Mudtastic
Yes Weon, I saw you smugly waving from the warmth of your car. I bet you didn’t have as much fun as I did though, did you?
You see, for the second day in succession, I waited until the rain stopped before setting off on the ‘dale. For the second day in succession it starting tipping down within five minutes of me leaving the house, but I was going by then and there was no way I was turning back.
By the time I got to Daisy Bank car park I was absolutely drenched. I arrived just in time to find Nick unloading his 222 from the hire-car (Oh, sorry, we’ve got no Corsas left -how about we rent you this nice Mondeo for the same money?
). We whinged about the weather for a bit before setting off up the hill for a blast down the DH tracks.
The first run down was just plain horrible. It was pouring with rain, the trails were slippy as hell and not a great deal of fun. We contemplated not going up for another one, but seeing as we were already covered in mud…
The second run was absolutely mint. It was pouring with rain, the trails were slippy as hell and we were getting used to the conditions by now. Drift-o-rama. I was riding like a wet flannel (no change there then), so Nick left me for dead on every run – but that didn’t stop me having bucketloads of fun.
We got back to the car park to find Neil Cousins (of TFTuned fame) unloading his spanking new Santa Cruz V10, so we showed him all of the new trails. We went slip-sliding down each of the trails in turn. First up was “Love Child” – wherein I left the bike attached to a tree and slid down the trail on my arse. Secondly we took on “Second Coming” which I got down in one piece, somehow. Finally we rode “La Raclette”. I dropped my chain, which was the perfect excuse for wussing out of doing the stupid log-drop halfway around a 180° corner.
By that point we were all starving and the wind had started howling, so we called it a day. Neil kindly gave me a lift back across town in exchange for the use of our hose-pipe and a cup of tea. Bizarrely, I think we did more riding today in the pouring rain than we would’ve done on a typical summer sunday afternoon.
Oh, one thing. Next time I take the ‘dale out downhilling in conditions like that, can someone remind me to fit some flat pedals (or maybe take the 222 out instead)? The SPDs clogged up almost instantly, which is always rubbbish.
As a local cheltenham boy and a keen MTB’r looking for more DH courses, was interested to read about the DH tracks on Lecky! Was up in N.Wales on the weekend riding the new Penmachno trail just opened. It was also raining! althought it manged to stay dry for the first 3/4 of the circut. Off to BC in July and need to put in some serious DH / Freeride training in prep. Can you give me some info regarding local tracks you know of.
Cheers for any help.
Aye. There’s several tracks on Leckhampton Hill, all of which end in the woods just above the car-park on Daisy Bank Road.
Best way to find them is follow the main path (long, straight, steep) up the hill to the ruins, then turn left up a steep trail and follow that almost to the top of the hill – then look out for tyre tracks. Either that or look out for all the bikers that are inevitably up there at weekends.
That sums it up Olly! What a bosstastic afternoon! Considering how much I was moaning about getting muddy again! Thats it everyone summers are over rated, winters where its at!