It’s beautiful here, and despite the snowy conditions the ground is soft enough to dig!

Today’s Dig Day is going ahead as planned. We’ll play it by ear, changing the scope of work depending upon ground conditions and may even finish early if the temperature doesn’t improve. Please wrap up warm but wear layers as you’ll soon get hot when you start working.

See you there!

The Met office have issued an advisory warning for Sunday’s weather:

“There is a moderate risk of severe weather affecting parts of the south of the UK on Sunday morning. There is a risk of widespread ice on untreated surfaces following a band of rain, sleet and snow which is expected to clear south overnight.”

With this in mind we’d like to ask that everyone checks the front page of this website on Sunday morning to see if the Dig Day is still going ahead. It is currently, but this may have to change.

The ground is likely to be very hard so could people please bring rakes so that we can clear all of the trails ready for the next TickerTape, and help with the XC project.

Also, please remember to wear breathable layers, warm socks and a hat – that’s right, for the duration of this post I’m behaving like your mum.

Fingers crossed the weather is better than expected.

After 6 weeks of sifting through photo’s, a lifetime of format faffing and a small incident of accidentally deleting the damn thing then re-making it, the 2010 Black Canon Collective calendar is finally finished and I should have 50 copies fresh from the printers just before Christmas. The Calendar will cost £8 (plus £2 postage) and will be available from our websites new online shop (currently being set up). Alternatively the calendar will be available to buy at Tuesday night rides and The Tickertape triple crown on Saturday 2nd January. The profits from sales of this calendar will be channelled directly back into the trails that we as a collective build and ride.

Thank you to all the photographers who have enabled this project to go ahead and remember to continue uploading you photographs of 2010 on  http://www.flickr.com/groups/blackcanoncollective/pool/ to help create our 2011 calendar.

Here’s a preview of the 2010 Calendar….

Well the first of our December Dig Days was a massive success, and with the next (to be held on Sunday 20/12/09) being both XC and DH focused it’d be great if we could keep up this momentum.

On the day we’ll split into two groups voluntarily, with Ian Crook leading the XC Dig and me leading the DH dig.

As always our progress is entirely dependant on how many people turn up, so the following list of items is in priority order (top being most important) so that you know what we’ll be working on and how much we’re likely to achieve.

XC Building

If we have 5+ people for the XC dig we will complete 50m of singletrack, built correctly, on soil not leaf litter, armoured where necessary that drains correctly and is marked clearly.

If we have 10+ people for the XC dig day we will complete 100m of singletrack, built to the same standards.

If we have more than 15 people we can begin work on the one area where we need to cut a shelf into the bank – the section is around 10m long.

DH Building

If we have 10+ people on the DH dig then we can:

Build bottom berm feature on ‘moron’ and complete drainage of the finish line.
Build berm at the bottom of ‘battery hill’ on ‘puppets’
Clear drainage on ‘spoons’ (important but very quick to do)
Clear drainage on ‘bbms’ (important but very quick to do)

If we have 15+ people on the DH dig then we can also:

Remove felled trees from the bottom of ‘puppets’
Route the ‘punch’ line into battery hill on ‘puppets’
Rake and mark new bottom section of ‘puppets’

If we have 20+ people on the DH dig then we can also :

Build two drops on ‘punch’ line into battery hill on ‘puppets’
Rake and check markings on all courses (now that all the leaves have fallen and are wet, this won’t need doing so frequently)

It’ll be cold so we’ll bring hot tea and coffee along with mince pies but please do wear some warm clothing and bring your own food and drink also if you intend to stay for the whole day.

Hope to see you all there!

Sam and Jack Wells (who many of you will have read about here: http://www.blackcanoncollective.co.uk/2009/11/19/brothers-wells/) have begun their trail building project for us at the Allotment.

With the type of lifestyle that many of us can only dream of both are able to build trails and go riding all day almost every day. The brothers approached us recently, asking if they could get involved with the club and build some trails with us. Given the quality of the other trails that they’ve built and their pretty awesome riding ability we jumped at the opportunity.

The trail that they’re building (to be named) will be a fast open freeride trail with big features in it. It’ll run down the east side of the Allotment, starting at the top plateau and will finish just short of the skills area. They scoped out the trail route for us, and explained the placement of all the features too before we agreed and gave them the go ahead.

They’ll be building the trail over the next few months, mostly during the week, but will also be working on it at some dig days and weekends. If you’d like to help out please get in contact, they’d be glad of the extra man power.

As with all our trails it’ll be built with the weather in mind, so drainage, side cambers, and raking back to the soil will be key. We’ve got the rest of the winter and most of the spring to get this trail up and running, so there’s no rush – it’s all about getting it right.

Sam will be updating the website frequently with news of progress and pictures too, so check back to see how they’re getting on.

I would just like say a big thank you to everyone who turned up. We had a great time and it was good to share some festive cheer with some smiley bikers (and guests). On the evening we held a small raffle of a couple of gift vouchers. Lots of tickets were sold which helped the evening raise a grand total of £36.45. The big winners were Ben Irons (£10 AVC gift voucher) and Andrew Stevens (£10 L2R gift voucher).

Good Times

(Thanks to Piotr Kozub for the pics)

When not making the rest of us laugh with their choice of wet weather gear, the inseparable trio have been working hard, dancing to ‘them modern sounds’ that come out of Nige’s tinterphone. They insisted that I try and get them as much publicity as possible, as they’re hoping to launch a JLS tribute band, but are looking for a fourth member. For those of you who are wondering why Nige looks a little different, well he has been practising a long time, and filmed his part for this ‘back in the day’ when everything was apparently much better. We’ll let you be the judge of that….