yes saw them, from forresters way last night as well. they looked big

So is anyone else in for FAs ride tomorrow?

Sorry out , had a job come in .

Shmikuk - out on Tuesday ? FA said he might pop along !

I'm still out tomorrow. And would love to see Frenchie on a Trolls ride. The last one was carnage!

Should be in for Tuesday. Gutted I missed this weeks carnage but really pleased to have got rid of the awful wallpaper in the lounge, so a good evenings workout anyway.
Shame you won't make it Stan as I'll have the 29er demo bike. Comedy could be on it's way!

Cheers Frederic and Simon, good ride today.

today was most recreational ride ever.
invited my wife to taste swinley - and inspite and hurts and fruises from many falls she loved it ))
thanks Andy and Marc for being so patient ))

I tried clipless pedails today - fallen maybe 5-10 times - but eventually got some feeling of them.

I know the back was 29" but what size is that monster of a front wheel? Post up for Tuesdays Trolls ride - before anyone decides where we are going please!

I make this look good!!!
Nice ride today

Oh and Ian that's a funny looking coach!

I wasn't sure if she was being polite when she said she liked it but I'm glad that she did.

As for me and Marc being patient, we were busy chatting the whole time - lot's of catching up to do

I never said I could read!

believe me, she is not that kinda person.. if she doesnt like something/someone - she is always straightforward

I think she liked it for the same reason we like it: extreme, sociable, healthy.
I hope she gets enough confident and experience soon to get more speed.

Glad she enjoyed it particularly after the big crash she had over on the steep 'playground' section.

It was a good morning out on the bike!

Good to see that the fire damage hasn't destroyed anything too important (in trail terms) but its easy to see that if it they hadn't managed to control we could have lost some of the favourite trails.

Has anybody got any ideas as to why they have opened up a bit of a clearing and introduced a 'pathway' out of the woods at the bottom of deerstalker/babymaker, etc before you carry on into the labyrinth? Our guesses yesterday were either to make life easier getting a machine / material in for 'armouring' the trails or for getting 'broken' bikers out to an ambulance?

There were piles of the orange stuff just off the trail yesterday, so I guess access for maintenance team/ machinery.

Project Zesty is almost ready to hit the trails...
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Clearly missing the single ring crank.
Add a RockShock drop post and it will be ready for everything both here and in the Alps...
Now I just need to learn to ride the thing properly...
Won't take it out Tuesday night for the Troll ride as the bike doesn't take bottle cage and therefor I need a new bag for my light's battery (that should be sorted by Friday night ride however if anyone want to join me for inauguration for a couple of hours starting @ 19:30 from Go Ape)

Funny you should ask. When the ranger was taking me and my bike back to meet the ambulance that was waiting to whisk me off to Frimley Green hospital he told me its to make it easier to get ambulances in and out !

I've now got a bust collar bone from over shooting the little jump after the table top on baby maker, landed a little on the heavy side on front wheel and over the bars = no biking for a while A little p###ed of as I did the hard part in clearing the tabletop

Lovving the beetle - I had a '61 split screen Camper when I was (much) younger, followed that with a 69 pope's nose beetle and then a Porsche engined 411 squareback - now I drive a Volvo, where did it all go wrong!!!


Back on topic, the drops in the picture don't look like the jumps I could see from the road, where is the 'playground' you guys found?

I wasn't there on the FA ride but the pics look like they were taken in the Corkscrew.

The "playground" that Marc referred to is the bombhole that's in the same vicinity which now looks down to the A3095 across a charred wasteland.

We didn't do an in-depth exploration but the only trails we saw that were really affected were "Carwash" on Hut Hill on the trail that dropped from the above mentioned bombhole straight down and the otherside towards Gorrick Well (that last trail has just been bulldozed to create a fire-break and it seems to have done the job too).

We also saw a big swathe of burnt out stuff going from the back of the Club House across the MOD land towards Deer Rock Hill.

Ah, OK - know that area quite well, looking at the pictures again I can see it is the corkscrew. On Friday evening I did a brief explore of the burnt tracks, most are still 'rideable' but where the branches are charred they are like razors if they catch your arm (cuts to prove it!). Also, a lot of branches have fallen onto the trails so you need to be looking a little further along the track than normal, I didn't - had to put my foot down in a bit of a hurry and sliced a 4 inch cut into my calf on a burnt branch! DOH.

A lot of the tracks that run parallel to Foresters Way have survived OK (from the bomb drops to the tunnel to the Broadmoor side), but a logging monster has cut through the middle of a lot of them which can make for an interesting ride - one of the fast gnarly descents has a felled tree half way down it and there is virtually nowhere to shed speed before hitting it!

Overall, given how bad the damage could have been we are lucky that most of our playground is still around to keep us amused in the evenings and weekends!!

Cheers MB, that's the daily hack..1957 rhd oval. Rallied and last on the road in 1989 til this year. A sympathetic renovation (by no means a restoration ) and she's back on the road. Got/had a few more air-cooled in our fleet, and the newest car we've ever owned is a 1987 mk 2 gti. I'm sure sensible cars will force their way in one day but we keep resisting.
411 squares getting pretty rare these days, one of the few aircoolers we haven't owned yet.

Cool, I can thoroughly appreciate that then.

I also give full marks to Frimley. Nice place that and the ICU is very well run in my experience . Only thing that sucks is the food.

Have to say aside from my smash, yours and a number others I've read about in the same area just over the last month or so, makes me wonder just how frequent an Ambulance trip is at Swinley!

Good job really as I heard you weren't far from being fed through a tube!

Lovely - really great looking car - always wanted a split or oval when I was younger - came close to being the proud owner of a wizard roadster when I was about 22 but the owner managed to stick it into a tree before the deal was done! Squareback was great (I lied, it was a 412), lowered all around, 135's on the front with 185's on the back, engine re-built by Berkshire Beetles in Henley, custom exhaust - I have just realised I miss it! I have always promised myself another bug at some point but at my current rate it will be a retirement project! I have a FIAT Barchetta 'plaything' but hardly ever get out in it, either on a bike, running around after kids, working or decorating - livin' the dream eh?

Trails were busy tonight, I headed out for an hour and a half - obviously a lot of other people had the same idea as me! While I was packing up a group turned up on some nice bikes (Santa Cruz, Orange, Zesty) but not a single skid lid between them. If you can afford to spend £2k+ on a bike why not spend another £50 on a half decent lid!

Project Zesty
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is ready to hit the trails. Anyone up for an early evening (no light required as we will be back before it is too dark to ride) ride today (Tuesday) ?
Nothing drastic. 75/90 minutes of single track fun...
18:15 at the lookout.

Looks good FA.

Ouch - sorry to here that you have joined the ranks of the injured (is it me or are more and more forum regulars suffering injuries!!) - Get Well Soon!

So that answers it then (you were right Andy/Dr Bike!)

Friday evening ride addedHere

So what? Just me and Simon for tomorrow evening ride?
Come one people... 20:00 at the lookout. And don't pretend that you have a life because we all know better ;-)

I went out tonight so riding tomorrow would not be approved by SWMBO

Also rode through what was car wash trail tonight and that felt strange with everything burnt.

Two more f*@#@ long days left to go then it's back out to play in the evenings again !

Yippee !

Sunday evening then>?

I could be tempted for a ride tonight - no idea of my pace compared to yours, but i won't object to being left behind if i'm holding you up.

Should back to riding after this weekend. Looking forward to get on the back again..

You'll be fine as its a social ride. And if you do drop off then there are normally plenty of catch up opportunities when Frenchie fixes his chain.

Looks like I might be able to make my first group ride tonight. Where do you meet and how long are you planning on riding for??

Look out @ 20:00 forbhow ever long we feel like but usually about 90mn to 2 hours top
Me got to get up @ 06:00 to go to work


So far so good on the lapierrre. The 1*10 set up with chain system seems to be ok so far and left hope it does stay that way as I have no spare or power link with me as yet

Forget a 10sp powerlink they are not reusable, get a KMC Missing Link mine have been work great for the past couple of years.

Requires lights I take it.

Not that I can be there. Might manage to struggle to Swinley this weekend for a simple fireroad pootle, but very much depends how I go. Maybe I'll take the camera and check out the fire damage.

Would be nice to find where I took my tumble, but I need someone to show me where it was as I can't remember it!!

Yeah sure , text you Sunday .

Change of plan, apparently I am having a night in with the wife and kids with a video and take away.

Nice surprise but not really what I had in mind for a Friday night. :-(

Nice ride boys. A bit short because of Simon early xmas present waiting for him at home but nice non the less...

Thanks to you both - that was a good ride. Hopefully it didn't show too much that was my first night ride - it all happens a lot faster in the dark. That last section was particularly interesting with Simon making sure he got home in time!

I'm off to shop for a saddle...

Got a spare post and saddle to sell (Same than the one on my bike) but might just double the value of your bike

I am working through the weekend so no riding for me but I am hoping to hit the trails Sunday night for a "few" hours (about double what we have done yesterday)
I am working on convincing Stan to keep me company as I know he likes riding in Sandhurst Academy ground. Anyone else interested in a mix XC/Single tracks 30km night ride?

Little bump for my Summer Solstice ride HERE
Any takers or you lots are just day time, fair weather, all gear no idea riders???
And yes, I am aware of the irony

Cheers guys good rides tonight.

Had a little back trouble this week, so Im off for a more XC ride from swinley-tunnel hill-fleet-minley. Bit of an epic but if anyones interested?


Plan a quite early start (8am) Tommorow (sunday) as I have a roast dinner on the table at 2pm to eat.
Gives enough time to investigate some areas. (did it in 3.5 hours last time).

Kinda loosly as this...

http://www.nostra-casa.co.uk/bikeroutes/OS...gpxfiles/32.gpx

Kerr

That looks like a nice basic route for my summer solstice ride (see here) but with more less xc trails when crossing them.

I know little about what lie beyond the off road vehicle training area, so I really need to get to prepare a route before hand.
Anyone riding with the trolls (and that know where they are going and where the technical trails are) available to do me a guide ride...

Had a nice recreational ride today, took my collegue from work and wife to Swinley, used gps and followed that trail, which was a kinda sociable ride , with about 10 peoples couple weeks ago, took 5 hours with lots of stops to check the trail and picnick but everyone enjoyed it so much! i think will need to get some mounting handler for the phone.

can't now. My daughter is sick so I have been told to get my arse home strait after work