19th March - Bringewood Uplift Day

Details: Category: 2011 Ride Diary; 21.Mar; Hits: 3455

With the dry conditions I've reported in the last few diary entries I tempted fate by removing the Swamp things from my Commencal Furious on Friday night. I finally fitted the new High Roller that I bought for our trip to Morzine last August but which had yet to be used! On the drive down to Ludlow I knew fate had not been tempted! :) The sky was blue and the sun was out. Unbelievable for the UK in March!

Shakey had picked me up and we arrived at Bringewood before the folk from Pearce Cycles had unlocked the forest road gate. We renewed aquaintance with a few old friends we hadn't seen for a while for ten minutes or so until the gate was unlocked. During this time Jamie and Jenny arrived. This was to be Jenny's first time back on the bike proper since she broke her elbow last year.

The uplift day was a private one organised by Jo but was the usual Pearce format. Jo had had to turn people away and she had easily got the 30 people to fill the three Landrovers running.

The first open section from the car park was damp and a little slippy on the first run down due to the melting frost but the rest of the course was nice and grippy. As Shakey hadn't ridden Bringewood before I lead and as usual it was a case of taking it steady to start until we got our eye in. The sunshine had dried the open section by the time we did our second run.

As usual we hardly had to wait for an uplift all day. We chopped and changed lines on each run as all the courses and options were running good. Last time we were here we were riding the course in three sections but on Saturday we did quite a few full runs. It might not be a long course but I was feeling it in my calves by the time I reached the bottom each time! All the courses are pretty technical with loads of roots to negotiate. The changes in light were also pretty severe going from bright sunshine to near dark in the lower woods.

After a couple of hours we stopped for a quick lunch break and I grabbed the helmet cam to use in the afternoon. Here's some of the footage:

During the afternoon Shakey had a couple of crashes. On the first he came off in pretty much exactly the same place I did last time I was here. He smacked his knee pretty hard and despite his pad it swelled up and he sat out a run. The other was dropping the little "road gap" near the top. It's actually more of a "path gap" than "road gap" but is tricky and the landing and run out were greasy and battered. Luckily he didn't land on the same knee. Here's the video evidence:

Towards the end of the day the spring in my rear mech gave up; my chain was flapping around and pedalling was a problem. I still got down a couple of runs and then as it was close to 4pm we finished with a steady roll down the top half of the course back to the car park.

A great start to spring.