graveymonster then spotted a retrobike raleigh, i tried to coax him into chasing the bloke and offering him money but he was having none of it!
we then decided to have the jumble as some were going to be leaving, i got more stuff than i should have bearing in mind i took stuff to sell/karma :roll:
after this makster, paulie and me carried on for another spin as did some of the others but we chose different trails, paulie had another 2 off during this ride though they weren't as bad as the the first one (luckily!! he likes hugging trees at speed!)
thanks to everyone you turned up, it was good to meet you all and i apologise but names have already drifted from my mind
my memory really sucks sometimes!
any way here's some pics and a link to my facebook pics and also the whole lot on photobucket
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=3 ... 70699641b5
http://s929.photobucket.com/albums/ad13 ... %20200311/
But probably good as I have too many bits as it is 
Though I do need some new bars now 
