R O T H A R . C O M

On Thursday night I went up to Calderdale and saw Chipps and everyone at Singletrack. It was good to catch up with people and find out how things are going at the mag. There was also a chance to talk through some ideas for next year. After that we headed up to Mark’s local patch near Burnley and did some riding, on what it turned out was part of the Mary Towneley Loop which I have ridden before and some other bits that were definitely local trails. It was a gorgeous starry night and well worth getting out for on the Singlespeed.

This weekend I was home in Norfolk. It was a brief stop to do some work around the house including firing up the woodburner to test it out and bed it in for winter. It looks like it is going to be a cold one. I also managed to catch up with Herr Thorne down in Suffolk before heading back up in the early hours. The broken leg from Egyptian Kiteboarding is almost healed.

Riding is definitely on the agenda for this weekend. I just need to work out the where and when.

This has been posted in various place across the Internet, but is worth highlighting. Extreme mountain bike rider Stefan Oberlander has successfully jumped off a 3000ft cliff on his Santa Cruz VP-Free, opening a parachute while sitting on the bike and landing and riding off again without putting a foot down. Pictures of the descent jump can be found at on his website

After a few recent rides I’ve been thinking about getting a helmet cam. the market is fairly broad and there is a lot of choice. I’ve been thinking that the best solution is an all in one solution with recorder and camera with battery pack in one unit. This looks like to be the best bet. I’m thinking it would be cool to get one in the New Year before we go out to South Africa…

There is no disguising the fact that one of the reasons I moved to Manchester was for the fact that there was excellent mountain biking all around the city. Some of it (especially that to the west) takes longer to get to than other bits, but in general within 45 minutes in every other direction by car or train you can be somewhere great to go riding.

My first adventures were along the Manchester to Sheffield train line. It’s a great service because it passes through so many places that you can get off and go riding, Marple, New Mills, Strines, Edale, Hope and the list goes on. For the first three years or so of being in Manchester nearly all my local riding was along this route. Buy a day return pick somewhere to get off, pick somewhere to get back on and plan a route in between.

After hammering the trail is quite relentlessly weekend on weekend for three years i’d decided that it was time to explore further afield and this weekend was the first time in a long time that I’ve revisited some of those old routes. I hooked up with Neil again from Ride the Alps and we split the day into two halves taking in some stuff I did know and a lot of stuff I didn’t. Local knowledge definitely helps find some great stuff. The end result was pretty much all day riding between 9am and 4.30pm when it became dark.

The weather was a bit grim and it was very blowy in the wind, especially on the tops near Lyme Park, but it was well worth getting out doors for.

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored the rothar.com racing efforts so far. I’m not sure how achievable our fundraising target is, but we’re going to stick at achieving it. Off over to Calderdale this week to catch up with people, get some great singlespeeding in and discuss some things with the boys from Singletrack.

Jamie and Mary at Ride the Alps have been busy and have just sent through the following. “We’ve had a great summer season of biking with highlights including breaking our own record for the amount of fantastic singletrack descent on Chamonix to Zermatt and some superb technical riding in Canada with grizzly bears!”

“Thanks to all of you who rode with us in 2006 for making it our best season yet. As the nights draw in and the leaves crunch beneath your tyres, it’s the ideal time to start planning your 2007 summer holidays. We’ve just launched our new website with all the details of our 2007 trips and we’ve added a new point-to-point route finishing at the Eiger to our repertoire of classic high alpine routes”. Jed and I even feature in the redesigned website!

I’ve also had an email from Jeff Browning at yourmtb.com. It’s a new website that seems to be a cross between Bikemagic and MTBR. So there’s a selection of features stories, photos, and videos that mountain bikers post to the site.

Some time ago I headed over to Llandegla in North Wales and rode the new trails there. I must admit I was disappointed and there wasn’t much incentive to go back. recently Neil from Ride the Alps has returned to the UK and this weekend was a chance to catch up with him and Si Hoe from my group and get some riding in. Llandegla was the venue and it was going to be a chance to get the new Patriot out again.

The riding was radically different. See the thing is since I was last there the team at Coed Llandegla have been a bit busy…

There is an all new Black run with a 2km downhill and in all honesty it is a truly great trail. Imagine a forested hillside with a ribbon of singletrack snaking and carving its way gradually downslope. Add in various jumps, berms and drops and then ride it as fast as you can, pushing your tyres for grip. It is a truly great bit of construction. Enough of my dribbling watch these videos of Nathan Rennie and Jimmy G to get an idea of what I am talking about. Actually the quality is rubbish, but you get the idea that it’s fast and flowing…

Added to this there are various sets of doubles, tabletops, stutter bumps and jumps and several places along the red and black route that provides a chance to push the limits and progress your riding. It was great to spend some time trying to keep up with Neil on the jumps and even after three runs the big set of doubles still eluded being cleaned. It’s a pesky one because of the table top and small jump before the doubles which makes it hard to go in with enough speed.

Out on the moors near the forest park there is some excellent riding too and we took some time this afternoon to explore some of these options and the payback was some fantastic descending on singletrack through mossy bog and autumnal heather. It’s now back on the list as a great riding venue. There are a few photos from todays riding up in the Llandegla gallery. To finish off a great day riding, I finally picked up a copy of The Collective‘s Roam. Great film. It was good to watch it properly at last.

Oh and I bumped into Jim Morrison at the Cafe too. See his rather ace restaurant Darcy’s Cafe Bar Trattoria in Shifnal is closed on Sundays so he was taking a day off. Jim, Jam, Nige and I raced the Mountain Mayhem 24hr this year. Jim went onto take part in an Ironman later in the summer. he had various advice from Black Country Tri Club riders and went onto beat them all putting in a solid 21st place finish. Fantastic result and it was good to catch up…