As I left the house this morning for the traditional monthly Delamere ride, I was secretly hoping that due to the weather forecast everyone else would have sacked it off and I could just ride home. The chances seemed to improve when I arrived too as the forest was officially closed, (OK mate, I’ll just stop at the cafe and be on my way. 😉 ) but Iain and Geoff weren’t so easily dissuaded and turned up presently. After a  brew, -standard- and detailed discussion about the route, -we’ll go over Old Pale, do a bit in Primrose Wood and then, er… just… OK, lets go!- we left smack on the nose of twenty three minutes past 10.
In the end we didn’t do anything else but Primrose Wood due trail exploration, a bit of maintenance and late-shift work commitments eating into the available time. It gets pretty overgrown during the summer on that side of the A556, but soon dies back as the seasons change, this year revealing entrances to new bits of trail that demanded a bit of sessioning to get the best from. We also shifted a fallen tree, and shaped a new track round the immovable bit, also needing repetition, primarily so a couple of pictures could be taken for this blog.
Geoff tries to keep up with Iain…
As we traversed our way back towards Gresty’s Waste a couple of hours later, Geoff got a second puncture and sneakily asked me to demonstrate again the technique to get a stubborn tyre over a rim without the use of levers so giving me filthy hands twice. I do however have photographic evidence of him crashing a little before, so some retribution follows Geoff.
…with predictable results.
So with tea and cake playing their siren tune that was it for the morning. When we got back to the Station Cafe the Christmas tree sales were doing a roaring trade due to the Forestry Commission facilities still being out of bounds, not that it, or the wind had stopped us. After an unsure start we had a brilliant, if short in distance ride, one of those you are glad to have made the effort to get to. We’ll be doing something similar in a couple of weeks. You’ll be welcome to join us.