Author: Cris Bloomfield

The Trans Alp this summer really was great. Here are a few photos from Jamie Carr at Ride the Alps. The bike that this trip inspired has also arrived. I’m picking it up this weekend. It’s a bit of a burly beast…

Can’t remember where this photo is…

On the Grand Raid CristAlp Route approaching the Basset de Lona

In the morning after a night up at the Cabine du Mont Fort

No riding for me. There’s just far too much other stuff to do and just to rub it in this has come in…

From: Nathan
Subject: Canada Rocks

Hey,

Finally have time to sit down and email you about the weekend. The mountain biking was AWESOME! Holy crap man. I’ve only ever ridden on my own rigid frame bike, so even just riding one of the suspension bikes was a whole new experience. Of course the absolute swine thing was that the brakes were the opposite way round – back brake on the right hand instead of the left. Interesting trying to remember that at a critical moment…especially with those crazy ass disc brakes that will lock the wheel with just a light pull of the fingers!

Anyway, for the first run, Andrea took me down a black diamond. Ha ha! Good thing I was wearing body armour shall we say. It was wet and those rocks were damn slippery. After a couple of runs I was used to the bike though, and from then on it was just a complete blast. We went and did that first black diamond run again in the afternoon and I conquered it, so that was satisfying. I think Andrea likes the runs that are slow but very difficult, requiring control and technique, whereas I think I found myself preferring the runs with the speed! …and all the jumps 🙂 Those were the ones that I got the biggest buzz from anyway. Although on the drive home I found myself thinking about the slow difficult ones and wishing I could do them again to see if I could improve.

So, thank you VERY much for putting me in touch with Andrea. We got on well and I think we both had a good weekend.

I’ve rented myself a nice 4×4 today, that has enough room in the back for me to sleep in. Tomorrow I’m taking off for the Rockies for a week or so. Tonight I’m going out to a club for my first drinks in Canada!

On that note, time to leave.

Thanks again man, good luck with the biological warfare.

Nathan

And this is in from Conradski:

From: Conrad
Subject: Whole lotta nice bikes

DOOOD!

Hello! Not read your site for a while but looks like you’re doing pretty
good…that is a whole lot of nice bikes you have now! I’m jealous! Let me
know if there is any racing you’re doing on a road or cross bike and i’ll
get involved! Can’t afford mountain bikes these days, being a bike courier
has its ups and downs. Dont earn loads but do get to spend 45 hours a week on a bike…not sure where the ups are there…

Anyway hope you are good man

Take it easy

Con

My old club, the Guernsey Velo are in the middle of moving over to a new website. It’s looking good. It puzzles me that riders are clearly heading over to the UK to race (some even to Manchester), but none get in touch. That puzzles me a bit. Maybe I need to return to the island and see if I’m still able to mix it with the mountain bikers in their races.

Not a day after I popped into Harry’s and hear that Ben has not only found work in a bike shop again, but is living in a tent, I get this:

From: Ben
Subject: Yo, Yo, Yo!
Howdy folks,

Hows it going? Hope this finds you all ok. Thought it was about time to let you all know what I’m up to. I dont get much access to the internet at the moment, so i’m making the most of it while I can. Well, I’m still living up in scotland, not at my folks house anymore though.

Got my self a job in a bike shop again, Up at Bothy Bikes in Aviemore. It was a very short notice thing, went in and asked for a job – they said yes and that was that. Moved up about five days later. Didn’t quite have time to find accomodation though, so went armed with all my camping stuff. Now, all the campsites were full when i got there – so I’ve kinda started camping out with a few guys from the shop. They’ve started a little campsite of there own, randomly in a field (right to roam act!), and I was invited along. After looking for a few rooms etc, I decided (and was told) that I was gonna stay at the campsite! Hell its free rent, no bills and good craic too. So to cut a long story short I’m living in a tent in a field in Aviemore. Bliss.

So if your ever up that way give us a bell. I’ve just come back from lets gets too. A weeks mountain biking. It was dope, although it rained heavily at first, so super muddy. But it dried up and we had the best time, going over to switzerland and all over the place. Some pictures will appear soon. My rear wheel kinda died and i missed a days riding which was gutting, but I get trade price again now so its all good. Bikes are expensive though, my rear shock blew up just before going out so that needed replaced too! Now my vans too rusty to fix up for its mot so I need a new one of those too. AArgghh. Just as i was saving money. Ahh well, thats the way it goes. Gotta laugh really, It could be worse.

Anyhoo, I’ll stop waffling. Hope your all good and hope to catch up soon. As i said I have no internet so if you reply I may take a while to get back. If you’d rather, drop me a line or text. Look after yourselves.

Ben

Sounds like mr Davies has been up to some antics trashing his Demo. I hope he gets some photos up on that website of his at some point.

Now we’re doing the Cape Epic, certain people are trying to convince me to do a Bike Safari. Now hang on. When you do a proper safari you’re in a rufty tufty 4×4 with men with guns. I’m not sure riding through a game park on a mountain bike offers quite the same level of protection – I’m sure one of the riders in the photos on that website has a rifle strapped to his Camelbak. I’ll have a Beretta with hollowpoint ammo in a shoulder holster before I’m doing that thank you very much. It at least raises the question “What tyres for outrunning Cheetahs?”

I was a bit slow to get going this morning, largely due to yesterday’s antics, but in the end I drove up to the Lake District and rode some waymarked man made trails. If yesterday was proper mounatin biking I don’t know if today was pseudoriding or what, but the route sponsored by The North Face in Grizedale Forest was reasonably entertaining. It reminds me a bit of Dalbeattie, in that there’s not that much climbing, but the Singletrack flows nicely and it all seems to be over before you know it.

It my first ride in the Lakes despite all these years in the north and I swear that I’m going to return to the Lakes before the year is out for another ride. The North Face trail was taken at a solid pace. There were loads of wooden boardwalk sections thrown in too. Although I was expecting these, there turned out to be a lot more than I had anticipated – which made it even better. Not many photos but a few in the gallery.

With a shorter ride than expected there was plenty of time for a nice drive on the way back. I’d heard a lot about the Kirkstone Pass so I thought that I’d take a look. It turned out to produce a route that delivered the long way home. It was a stunning drive and was nice until I ended up stuck in traffic on the Motorway for about an hour.

I was sorting through some photos of things the other day and I have realised that I never posted up these two snippets from the US trip last month. The Americans seem determined to deny BSE and therefore are risking a massive population health risk if the link to vCJD is as solid as it appears. This report about turning a blind eye is from USA Today.This should need no explanation.

If Proper Mountain Biking™ involves getting a map and planning a ride from scratch and then going out, finding the trails and following them, then it’s my favourite kind of riding. The excitement lies in trying to follow trails that look so clear and distinct on the map, but in reality turn out to be vague and hard to place. Is it this path or that one? It’ll be a right bugger if I ride down this hill the wrong way and then have to ride back up…

Based on this assumption todays ride was was proper riding. The start point was Dunsop Bridge, tucked away in the stunning venue of the Forest of Bowland. There is a slight irony in the name because the Forest isn’t actually a forest, but does have a shed load of big steep hills and lots of valleys and moorland. Bowland was formerly called “Bolland” – a name for which there are various interpretations – a derivation of the Norse ‘Bu’ (cattle) or Celtic ‘booa’ a cow, signifying cowland. The word “Forest” is derived from the latin “foris” meaning an extensive wood or tract of open country.

After rolling out of the village Tyrrell and I spent about an hour looking for the first trail. This involved riding up and down the road on the same hill several times. Which was nice (in a “bloody hell this hill is steep” and “not a-bloody-gain” kind of way). In the end it turned out we had ridden too far up a hill we didn’t need to ride up chasing some dude on a road bike. Not only had we ridden too far up, we’d crested it and ridden all the way down the other side. We rode back to the summit three times before we finally worked out that we had misread the map…

Of course once we made it onto the trail it was a great day out. Half way around we stopped at a pub for lunch – a Trans Cambrian classic combination of Aberdeen Angus Lasagne and local Golden Trough beer. The afternoon brought the best riding of the day, but it came with a price. As we started the homeward section the riding took us through a small woodland, wherein the trail dropped down to a ford crossing.

The run in and exit of the ford and the stream bed over which the water was flowing was all concrete. As you might imagine it being in a woodland it had several years of rotten leaves breaking down on it and as a consequence was slippery as a very slippery thing. I was carrying far too much speed into it and it was like hitting black ice. One minute I’m upright and the next I’m sliding down to the river. Christ that hurt. New forks scuffed, dented pride a few laughs for Tyrrell, but no real damage done. Post ride assessment revealed a big bruise on the left hip with accompanying road rash and a bruised elbow. What an ace day out. Proper Mountain Biking™ rules. The photos are in the photo section.

Updated: August 2020 fixing broken links

Build No. 4