North Downs with Pete and Lee

October 18th

Wow people to ride with at last! Pete actually made it out on a bike and Lee came down from Oxford for his first tour of the North Downs singletrack.

Pete ahd a route in mind rather than just playing on singletrack. Recently I've been riding on my own a lot so I've started just playing and sessioning the best singletrack routes. Parking at the Holmbury village CP climbing up to Homlmbury hill viewpoint and heading over to the reservoir via black hole and then sessioning "Golden Birdies" 4 or 5 times (takes about 5 mins to get down and 10-15 to climb up) and "I should coco" a couple of times, then back via "Yoghurt pots" and "Telegraph" back down to the CP. Dry trails and fast tracks.

So anyway today we start in Peaslake and climb up Pitch hill and play on some of the singletrack that I think is called "T1, T2" which has been logged a bit but the route is coming back now and then down "Baptista" which has been logged a little too but is still fun, twisty and challenging but not so much to manoeuvre your handlebars through nowadays and back down to Peaslake.

Too early for tea so we climbed up to the reservoir and top of Holmbury, yoghurt pots, then the off camber parallaling Telegraph and the new stuff Dave showed us (nameless). Took the bridelway past the school until we climbed almost to Leith. At Leith Tower we had tea and sandwiches and cake of course and bumped into Simon from Nirvana, reminding me I must ride with him again.

"Windy Willows" was the usual fun but a bit muddy over the log jumps at the end!
Scuttled down the steep descent towards Friday street then climbed up via Simons Copse and back down the bottom of Summer lightning to Rookery. Cross the A25 and along white Down back across A25 and climb up near Abinger to Holmbury.

Lee thought we were done but we pointed towards Peaslake and how much further we still had to go. He was sprinting ahead on his light 24lbs Specialized hard tail and I steadily did leg presses on my 33lb Hustler FR set-up to climb on up to the top of Holmbury.

Finally we had the fun fast fling down Golden Birdies which was massive fun as usual such sweet singletrack! And of course tea at the bus shelter at the bottom and cake AGAIN!

40km done, 6.5 hrs out, moving for 4.5 hrs (so lots of chat and tea breaks going on!)

Back at Pete's Is had cooked a Vegan meal for us and Lockey came round so it was good to catch up after a few years absence!