Black Canon Collective

Month: May 2011

  • FUN in the PARK

    Welshmill Park, Frome

    Saturday 21st May, 12 till 4pm

    Frome Recreation and Open Grounds Supporters (FROGS) have got through the first stage for a £50,000 grant to improve Welshmill park and the bid includes a bike track, natural play features, woodland trails, etc, but there is a lot to do before the deadline in September.

    We are running a Consultation event on Saturday 21st May, because we need to hear people’s views, and also gather evidence to include in our bid.

    Please come along!  Bring your bikes!  No hard work involved.  I will put up a gazebo and be organising a few bike games involving balloons, water pistols and tightropes. The idea is to attract people to Welshmill and sample their views about what they would like to see in the space.

    All help will be very welcome, so why not pop by? Fill in a questionaire! Help with the activities! Talk to people about the loveliness of biking in general and bike tracks in Frome in particular!

  • Dig Day this Sunday!

    Having generated a pretty good TO DO list at the last Dig Day we’ll be working our way through it with our main focus being to build a new Slam Berm on Spoons, in the style of WEEEEEEEEBOING (see photo). There’ll be an opportunity to scope out some new features on Puppets (top and bottom) and BBMS (at the bottom) too.

    We’ll spend some time planning out the new XC Blue Descent too, marking out the trail corridor, and even clearing some of it if we get enough helpers.

    We’ll also be looking to add to the TO DO list with any new trail or feature ideas as the day goes on.

    So that’s Sunday 10- 4.

    See you there!

  • Big Bang Theory

    Last Thursday night three bike riders (I won’t use the word cyclist it would be an exaggeration) set off on a jaunt around the hills of Blagdon and Black Coombe.

    We started out after a protracted journey due to road closures, and when we finally arrived were subjected to watching Malcolm screw even more bits onto his classic GT Timberline (1993)….prompting me to almost rip the allen key from his hand.

    Well eventually we set off down Loves Lane (no really..it’s not a euphemism) to get to the bottom of the coombe, involving chucking our steeds over a couple of gates…which is where the trouble began.

    I dropped the trusty Duster over the second gate, which was immediately followed by a loud bang and the rim dropping to the ground.

    Dave nearly wet himself with laughter, and proposed that it was the enormous weight of my Alfine hub that had caused the tube to explode.

    Personally I think it may just have been a dodgy tube…and was glad that it happened whilst stationary rather than on the cheese-grater style rocks of the coombe.

    Any which way I was more than a little disappointed as it was a new Slime Tube that had just gone bang, and there certainly wasn’t any self-healing going on.

    So off came the tyre, and out sprayedpoured the entire tubes worth of slime, what a mess…new tube in and off we set with me now looking like Shrek and the Duster having an interesting brown to green fade paint job.

    The rest of the ride was far more fun with dry, dusty rocky descents mixed with a few whoops and steep climbs through the woods and massive grins all round.

    Everyone felt chuffed to make it to the top of the coombe without bringing up a lung, and looked forward to the drop from the top back down into Blagdon.

    Brakes off and down we shot, Malcolm fighting with his fully rigid GT, when we met up at the bottom his eyeballs were still bouncing up and down in his skull. In typical Scots fashion he dismissed the idea of suspension and put his blurred vision down to a lack of riding gloves….fair play.

    Anyway good route, good weather and great company…it’s why we ride.

    P.S. it’s Daves birthday today…

  • Frisky bullocks

    Eight of the more foolhardy members of the Tuesday Nightriders had to demonstrate their cattle-wrangling skills last night when they joined the Anti-social group’s ride.
    .

    En route to some newly-found and much-hyped singletrack, they had to negotiate a series of field-edge bridleways the last of which contained a herd of very inquisitive and frisky bullocks. Not knowing quite how to deal with an approaching army of two-ton bovines, our intrepid band of non-farmers walked/trotted/ran their bikes through the enclosure, desperately trying not to start a stampede or spook the residents. Visions of that scene in Black Hawk Down where the Somali locals swarm on the doomed, crashed ‘copter, or that scene in LoTR where the orcs are chasing the Fellowship through the Dwarf Mines of Moria flashed through my mind… Anyhoo, we all made it safely through the farside gate (just) and nervously laughed-off the experience. Now on to the more serious stuff of enjoying what we had come for.
    .
    This singletrack nirvana was about a mile-and-a-half in length. Starting inconspicuously on nothing more than a deer-track through bluebells near the edge of the woodland, it continued unbroken for over two kilometres. It could easily be ridden in one continuous length, but this being new territory and under encroaching darkness, we paused three or four times to regroup. Occasionally dipping under the odd low deciduous branch in its early stages, it wound its way around the periphery of the wood. Soon it widened and became loamy as it dropped steeply down through conifers to the river, offering up some interesting roots, drops and dips to surmount along the way. From there it narrowed again and followed the watercourse downstream, twisting and rollercoastering between the trees and over fallen logs. A short, sharp, unrideable rise near the very end was the only major obstacle to interrupt the flow. By the time we emerged at its end onto some fireroad, eight white grins in the forested twilight indicated that we’d all ridden some of the finest singletrack on offer in Longleat.
    .
    We arrived back at the pub 22 miles and nearly three hours later, only to find it in darkness and no sign of the Social group… maybe they had fallen foul of those fire-breathing, man-eating young bulls…
    .

  • 3 Minute Gaps – Local Screening

    Thanks entirely to Jonny Ashelford we’re all going to be able to watch Clay Porter’s next film 3 Minute Gaps sooner than most (09 June · 20:00 – 23:00 at the Little Theatre Bath)!

    Check out the Facebook events page here for ticket info and make sure you buy them as soon as they go on sale so that you don’t miss out!