It seems that I’m not the only one who’s been enjoying the wonders of Glentress this summer – Leon and co have been up there having fun too. Is it really a 500 mile round trip from Manchester though!? We mush have gone miles further when we went there from Gloucestershire then…

Deliverance?

Leon’s exploits reminded me of one particular bit of trail we did back in the summer. It was the last descent of the morning – whether it was actually Deliverance or not I can’t remember. Anyway, partway down it splits into two trails – one way was Red, the other Black – ski-style gradings you see. I stopped where the trail split in two, thought for a second and took the black route. This may have been a silly move because it then proceeded to scare the crap out of me – two gert big step-downs and a huge tabletop greeted me before the two trails came back together. I reached the first one in a cloud of screeching brakes before going back to get a better run at it.

Gethin Woodland Park

I did exactly the same thing on a much smaller drop at Gethin, South Wales yesterday too. I don’t know why but as I approached it it just phased me completely. Perhaps it was the big rooty bits sticking out, who knows? Either way I had to take about five run-ups before I launched off it – and in the event it was really easy. Typical.

Not so easy was the rock garden. Ever since a few friends of mine raced the Dragon DH at that course a couple of months back they haven’t stopped going on about it. Its become a minor legend in its own right. About fifty yards long, its basically a “path” down the hill consisting of a load of very big rocks. Rocks that move about underneath your tyres. My advice would be drop off the middle, go down the left until it gets really tricky, and then move to the right before carving into the corner.

The course reminded me of the Fort William course up in Scotland. That kind of gritty, rocky, all weather surface thats ridable just about all year. Well, unless it snows all winter or something. Its amazing just how much grip your tyres can get on gert big wet rocky slabs really isn’t it?

The Ewok Village

Back in Glentress again, the ‘shore style stuff was ace fun. First of all there was all the messing around in the Ewok Village, and then there was the black run after it – big step downs, log rides and that massive swooping ‘shore-style roller-coaster descent. Acetastic. I’ll be heading back next year, you can almost probably count on that!

I wrote about The Collective the other day – and the way that it captures the feeling of “flow” that you get when you’re ruling the trails out on your bike.

I was thinking back today to the last few times that I’ve really felt that. It doesn’t happen very often, when everything just clicks into place, where the trail submits to you, when you’re invincible.

Afan provided one such descent a few weeks back – Final Decent Zig-Zags on The Wall trail was the place. I ruled that descent, powered by nothing but adrenalin and a Boost bar.

Before that the last one that really stands out was the downhill course at Caersws. My confidence on the bike hit a high that day – I was flying (relatively speaking).

An all-time high-point for flow was the week I spent in the french Alps in the summer. Once my arms had acclimatised to the workout they were getting, I was able to really flow. Les Gets I, Le Canyon, the top half of Les Gets II, that run down through the cloulds and cows to Lindarets. I think I’ll be returning there next season.

Scotland has to take an honourable mention too – parts of Fort William’s DH course, Grant’s best-of-compilation route around Glentress and the Traquair trail at Innerleithen (especially that final descent, with all those whoops and drops to play with) – they all gave me that huge adrenalin buzz.

Its been a good summer for biking all in all. I’ve ridden some absolutely fantastic trails in England, Wales, Scotland, France and Switzerland, and whats more I’ve ridden them with some fantastic people. Here’s to y’all, and here comes the winter.

Riding in the rain at Gethin tomorrow then. Should be fun…

It took me a while, but I found one. A simple PHP based gallery system, that uses XHMTL and CSS for the layout.

If only I’d googled “Simple PHP Gallery” in the first place I might well have found it at my first attempt. Because its called just that – and it comes from relativelyabsolute.

The only pictures in there at the moment are some from a trip to Bringewood in July of last year, that I was using to test it all out. I guess I’d better get a new digital camera to fill it out a bit then. Canon Powershot A85 anybody? Update: Its entirely possible that I’ve just ordered that very camera…

Right, non geeky readers can stop reading right about now and go look at the pictures…

The Geeky Bit: Implementing SPG

Still with me? Good.

Installing SPG is dead simple. Download the .zip file, extract it, and then upload that to a folder on your website. As the system is so very very simple, its dead easy to customise it to fit in with your site aswell. Just alter sp_index.php and sp_styles.css to suit.

The hardest part came about because I’m using a fixed width template on this site. Left to do as they pleased, images that were wider than the site quite simply broke it. So I decided to set a max-width on the images, then let the user click on them if they wanted to see them full size. Easy enough, or so you’d think. Just set the max-width in the CSS file and alter sp_index.php to put a link around the image. No problem.

That is to say, no problem until we come to test it in Internet Explorer. IE doesn’t actually support max-width does it? JavaScript to the rescue then.

With a bit of help from the peeps on the SitePoint forums, I knocked up a simple little script especially for IE, that figures out if the image is too big and scales it appropriately. You can find it in the head portion of the gallery pages.

The Collective hs been hyped quite a lot in certain circles as the best mountain bike film ever made.

I’ve not seen all of the bike films ever made, but I can tell you for sure – this one is ace.

OK, so the first scene – big jumps and drops in the desert – isn’t brilliant, mainly because its all been done before. But from then on in its just amazing. The filming captures the speed, it captures the flow, it captures the fun and it makes it look beautiful.

Better than Earthed? I’m not sure – its a different kind of film. Earthed, like its predecessors – the Sprung series, are presented as video magazines, and they follow the racing around the world.

This one is more like a showcase – something that makes our sport look fantastic. It doesn’t visit the races (apart from the RedBull rampage). Instead it takes you down miles and miles of stunning singletrack and ‘shore trails.

You know that feeling you get when you’re flowing through that awesome singletrack descent – everything clicking into place, the wind whistling past you, the trees passing by at speed? It captures that feeling.

Just thinking about it makes me want to go out and ride.

…because I’ve just cycled back from work. It’ll be the winter all of a sudden then.

This weekend I shall be fitting the RaceGuard to my bike again, and purchasing commuter lights. I might even go so far as to get some waterproof over-trousers.

I should probably get a half-decent lock while I’m at it too. I’m always slightly apprehensive that I’ll get to the end of the day and find that someone’s broken the current one, what with it being cheap, nasty and not very secure and all. One of the new Kryptonites, the ones that can’t be broken into with an old biro, would be nice. Pricey though.

What price do you put on peace of mind though, eh?

I never did get around to writing about Afan. So I will, right here.

Way back in early October, the 9^th and 10^th if I remember correctly, Will, Dom, Owen and myself headed down to Afan Argoed, in south Wales, for a weekend of mountain bikes and fun.

We stayed at the bike friendly Oakridge Guest House, run by Barrie and Jill – which we would all highly recommend. Give them a shout on 01639 645210 if you’re heading down there. We ate at their local pub – the Colliers, where the food isn’t half bad, and the identical twin waitresses are lovely. [Thanks to ickle Nicky A for passing on the info!]

Saturday AM: The Penhydd Trail

This trail is as ace as it ever was. It starts with a fair bit of climbing – singletrack to begin with and then a bit of a slog up a fire road. I really struggled here – but then thats not too surprising. I was on a downhill bike, running 2.5″ super-tacky mud tyres and chasing three mates on lightweight zippy cross-country rigs. We were amply rewarded at the top though, by Desolation and Brashy Track, which are ace bits of flowy singletrack.

After another climb, we reached what used to be the pinnacle of the trail: the Hidden Valley – its still a really cool singletrack descent through the forest, but its somehow lost some of the flow it once had. Maybe if I was on a lighter bike again…

These days though, the rest of the trail shines through. One more climb, and then its awesome singletrack almost all of the way to the end of the trail, with just a couple of short stretches of fire-road.

We reached the end buzzing and very much ready for lunch. So we went to the cafe and had just that. Mmmm, fried food.

Saturday PM: The Wall Trail

So named because thats what you’ll hit on the way around. Its horrible – climb after climb after climb after climb. Long soul destroying fire-road sections interspersed with bits of steep technical singletrack. Pure horrible nasty evil pain. For ages. We had to stop a number of times for chocolate and water and to get off and push. Its really not a fun experience.

And then you get to the section named “Last Decent Zig-Zags” and all is (almost) forgiven. Having been unable to keep up with the rest of the group on the ascent, here’s where me and my bike came into our own.

Running purely on adrenalin, I pedalled off down it. Owen kept up for little while, but the advantages of 205mm disc brakes, 2.5″ tyres, loads of suspension and plain old confidence saw me ride away from him as the trail got more and more flowy. I was riding no-brakes through sections where I shouldn’t have been able to, relying entirely on my tyres for grip and pinging off rocks on the outside of the trail to stay on track.

Its an ace downhill, but its not adequate payback for the slog up there in the first place. Especially as theres still a couple of miles of fire-road back to the visitors centre…

Sunday: The Whites Level Trail

This one is situated a few miles up the road from the main Afan visitors centre, at Glyncorrwg – where they’ve opened up a new visitors centre complete with bike shop and showers!

Its well worth the trek though. I thought that the Traquiar trail up at Innerleithen was one of the best trails in the UK, but this one kicks its bottom hard. There’s a long ascent to begin with, but its really well done. Its quite a technical singletrack climb up through the forest. You’re concentrating so hard and having so much fun clearing all of the obstacles in your path that you don’t really notice the gradient too much, and all of a sudden you emerge about a squillion feet up the mountain.

And we all know that what goes up generally deserves to come down again. So we did. The descents are awesome. Rocky, rooty, technical and really really flowy. Flowy to the point that Will tried a bit too hard and took a nice big gouge out of his arm. Ouch!

Its simply put, one of the best man made trails I’ve ridden. Just fantastic.

New Bike Time

Now Dom had spent the whole weekend whinging about his bike – a Carerra something-or-other. Towards the end of the weekend he knackered something on the rear hub. Now, he could have just gone out and had it repaired. But no, he’s used it as an excuse to go out and buy a Cannondale Jeckyl, complete with Lefty fork! Rock on dude!