Author: Cris Bloomfield

I can’t remember the last time that two days riding occurred back to back. Well that’s not strictly true. Riding to work doesn’t count and really Wuthering Bikes did fit the bill, but this was the first time in a long time I have been motivated to go out and do some epic riding.

Saturday was a trip down to Tim at Sideways. Didn’t stay long, because I was just dropping off a wheel and a pair of forks for servicing. The plan was to go out riding in Macclesfield and it was a chance to get some tips on directions from him. He did try to persuade me that given the weather I’d have to be mad to go out in the rain, sleet and hail that had characterised the drive down.

Not only that but there was a near road rage incident with an arrogant bastard in a car on Talke Road. We had a disagreement over who had right of way and once I’d backed up to let him past he gave me a good old evil look which I intuitively countered with an up yer kilt two finger salute. That didn’t seem to go down to well and he then tried (for comedy value) to back down the road at speed in pursuit. It didn’t last very long. He almost crashed into a wall and then as another car was coming he probably realised that the whole thing made him look like he had a very small penis.

I ended up turning down Tim’s offer of fine coffee, reading The Outcast and enjoying good conversation and a bit of banter. Tim can be found blogging here. and sped off cross-country to Macc Forest. I parked up at Trentabank and then rode up and through the Forest and then down Wildboarclough. Then it was up past Clough House and Crag Hall and then over Tagsclough Hill past Heild End Farm. Then it was down through Greens and towards Flash Bottom.

From there it was a case of skirting up and over Wildstone Rock and dropping down to Far Brook and following the bridleway up to Hawk’s Nest. From there it was up to Knotbury, after which it was a case of dropping down towards Three Shire Heads, but rather than turning down towards Panniers Pool, I climbed up the road out of Blackclough and then feeling a bit disorientated, ended up taking the trail that contoured around to Reeve-edge and Danebower Quarries, from where it was a case of making a dodgy wade-across-and-try-not-to-drown crossing of the River Dane in full spate.

This followed an earlier bloody-hell-these-rocks-are-slippy and it’s-a-long-way-down crossing of the waterfall rim near Hawk’s Nest. Ironically this later encounter with the funnelled precipitation of the surrounding hills actually warmed my feet up for all of about 30 seconds – not much comfort really as shortly afterwards it was back to having feet like blocks of ice. As has recently been pointed out, winter boots are great at keeping your feet toasty until they get wet inside after which they’re not particularly fabulous even with nice merino socks on.

Fortunately I survived the crossing and then enjoyed the hike and bike climb up the access road back onto the A54 before heading south and taking the turn off for Sparbent. As with the last time I rode this area, what should have been a great descent was marred by a rather icy headwind. Despite this eventually the trail led down to the waterfall at the head of Cumberland Brook from where it was a case of taking a left down to Clough House. Back on to the tarmac and then a slog up Wildboarclough, back up the climb near Chapel House and down back though Macc Forest to the car.

Sunday saw more rain, hail and sleet in Manchester. Despite this I was determined to go out riding and I managed to convince Tyrrell that it was a good plan. We headed down the M56 and there had been so much icy stuff falling out of the Sky that the motorway was white and everyone was doing 30mph. About fifteen minutes later as we made it onto the Cheshire plain it was blue skies and we were blessed with a spectacular spring ride which was the first outing this year that was warm enough for shorts.

We headed into Snowdonia and parked up at Betws-y-Coed before riding the Tarmac Climb of Death up to the Marin trail. It’s been a year or two since I’ve ridden the whole trail and it’s changed a lot in that time. In all it seems to be wearing well. The Deluxe gobbled up everything it had thrown at it and T’s Stumpjumper was rocking. I think the standard tyres (Fast Track Pros) probably aren’t the greatest things in the world and probably contributed to a spectacular crash on one of the many hairpin corners.
Any I found this biking site the other day and found it had some interesting stuff on it… check out totally spoked.

Photos of the little Explosif are up here…

This is one of the best things I’ve seen for ages. As musicthing.blogspot.com reports, the after-school percussion group at Minnetonka High School, Minneapolis, rehearsed for months and can now play two tracks from DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’ album. The music was arranged by 25 year-old geographer/law student/vibraslap enthusiast Brian Udelhofen, who teaches the group. The Shadow Percussion Project page links to this amazing video [65mb WMV] of the group’s live performance in May 2005. They play ‘Building Steam with a Grain of Salt’ and ‘Changeling’.

I spent most of the evening building up the Explosif I picked up from C&G in Liverpool irst thing on Saturday. It’s come back looking very fine and tomorrow I’m going to finish it and get some photos taken and posted up on the site. The paintwork is immaculate and the chaps at C&G deserve a big shout for their efforts. You can find them here:

C & G Finishes
The Old Railway Station 274b, Smithdown Rd
Liverpool Merseyside
L15 5AH
Tel: 0151 734 3088

A big thanks is also due to Gil at The Cycleshed for the custom graphics, eBay for a bargain frame and to everyone at Harry Halls for their help and patience. It’s too small for me to ride properly, but it looks like it’s going to rock.

Wound up playing another game of rugby on Saturday afternoon. It was possibly the muddiest game I can remember, but i think everyone had a good match and it was uplifting to play with some really talented and experienced team mates. My back held up and even the following day when it was fairly tense, there wasn’t that niggly feeling that it was on the verge of going. It’s a big relief.

France is treating a certain Alaskan Pup well:

From: MacPuppy
Subject: News from Vercors

Please excuse the blanket broadcast e-mail …. but were now properly back online after a bit of radio silence. And some of you possibly havn’t heard much from us for a while.

The first alpine winter seems to be coming to an end as someone flicked the switch from winter to summer last weekend – it went from -10 to +20degC in a week and the snow has gone with it. Were sure it will be back again for a few days before summer kicks in properly but our local ski tows stop this weekend so we’ll be putting away the skis and dusting off the bikes.

I’ve put a selection of pictures from the past few months up on the web here.

BIG NEWS !!!!! we have signed a compromis …. which basically means were now buying a house or losing a lot of money if we pull out. It’s right in the middle of our village….

Makers of classic bike bits, Brooks have some new stuff out and have been spinning some publicity about them. Their pictures and press release can be found on their website. There’s information on their new products, including Brooks’ Leather Bar Tape for road bikes and their newest sports saddle, the Swallow Classic. Not really my thing. I mean they’re about as comfortable as Sheldon’s Real Man saddle.

Nick Wallis has been running a WordPress-driven blog for a long time and I like what he’s done with the right hand side links. There are also some classic posts on their including the classic Die Wikipedia, Die! 32:16 also links to Sentenced to Life a BMX movie trailer. It looks fantastic and there are some subtly outrageous tricks and fast riding in there.

Chilly, Tyrrell and I are getting ready for Wales. Counting down the weeks now. After that it’ll be time to start thinking about the Alps.

I’ve broken it. The site isn’t working properly in Internet Exploder. It works on Mozilla browsers. I guess I should do something about that…

Well I’m working on it. Everything seems to be up and running now which is a good start. There are a few things that need tweaking like page titles that are a bit out of sync as you browse through the site. I need to work on the way content is rendered by the WordPress editor too. That isn’t working right just at the minute either, but it just needs a bit of fettling.

Mike Brown, who’s a guy from Alabama wrote this comment when he registered his IF on the Owners’ Club site:

The paint is silk and the build is immaculate. The ride is balanced, natural and predictable. It is the bike I would build, if you had the experience and energy of thirteen bicycle obsessed people stuffed in my brain all at once – but I don’t, and that’s why I bought an Independent Fabrication.

It’s probably one of the best comments I’ve received from an Indy Fab owner and it sums up a lot about how I feel about their bikes too. The owners’ club is rapidly approaching 550 registered bikes.

This morning saw a reasonably early start and a trip down to Sale Water Park to hammer out a river run ride with Tyrell. After torrential rain yesterday, today the sun was out and the trails were drying. The air is warmer and I think that spring is finally on the way. It’s been a long time coming this year. So much so that Howies are doing a crazy deal on t-shirts.

I signed the site up to Technorati earlier in the week and there’s now a link in the right handside menu of the front page of the site. It’s interesting to see how rothar.com is networked amongst other blog users – all seem to be bike orientated and that’s not really to surprising. If you have a blog and haven’t checked it out yet, then take a look.

Anna Shepard writes a great column in the Saturday Times called the Eco Worrier. Anna has started up a blog for debating about green/ethical issues. It makes some interesting reading.

The mountain bike section of the Commonwealth Games happened last night. Liam Kileen and Oli Beckingsale rode a tactical race and came away with a cracking result for Gold and Silver for England while Roy Hunt’s daughter (Amy) who can normally be found showing her opponents a clean set of wheels in the cyclocross circuit, cam ehome 4th in the womens race. A great ride by them all.

I’ve been talking to MacPuppy about some extra riding off the back of the TransAlp this summer. He’s invited us to play on his local trails near Grenoble and it looks like a great option from the photos I’ve seen so far. I can’t wait to get over there. He’s also talking about doing the trans-Vercors – a 1 day 100km event – at the beginning of September. Unless I have an unexpected change of career before then that I’m not expecting there’s no way that I’ll be doing that.

A more realistic prospect is going to the Southern hemisphere to ride the Cape Epic. Imagine doing the Trans Alp race but in a radically different environment. That’d be 900 gruelling kilometres and climbing totalling more than some 16000 vertical metres during an adventurous eight-day journey which starts in Knysna and ends just outside Cape Town after traversing wide open African plains, majestic mountains, deep ravines, arid semi-deserts, indigenous forests, spectacular coastlines and flourishing vineyards. Erm, yeah. It’s on the table.

From: Mike
Subject: Valerie

Knock! Knock!

The madam opened the brothel door to see a rather dignified, well-dressed good looking man in his late 40s or early 50s.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I want to see Valerie,” the man replied.

“Sir, Valerie is one of our most expensive ladies.
Perhaps you would prefer someone else,” said the madam.

“No. I must see Valerie,” was the man’s reply.

Just then, Valerie appeared and announced to the man that she charged $1,000 a visit.

Without hesitation, the man pulled out ten one-hundred dollar bills, gave them to Valerie, and they went upstairs.

After an hour, the man calmly left.

The next night, the same man appeared again, demanding to see Valerie.

Valerie explained that none had ever come back two nights in a row–too expensive–and there were no discounts. The price was still $1,000. Again the man pulled out the money, gave it to Valerie and they went upstairs. After an hour, he left.

The following night the man was there again. Everyone was astounded that he had come for the third consecutive night, but he paid Valerie and they went upstairs.

After their session, Valerie questioned the man. “No one has ever been with me three nights in a row. Where are you from?” she asked.

The man replied, “South Carolina.” “Really” she said. “I have family in South Carolina.”

“I know,” the man said. “Your father died, and I am your sister’s attorney. She asked me to give you your $3,000 inheritance.”

The moral of the story is that there are three things in life that are certain:

1. Death

2. Taxes

3. Being screwed by a lawyer.

The blog bit of the rothar.com site is slowly being migrated over to a database driven WordPress installation. The transition should be fairly seamless, although it might take a while to get it all done.

T-man picked up his new Stumpy yesterday. After the ceremonial disposal of reflectors, adjusting of gubbins and kitting out with parts and accessories, he left Harry’s a very happy bloke.

First ride in the UK and it was down to me to show him the commuter route from Manchester to Altrincham. Through the Uni Campus, Whitworth Park, Alexandra Park, Broughton Park, Southern Cemetary, Chorlton Water Park, River Mersey to Hardy Farm, over the bridge, Sale Water Park, over the motorway bridge (the only climb on the route) through Sale and onto the canal by the Bridge Pub and then it was then just a case of straight lining it into the heart of Altrincham. It’s about 14km as the crow flies so in an offroad guise it’s probably closer to 16km.

After reaching familiar territory, it was time to head home and after two and a bit hours on the bike it felt like I’d been on a proper ride and no mistake. The Ti Deluxe was flying and it was a great ride. I was a bit jealous of the longer distance commuting potential, but after dealing with the headwind back up the canal, I think I might actually be quite happy with my own ride in each day. I’m sure I’ll find a few opportunities to do the long route home over the coming months.

Once home it was a rapid turn around and into the S to fly back to pick Tyrrell up and continue onwards to London village for a bit of a business perk. Tickets for the England vs Ireland match at Twickenham. We made it (just), ended up getting a little bit chilly in the stands, but watched an ace game with a crunching (and disappointing) finish drom an excellent viewpoint in the stands. After the match we discovered that we’d manged to get bargain parking at the Twickenham Waitrose in the region of 23p and hour and as we drove back and saw signs advertising Rugby parking for between £10 and £25 we couldn’t help but feel smug.

Geoff Kabush’s antics are now part of a regular Cyclingnews feature. For 2006 the popular Canadian mountain bike racer will once again be bringing us his unique slant on the racing scene in his diary as he campaigns the NORBA circuit for Team Maxxis. Catch up with the larger than life Canadian here.

Check out this BBC video of a skier taking part in the Red Bull freeride comp on the Monte Rosa in the Italian Alps. Jani Pogacar survived being caught up in a massive avalanche as he began his descent, but managed to ski out of trouble.

Eeek. That’d be another week that’s flown by then. Well last Saturday went as planned. I dropped the frame off at C&G, went riding around Llandegla and popped in to see Tim at Sideways. We had a good chat about life, bikes and everything, including and then to catch up with everyone at Harry Hall’s. Simon had managed to get hold of a copy of the new Specialized 25 years of Stumpjumper book.

Llandegla was a bit weird. For a start it’s not signposted when you get to Llandegla village, so it took a bit of driving around looking for the entrance to the forest park, but once there the site facilities were pretty good, except for the fact that there are no bins. Well that’s not strictly true – there’s one in the log-cabin building. I thought that was a bit weird that as loads of bikers have energy bar wrappers and stuff that they use at rides and invariably endup with wrappers and empties. If they want you to take your rubbish home they should at least put up signs to that effect.

_ _ _

The riding was a bit odd too. The first bits of Singletrack from the start were closed for no apparent reason. I think I ended up getting fireroad blindness, became bored and just hoiked the bike over the tape and rode it anyway. Some of the best bits of the entire day were ‘off-limits’ and after driving for 3 hours to get there I wasn’t going to miss them easily. In fact all the riding on the red route is a bit unusual.

There are one or two good rhythm sections, but there are too many bits that just don’t flow. Jumps into corners without berms. Massive two metre berms where you have no speed to carry into them. Jumps on slow and uphill bits. Fast swoopy downhill bits without jumps – when if they were there you’d think, ‘Ooh that was nice’. There were a lot of wet muddy bits that need to be armoured and aren’t and then there are some really nice bits, even a few technical sections that make you think twice. On the whole just when you’re really enjoying the riding, it’s all over and before you know it you’re back at the start. I’ll be returning, but the first impression wasn’t that ‘I can’t wait to go back’ buzz that Betws-y-Coed and Coed-y-Brenin induced.

Tyrrell is replacing Chris on the Trans-Wales adventure at the end of next month. He’ll be picking his new shiny Stumpjumper up from Harry’s tomorrow morning. He’s so excited about it he’s been bouncing off the walls all week at work. It’s going to be an ace trip and I’m really looking forward to it. I guess I should probably order some maps for it about now and start thinking about the route. I’m hoping that our ride won’t involve anything as spectacular as this.

Finally this is the webpage of One Odd Dude. There’s some call photography and stuff on there. Check it out.