Fort Bill or bust...

Well the UCI World Cup visited Fort William last weekend - and the media circus is just dying back down. Much more interesting than Shuey being put to the back of the grid for cheating during GP qualifying!!

Results are in here. Full write up here. Sam Hill's first win of the season and a British 4th/5th/6th!



Team rider Tom Deacon came 40th!


The NPS visits Fort Bill on the 23/24th September for the DH series finale. We plan on heading up for a weekend of riding and socialising. Details via Scott shortly.

More lessons learned....

After about a months worth of "how the fuck is my rear hayes losing pressure/fluid?", I last nigth found the answer, a suspicious "bulge" in my hose (presumably due to a crash or two) and the tell tale dribble of fluid on the frame means I now know why! More investment required...

Fortunately during the ride the brake found a "fluid spot" and the brake worked, so the ride of charity lane was as ace as ever. Climb up wasn't too bad, again I had to push the final bit but I SHALL get fitter for next week. Maybe...

Top weather last night, so we took some snaps, and my 2nd lesson of the night was to remind myself how useless I am with James's camera. Poor lad had to do everything 10 times to get one crap shot!

Distinct lack of Wednesday turn out seems to be the theme to date, so presumably June will bring us some more banter and riding out in the forest.

Laters.

Wednesday ride...

Meeting as usual at 5pm tomorrow evening. This week the weather looks pretty good and we may try and extended route. We've got Nant-yr-arian in the calander for a fortnights time so we need to get the fitness levels back up!

Stickers

The new stickers are here so grab me at the next ride for yours!

Friday rant...

A good friend of mine recently told me (no telling who it is!) that it's funny how to the North lies Scotland, a country with its own Parliament, numerous mountain biking "heavens" and a population able to work with its forests to build on the growing popularity of our biking past time. Then Wales, with its Assembly, and yet again, numerous mountain biking "heavens" and a co-operative spirit between riders and, what I shall loosely term, "governing bodies". 2 small countries that have really got it going in the right direction.

Then we have good old England. I could write numerous things at this point, but I wont rant. Basically, the attitude is fundamentally wrong. A thriving and growing sport, potential tourism and economical drivers for mountain biking centres. Do you see them popping up in your locale? No, didn't think so. And even if you do, you know the level of ball ache it takes to get it going, and its the riders pushing it 200%.

So England, sort it out!

Fun fun fun

Good ride last night. After an epic 2 days at work, it was great to leave before 4, even driving home i was looking forward to getting on the bike. Got up to the reservoir, prep'd the bike and waited on other arrivals. Duly arrived James H and I then smugly noted how well I'd been looking after my bike, and how manky his looked!

Still, we climbed up feeling some pain from Sunday, but generally climbed well, I struggled come the road climb, but I am just only back on my fitness regime! Preps to James for going whole hog, and for reminding me my bike is so heavy, great excuse for me pushing that last bit up!

After that Charity lane rocked, I love how that place constantly gives different conditions, in this case white water rafting conditions from the recent monsoon weather alla Macclesfield.

Good ride, learned something new on seatpost different downhill ride heights on the beast, and still in love with Miss Stinky :) so all good. I'll be riding Macc forrest and Teg's nose this Sunday/Monday, let me know if anyone wants to join me.

Macclesfield ride

Good fun tonight but again just me and the boy Warnock. Weather stayed fine, even had some sun!
Both of us felt the exercise from the weekend, but I re-instated with a solid climbing performance. Charity Lane was great fun as usual, but VERY wet - like a damn river on the lower half, and typical, the 'racing' line was the wettest!

Hopefully we'll see more of you next week - slackers.

Blast from the past

Had an email from Ben this morning:

Hi James,

Just caught a mention of fearingout on homegrownpushbikes so I thought I'd drop a line to say hi. Am back in Macclesfield for a year starting end of July so it would be good to meet up and get some rides in.
I hope that you are doing well - see you soon

Ben
PS drop me a email if you are riding in south wales in June as I should still be down here!

As Scott mentioned we're riding tonight, in the pouring rain. When will the summer start up here?!!

Ready...

The brake is fixed (for now, wtf is going on with it I don't know, might have to return to high peak and get it proper fixed rather than doing patch up bleeds every fortnight!) and the rain is out........so it must be Wednesday......ride on for tonight as usual, I'm making a long awaited return, so a little monsoon isn't going to stop me :)

Bring it on.

Be prepared...

...The famous scout moto, maybe one I need to think about before riding!

ClimachX trail sounded good on the web, the pics and helmet cam video whetted the apetite even more, so having got excited for the trip, I was so keen to get my kit loaded into the silver bullet, I left behind my tool box, AAAaaaaaaargh! No axle stay for my front hub, no tools, no gloves most importantly! So on arriving in the middle of a valley in the middle of somewhere unpronounceable (that must a be a hard language to learn) in Wales it was officially monsoon season.

Fuck it we thought, this place sounds ace, let's get on it! So I patched together my bike, tightened up the axle as tight as I could make it, cried about having no gloves, then we began climbing. It's clear this place is built around the final descent, but despite this, there were a few chortles, though short, in the warm up climb. Being particularly unfit and having not exercised for about 4 weeks (lazy c*nt, I know) I took it easy, not knowing how steep it could get, but tbh, the climbing was easy.

Anyway, as we made our way round, the singletrack sections started and stopped with the odd big air opportunity. As we sensed the final descent was looming, the landscape was crying out for a mega downhill gradient, but initially we had wet rocks and slow technical passages.

Then suddenly, BANG, awesome tight, twisty and very fast downhill, bike loving action. As James spot on pointed out, our bikes were made for this shit. Due to my lack of gloves and annoying re-occuring rear brake problems I didn't quite hit 100%, but the bike flowed, no big air, but letting the bike glide below you, taking every tweak, every bump, every berm and tight turn, that final descent really is up there with the best of them. Plus we tried a random little north shore style freeride section, good fun :)

Rock on. It was fucking wet, but it was fucking ace and we will be back. Awesome day out.