Title: BCC Night Rider
Location: The Horse & Groom, East Woodlands
Description: Weekly BCC night ride…followed by a drink or two!
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2009-01-06
End Time: 22:00

Tonights ride will be starting from the Horse & Groom, East woodlands at 19:00.

See you there!

This weeks Night Rider saw another new face.

He was pretty sluggish (we reckon he’s over 20stone) but made for the perfect ride leader with his crazy bright light suit / beard / head…(must be over 5000 lumins all in)

Not sure he can make it next week though as he’s gonna be busy the following day.

Check the website to see where the ride will start next Tuesday.

Friday nights rainfall caused problems for a lot of people.

The allotment got its fair share resulting in some pretty impressive ruts, mini lakes and silty swamps.

But if it wasn’t for the water leaving a trail on its way down the hill we’d never have known where to dig drainage, every cloud……

We worked all day to weather proof 143; we dug drainage, built a water bar, rebuilt ‘flip flop’ from scratch, re-routed the very bottom section and gave everything else a good rake and shape.

We all stopped for lunch, ate sausages and drank tea. 

By the end of the day it looked like new, better even, it was just begging to be ridden.

Chris, Jack and co worked hard to make the most of the soft conditions and dug all day at the jump spot. It’s gonna be ace by spring time.

Sunday saw some new faces, some old and some who looked like they should have drunk less the night before.

We rode all day, crashed a bit but made the most of our new old trail.

I must admit to wanting it to rain, in the same way that you do when you have a new coat, I wanted to test out our newly weather proof trail. 

It didn’t though, it stayed dry and fast and we kept on going until we couldn’t see where the hell we were going.

This is what the weekend is for.

P.S. Kudos to Rob for doing the mini step!

We’re pretty confident with the format now so here it is: The BCC Tuesday Night Ride. 

Tuesday 16/12/2008

Meet at The Horse & Groom (East Woodlands) for 7:00pm start (theres’ limited parking available so please share transport).

90-120 mins of riding followed by a couple of drinks at the pub.

90% XC off-road however some road does mean that a rear light is needed.

Decent front Lights are mandatory.

The ride is open to anyone, not just BCC members, so wrap up warm, bring a fiver for the pub and we’ll see you there!

Oh and do check the website for details each week as the start point will change from time to time

(Got no lights? Join up as a full member and get 10% discount at either AVC or Live2ride!)

Where indeed did Will get to before our ride? Well I can tell you where…… everywhere but where he should have been! You see Will managed to take a country lane tour of the villages between Frome and Warminster before ever finding his way to the Horse and Groom. By the time we’d found him he’d probably done enough riding for most people but as we’ve come to realise with Will- he’s always happy to be on a bike. He just smiled and got on with it, up at the front of the group mashing his way up those hills. Quality.

The ride was good, just over an hour and a half, with only a slight alteration planned for next time; bypassing the soul destroying quagmire that is Sheppards Woods, in favour of the faster rolling trails around shearwater.

We had no mechanicals and everyone came back in one piece. I say that but Rich from Live2ride managed to aggravate a shoulder injury meaning that when sat in the pub he moved a little like Herman Munster. Oh and his light ran out of battery with 20 mins to go (my fault as I’d lent them to him)!

Was great to see new riders coming along, with even more coming next week it looks like the BCC Tuesday night ride is here to stay!

Oh and the fire in the pub was nice…. 

It seems that I managed to screw up the embedded links on the membership page while updating it with the SALE prices a few weeks ago…

It meant that if you tried to sign up you were presented with the club rules pdf rather than the membership application form; which obviously made joining a little difficult. 

I’ve fixed it now so please have another go!

P.s. Thanks to Robert Bunce and Sam Wells for telling me. 

Last night was our third weekly night ride.

It seems that the promise of seeing Chris go over the bars was enough to entice a further 6 people to attend!

We started at the Bath Arms in Crockerton, all 8 of us raring to go after waiting for my forgotten battery to arrive (courtesy of Chris Snell).

We only had a 200 yard wait before Will managed to go over the bars on the very first off-road section. Good stuff.

The route was claggy and slow going, but Will kept us entertained with short bouts of speed before suffering a mechanical, falling off or flipping into a puddle.

We finished after just over an hour and a half, wet through but pretty happy.

Great beer, lush crisps and some very muddy kit!

Last weekend’s dig and ride days were a great success…

We got loads done thanks to a really good turnout and some ace sausages (thank you Mark)! 

By mid day on Sat we’d significantly improved the drainage on both BBMS and Spoons then raked and remarked both.

The afternoon was spent renovating 143; an old favourite with lots of flow, some nice undulating corners and floaty jumps.

The jump spot was also the subject of some hard graft thanks to Chris, Garry, Jack and the other usual suspects. 

Over the course of the weekend we met 10 new people, 1 even helped dig all day Sat despite having hoped to ride (thanks Adam!) and has since joined along with two of the others.

It’s great to see that we’re still growing despite the time of year.

To see so many people getting stuck in is also fantastic, it’s what we need if we’re going to succeed.

Sunday was spent riding the trails, unsurprisingly 143 saw the most action leading to a relaxed day of sessioning and the freelap staying in my bag.

There’s something magical about riding homegrown trails with friends, and what a large group of friends this is becoming….

Last night we ran our second weekly night ride.

It was wet and very cold.

This week only 2 of us showed up, Chris Sheppard and I.

Chris managed to go over the bars twice, and I managed to come to a standstill mid way through a large axle deep puddle resulting in two wet feet and a jammed mech.

There was ice on the ground by the end of the ride and even the trees were shivering.

We rode for exactly 1.5 hrs by which time my lights ran out and my right foot ceased to feel as if it was a part of my body.

We finished at the pub by the open fire with a pint and some chips.

We’re still scoping out the best route but once we’re happy we’ll publish the details of the ride so that more can come and join us each week…