Muni in Bristol after BOB

[phil]

Originally posted by Zelten
Bristol Indiana?

The *original* Bristol, in the UK.

Tch... things would be a lot less confusing if you lot didn't steal all our place names...

Phil

[phil]

By sheer luck today was the first day for ages when it has been sunny at the weekend, so it was a great day to go for a muni ride. An excellent ride it was too!

Sam and I got to Ashton Court at just before two in the afternoon; with the nice weather there seemed to be a lot of people and a good few bikes about; there was even an optimistic ice cream van!

The first bit of the trail was a pretty decent warm up... nothing too extreme but enough to keep you busy. Then the trail leaves the trees, crosses the road, goes down a fast, slightly downhill path and dives back into the woods... and that is where the tricky bits start!

It's impressive how much trail they've actually managed to squeeze into a not huge patch of wood. The trail twists all over the place so it feels like you must be going round in circles. It winds its way around trees, over log piles, roots and rocky bits for ages... very tiring, but excellent fun if tight, technical trails are your thing; this bit definitely isn't for people who like their singletrack fast and swoopy. (That came later...)

The trail ended at a road on the far side from where we'd gone in, right next to a large rocky outcrop which was just crying out to be ridden on. Here I came to the conclusion that Sam is insane; if anyone had suggested to me to try drops taller than I am within a few months of starting riding I'd have laughed; yet here he was launching himself off huge great rocks and plummeting earthward. I think we got some videos of that bit on Sam's camera, which I presume he will make available if they're worth watching...

By this time the afternoon was getting on, and the sun was getting lower, so we moved on. The trail crosses the road again, goes along a smaller road alongside a quarry and then back into the grounds of Ashton Court for the ride back to the start. According to someone at BOB there are two routes from here, running almost parallel to each other alongside the length of the quarry. We chose one randomly and dived into the woods again. This part was much faster, a section for the Swoopy people.

From here we may well have lost the trail, for it was properly dark by this time. We ended up on a forest access road or something which led most of the way back to the car park. The view of the last rays of sun through the trees, and then the lights of Bristol below, were nice to see.

We'd been out just over three hours in total, but I suspect there are a lot of paths and trails there that we didn't go on. Definitely worth a return visit, especially if we can arrange a time when a few more people are available.

The picture below is the route we took according to the GPS gizmo. The triangle at the far end was me forgetting to reset the GPS on starting; the bottom end is the car park we started from, the top end is the car park I stopped at briefly while scouting around waiting for Sam's bus to arrive. The trail goes anticlockwise; the crazy twisty section is very apparent, the rocks we stopped to play on are in the bottom left corner, and the smoother run back to the start is up the right hand side.

Phil

[redwelly]

Thanks for that write up Phil, and thanks for a great afternoon's riding. I don't really need to desribe much, as Phil has covered it well. We met quite a few Mountain M*kers (seemingly all going in the opposite direction to us) with their suspension bouncing away, making it look absurdly easy to go cruising over all the lumps and roots. Ah well, I bet we had more fun.

A few parts of the single track got fairly quagmiric, with frequent UPDs, causing an exclaimation from Phil of "these seat handles make rather good ice cream scoops!". Mmm... mud flavour...

The rocky bit was very cool, and it was unfortunate that the light was failing. We only just got back to the car by the time it was completely dark, after stopping for about 20 minutes, but it would be quite possible to spend many hours dropping off those rocks (assuming time is not cut short by hideous injury). Making a successful drop even once would have been nice, but alas it was not to be. My uni made the drops a few more times than I did, including once when I panicked just before take off, and ended up grabbing an overhead branch while the uni disappeared below.

My few pictures and video clips are here. I trust you will be uploading your photos too Phil...

- Sam

[phil]

I'd forgotten about my camera... some of them didn't come out very well, unfortunately... but the rest are here: http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albut62

The handles would make excellent ice cream scoops because after several UPDs I ended up with a handleful of rather gooey mud... not nice to stick your fingers into! Ewww...

Phil