News update from Up North (the real north, lol)

A few updates from moi.
In brief:
The stinky will be up for sale today! The beast no more.

New Commencal arriving with me soon, awesome test ride on Thursday.
Great trails 15 minutes from my flat.
DJ heaven in Glentress.
Long term vision for 'race scoot'.

In detail!:
I tested a Commencal 5.5 on Thursday night, was awesome! Managed to bend the Sun equalizer 27 rim, but it is a xc rim and I was doing 40ft near 90degree descents into big kicker jumps! Went to ride the Cathkin Braes, south of Glasgow where the riding for the Commonwealth games will be held in 2014. A while off, but the lads showed me some great natural trails and there is some BIG stuff to go at too. Great ride, and I'll be getting Spank hardcore rims on my 5.5XT! Great bike, so light and chuckable, yet no bottom out on the big stuff. Plenty travel for trails riding, and at about 30lbs, light enough for me to actually climb on. Never thought I'd ride an air shock! So Thurday was a great ride and a new spend secured for me. Not many XT's left in the country in large, so I had to commit :)

Friday I spent 7 hours at the FR park in Glentress. No pics sadly, but easily the best days riding I've had in years. Trails are awesome but 7 hours dialling in the tricks on the park is such a buzz. Met a sound rider called Daz, he's riding Mega and has an 11 week summer in France ahead of him, so we chatted all day and got our lines and tricks going. Despite it being a Friday, the park was dead, but we didn't mind! Sessioned the top jumps mostly, but included the second hip and subsequent two jumps before the rock garden. The last jump is SO BIG, I was sending massive tables off that, big smiles. Complete runs were awesome, in between the wind and my chain snapping! Also had a spill early on, so my ass and ankle hurt today, but hey ho, fun and games. 7hours, that will be my new daily session length, roll on the sunny days. Happy days!

Summer plan - get fit on the commencal, learn new tricks on the park, then january find some cash for a 224 and start racing next year!

That's all folks...

Nostalgia

Leo and I headed out this evening in beautiful weather (if a tiny bit hot for riding) - gorgious blue skies, not a cloud in sight and over 20 degrees even at 4pm.

We took a leisurely pace up to the summit - stopping for frequent chat about everything from work to families. Really nice to chill out after a hard day in the office.

We rode Charity Lane the traditional way, good fun, dry but still enough water around to dirty the bikes and turn us mud splattered! We then pushed back up to do the route Chris and I have been messing around with for a few weeks - descending down the climb (great fun today - very fast) then messing around on the banks before heading down the footpath back to the car. Great action in the trees letting my whole bike give beneath me, Leo could see I was on the 'edge' from behind but I was grinning from ear to ear.

As we reached the car I couldn't help but think about the innocence of my youth - long days spent doing nothing but riding and chilling out - no women to complicate things - and certainly no work. I can never go back, but a summer on the hardtail is beginning to look really really great fun... who know, even a new hardtail on the cards?

Donny on location shooting for Foot Out Flat Out

Check these badboys from this weekend's shoot:
www.footoutflatout.co.uk

First week night ride... welcome to 2008!

Well with wednesday down in the calendar as the night for the regular week night ride, what were we doing out on a Thursday?

Earlier in the week Jon had texted me to say he'd bought a bike and was picking it up Wednesday night... with that in mind, and to ensure the biggest turnout for week one I rescheduled for Thursday.

As for the new bike (a Specialized Pitch Pro - that he's now got his mits on, I'm sure photos will follow soon) it wasn't ready so in the end only Leo and I turned up this week - me with a filthy hardtail un-washed since Scotland, and him with a bike that hadn't turned a wheel for 4 months.

The evening weather was good, nice and warm in the sun and good chat - stories from China aplenty. We were lucky to suffer no mechanicals despite Charity Lane being freshly rocky (for some reason) but great fun.
Down to Standing Stone I launched off the 'verge ride' to the delight of some walkers, at least the old lady smiled!

A short one - no action shots - but next time... who know.



:: CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW ::

FO on Dirt

Check out this - FO team rider Aaron Bartlett, whilst filming for his upcoming film Footoutflatout was caught on camera at NPS Rd 1 at Ae forest.

Linkeo

Scotland weekender...

Well it's been nearly a week since we got back and I'm the first to get on here and do a writeup! Personally I'd have been up here quicker if it wasn't for running round like a mad-un trying to sort Wideopen Issue 6 (which is out now by the way).

We were not blessed with the best of weather but un-deterred we headed north at the crack of dawn on Friday and hit Palnure for Kirroughtree forest shortly before 11am.
The setup there is quite good, little bike rental shop, cafe and toilets, and on a Friday it was quiet...

It's always fun to ride a new location - the anticipation of what you'll find keeps you going... unfortunately Kirroughtree was a bit of a dissappointment. It was good but just never really seemed to get going, the flow wasn't appalling but the descents never really materialised... we won't be going back.

Up to Peebles via the red roads and James and Ross beasted across Rally style in the thirsty scoob - Phil and I also headed cross country whereas Chris and Jon went via Dumfries... in for 7.30pm and a nice bit of grub.

Saturday brought SNOW!!! and it also brought Tez! Yeah with the white stuff under foot the road to Buzzard's Nest car park was closed and we faced the mammoth road climb from the hub to get up to the red route. It was COLD and hard work and fairly slippy in places. Spooky Woods was an experience, lots of grip where it was clear but mid berm you could hit a snow patch and kill yourself sliding into a tree!! All fun. It cleared up but with the temperature we headed back early. Out Saturday night for the obligatory curry in brief Scott won the darts and the Keg was 'interesting' as usual.

Sunday the group split, half doing the black route at Inners, and the other half doing the black route at Glentress. I can't speak for the Inners boys but at GT we had an awesome time... I really am falling in love with the wilderness and more rugged natural trails on the black route versus the manicured red route.

Monday and we headed to Inners for a push up session on Caddon Bank. After discovering my rear wheel on the Coiler Dee-lux had 3 snapped spokes I joined Jon on the hardtail and proceeded to whoop Chris and Phil's full sus asses!

Home time came to quick leaving us with the nagging question of how soon can we go back?

20 minutes of footage is now on the Mac, and will be edited up. We didn't take many photos - I've captured some stills from the footage (which will be on DVD at the end of the year!)...



:: CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW ::

Rock on.

Mid-week riding

Managed to get a lift down to Glentress last night for a quick blast round the red route. Out of the car it was pretty chilly but things warmed up nicely by the top of the first climb. It was nice to get out on the trails midweek as they're so quiet, we only saw one other rider all evening.
In a bid to motivate myself to do a little more XC I'm entering 10 Under the Ben as part of a quad (the slackers option) at the end of May. After which I may hang around for the world cup. In the mean time I should really be studying over the next few weeks so the bikes may not see too much action other thatn the odd Pentlands ride.

SDA Round 1, Dunkeld

After failling to get entered into the first two rounds of the SDA races up here in Scotland I found myself on the other side of the tape on Sunday. And I'm quite glad too. Never have I witnessed so many crashes in one day. Everyone from first time racers to the seasoned eiltes were coming off their bikes on one of the toughest tracks known, made harder by the introduction of a new middle section. Talk to anyone who was riding and they wont start talking about "that difficult corner", because there wasnt any, the track went pretty much straight down the hill.
In the end Dan Stanbridge went home with the first win of the season with Fergus Lamb and Chris Hutchens took second and third respectively.

As for me, I wont be doing much riding over the next month or so due to Uni. This does mean that the bike is being treated to a bit of lovin'. I've a whole host of stuff to bolt on to the Holeshot in the next few weeks...

and there's more to come. Can't wait!

Goats

Yeah of all things to interupt a ride you'd have goats fairly low down (at least behind crashing and punctures!)

Chris and I headed out tonight and expected 'exciting' conditions after stories of how Jon buckled a DH rear rim last night on his hardtail! Apart from the cloud though it was good riding weather.

Charity Lane has changed again, the fast line at the top is different again, but I found it and to be honest probably didn't ride as flat out as usual - however it felt faster because it flowed much better... horses and courses lol!

We decided to do the loop for fitness, just after Standing Stone we were confronted by two families of goats - the kids were awesome but struggling to get back over the wall into their field - we waited a while then pushed past - and on for a fitness climb and fun descent.

Scotland news:
Tezza is coming Saturday/Sunday! Great news.

Alpine Bikes Winter Series, Round 3.

The third and final round of the winter series at Inners was held on the 23rd of March in possibly the most wintery conditions yet. Snow fall threatened to put a stop to racing on the day with the uplift unable to make it up the hill. Things carried on regardless, with riders pushing to the top for the morning practice and luckily the snow had melted enough for the uplift to run by the time it came to racing.

Racing the hardtail category again I managed third step on the podium this time round after two over the bars incidents. It was enough for the series win though, so now I have this

hanging proudly on my wall.

Overall winner on the day though was Gee Atherton who was a good seven seconds clear of the rest of the field. For a full report head over to wideopenmag.co.uk to download issue 6 (very very soon).

Talk has already moved to another series next year, but between now and then I'll be keeping you up to date with all the SDA happenings.