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Photo - Chris Birch:
(File photo courtesy of Geoff Osborne:)
Most will be aware that Chris Birch, the current NZ Enduro champion, past NZ Trials Champion and Mountain Bike rider has made the major move to the UK to pursue his dreams.
Chris has a really great Website: that you may wish to bookmark.
Here is his latest report where he reports that Wales does have some good weather.
Contrary to what everybody has told me it doesn’t always rain in Wales. This weekend has been an absolute cracker, hardly a cloud to be seen today!
On Saturday I had a test with a certain race team for next year, I probably shouldn't say with who, but the name sounds a bit like banana....
Anyway we started off at a riding area near Ceswys, it’s a big farm where you can go anywhere on anything. Motorbikes, quads, off-roaders, Landrovers, whatever. I thought this sounded a bit hairy, I didn’t like the idea of being collected by some muppet coming the other way. However when we got there it became obvious how it works, basically it’s really safe because the whole place is one big rutted-out swamp and it’s a real battle to get any pace up at all! The whole place was absolutely trashed. I really wanted to find some dryish ground to try and get a feel for the bike, so I set off to the top of one of the biggest hill. I got up there without too much drama, only getting stuck once. It looked pretty promising but when I got to the top it was one big peat bog! Yep, there’s bogs on the top of hills in Wales as well! The highlight was a creek that the locals use to practice extreme tests, it had a decent waterfall half way up that took a fair amount of commitment to get up, however the rock had more grip than the mud!
Realising that I was never going to get a decent feel for the bike grovelling around in swamps, we threw in the towel and headed for an area of woodland across the road from Geraint Jones’s farm. Whilst it was still pretty wet, the soil around there drains a lot better and there’s a fair bit more grip, so I was able to start throwing the 'banana' bike around a bit and got the hang of it pretty quickly. We fiddled around with the forks and handle bars a bit, trying to get the front end to do what I wanted it to do and by the time we left I was feeling pretty happy on it.
Today I went and did some training on my mountain bike. Mon and I headed for a place called Church Stretton which is at the base of the Long Mynd ranges. I had found a bit of a route on the Internet that I tried to follow, but gave up on it about half way and just followed my nose. (forgot about directions being in yards not metres!) It started out with the mother of all climbs up a twisting gravel road (think Barlow Rd to the trig X2 but quite a bit steeper) that had me wishing for the shuttle truck.
From there it climbed some more up a single track before coming out on to the top of the mountain where you could see for miles in every direction.
According to my route guide I was supposed to head back down a trail to the car park - but it was way too beautiful to climb all that way and not do some exploring. I was well above the tree line so it was pretty easy to navigate my way along the trails through the heather, eventually picking a ridge to bomb down all the way back into Church Stretton. The downhill was brilliant, really fast and flowing at the top with lots of grassy bumps to kick off before turning into rocky sheep tracks at the bottom, I would have been keen to do it again but there was no gas left in my legs by this point! I’m definitely going back armed with a compass and map for more exploring.
(Mon just wants to add that while I was riding she was walking, following funny English tracks that cut through fields of sheep, making you wonder if this is really where you are supposed to be, and does that sheep look mean or what, but luckily you come to the autumn-coloured woods, with crunchy leaves underneath, spot a few wild squirrels and find your way back with no map whatsoever!)
