So after the last round was cancelled due to snow it’s fair to say that everyone is chomping at the bit. The series will be 4 rounds now, and so that we don’t miss out, this round is Puppets.
Is Chris Smith going be a good dad and look after his newborn son, or is he going to “pop out for a bit on the bike…”?
Will Ben Irons ride his new DH bike?
Is Steve Geall gonna bunny hop really really high (we all want him to)?
Can Curtis, Mark and Liam ride puppets with their eyes closed now that they’ve ridden it over 97 times each practising for this event?
Saturday, 11:00 – 15:00
Remember it’s members only, £2 suggested donation towards the timing equipment.
The first ever Frome Fling went down a treat with tickets sold out and over 240 people crammed into the Cheese & Grain for an evening of lush food, great music and ceilidh dancing (oh…and a couple of drinks).
With so many people to feed (and a broken rice heater) the Balmoral Catering Co did a great job making sure that no-one went hungry. VJ Ultra did a great job too, complementing the Ceilidh with a visual treat of tartan and MTB riding to keep all the riders happy.
The evening was an excuse for a party but also an opportunity to raise some funds for the Black Canon Collective, and our chosen charity re-cycle who provide refurbished bikes to people in africa. The following people/organisations made donations to the raffle…
Sainsburys – Chocolates Homebase – Crackers Marks and Spencers – Christmas cake Millers – Voucher Longleat – One adult pass to the grounds Colin Nisbet – Bottle of malt whisky Abernathy’s – 6 x £5 vouchers Simply Pearls – Necklace Herbs on the Hill – Soap collection Amica – Body wash & lotion AVC – £45 bike service, and a £15 voucher Halfords – £10 voucher Marjory Hatvany – Bicycle horn, basket & some groceries. Black Canon Collective – 2 x BCC T shirts Cobble Wobble – 2010 Cobble Wobble Ltd edition poster and T shirt
…which sold out a book of 1000 tickets (at £1 for strip of 5 tickets) raising £200 for re-cycle!
Thanks to Colin Nisbet (the brother of organiser Marjory Hatvany) who did the “MC” stuff for the evening, he looked very nice in his full dress kilt but I heard that he had it on back to front all evening!
Also, thanks to Marjory’s niece Lindsey and Colin’s wife Hilary Nisbet who did loads of the flower arranging. Poor Lindsey had torn ligaments on Thurs by standing on a hockey ball and was stuck with crutches and sitting down all night – poor girl.
The Little Biggar Band were without a doubt the highlight of the evening, having travelled down especially to treat us all to their authentic Ceilidh music. Most of the band drove back up to Scotland on Sunday morning and beat the snow, but Linda (the bass player) didn’t get home until Monday night; Edinburgh airport was closed on Sunday, so she ended up hiring a car and having to drive up and through a blizzard on Monday!!
Big thanks to Rachael Campbell Smith for designing the poster, to Poppy Waterhouse and Leah Hamilton who sold raffle tickets, to Live2ride and the Cheese & grain for selling tickets and to all those who helped set up and pack away.
Most of all though a massive thank you to marjory Hatvany who lovingly organised the whole thing and did a brilliant job!
Thanks finally to everyone who came and took part, with the first event being such a success we’re keen to hold the Frome Fling every year so look out for details of the 2011 event around November time…
The countries forestsneed your help to save them from exploitation. As Mountain bikers, forests are our playgrounds, we don’t want the vast majority of trail centers and visitor centers and all the planned developments to be completely obliterated for good. As the only real reason these trail and visitor centers exist is due to the previous government making it a legal requirement for all Forestry commission land to encourage people to visit the woods by providing trail centers etc. Unfortunately Private woodland, is as it says ‘Private’, so doesn’t have to let anyone in, you may have seen the sign ‘ tresspassers will be prosecuted’ before, well this could become common place at once open legal national forests where you might have ridden a properly crafted mountain bike trail.
This could be common sight
Some people might say, ” They’ll still keep all the visitor centers open and running, they’d be daft not to? ” Unfortunately this isn’t the case as visitor centers, however nice and socially effective they are, probably aren’t the most cost effective use of a forest from a business point of view, as visitor centers are less profitable than intensive farming of trees etc, due to infrastructure and running costs etc. and often loose the forestry more money than they gain in a lot of cases.
YOU can do something about it, you can sign the petition online here, to get the government to think twice about this very irresponsible idea, it only takes a few minutes.
This is what the 38 degrees ‘Save our forests’ campaign has to say;
The government is planning a massive sell off of our national forests. They could be auctioned and fenced off, run down, logged or turned into golf courses and holiday villages.
We can’t let that happen. We need to stop these plans. National treasures like the The Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest and The New Forest could be sold off. Once they are gone, they will be lost forever.
A huge petition will force the government to rethink its plans. If we can prove how strongly the public are against this, they will have to back down. Please sign the petition now.
Find out more: Visit the save our forests action centre to find out more about the forest sell off and download campaign leaflets and posters.
Thanks to all those who made it out to the Dig Day on Sunday!
We achieved everything we set out to do (thanks largely to Curtis and his ace fence posting skills) but fell short of being able to start any of the new sections or features for lack of additional bodies. As well as what I’ve snapped on my iPhone we also raked and repaired the whole of Puppets lower section (including a tweak to the last corner), raked over MCC (to keep it loamy and fun) and scoped out the climbing sections for the Dinner ’til Dusk trail.
The trails are holding up real well, and with a bit of TLC they should be in great condition fo the summer, but what new stuff would you like to build with us? What do you daydream about riding there? What trails do your imaginations carve down the hill? It’d be great to get a real army of people to the next Dig Day so that we can continue to add to the trails so that the Allotment stays fresh and rides sweet….
We’ve been talking about trying this for a few months, to change up the ride away a little bit,we thought it would be a good way to start 2011.
THIS IS A NIGHT RIDE SO YOU’LL NEED A GOOD SET OF BIKE LIGHTS. THE CLUB HAS 2 SETS THAT CAN BE USED UPON REQUEST.
As always you will need a good quality, well maintained bike with plenty of brake pad material, a helmet and suitable clothing and spares i.e. – extra spare tubes due to the type of terrain, power links etc. There is no bike shop on site.
We will car pool as much as possible to keep costs down. If anyone would like to drive and take bikes and passengers, please let us know.
We’re going to meet Saturday evening in Frome at the Cheese & Grain at 5.15pm, aiming to leave 5.30pm, that should get us there 6.30pm, riding by 7pm. We’ll ride until we’ve had enough, and on the way home we’ll stop off for a beverage of choice at a pub that will be named at a later date. So you may want to have a quick change of clothing depending on the weather.
Here’s Pete riding the trail in earlier in the year…
Trail Details
Please Note: The trails are more difficult during and after wet weather when tree roots and rocks can become slippery.
The first part of this signed route runs around the spectacular Ashton Court Estate where you can cycle through wonderful woodlands away from busy roads.
The yellow trail in Ashton Court is a great place for youngsters or inexperienced riders to have a go on the rough tracks because the route is not too technical – A new ‘figure of eight’ link has recently been constructed and signed in Ashton Court to create a separate circuit in the Estate.
More adventurous mountain bikers can follow the pink trail in 50-Acre Wood to test out their skills in more rugged terrain. A 400m section of off-road track has been created so that novices can extend their ride into 50-Acre Wood over relatively easy terrain and return to Ashton Court via Weir Lane.
Check out the club forum to arrange transport etc…
So, what better way is there to start the year than to come along to the Dig Day from 11:00 until 15:00 tomorrow (Ok, you could always take part in the SPAM Winter Challenge , which will be ace as always… but, well… OK, back to this…)?
The aim of the Dig Day will be to erect the new notice board, tidy the trails up and to look at improving the sharp right hander before the rock garden on Spoons. There will also be some work on MCC (the XC descent) with Ian in preparation for the next Diner ’til Dusk event and the final of the TickerTape Winter Series.
Unfortunately we’ve decided to cancel tomorrow’s TickerTape race for the following reasons:
1. We can’t get a vehicle anywhere near the trails, this is important as we all know that people do on occasion need to go to casualty (last month for example!).
2. Even once cleared of snow (no small task to clear all 500mtrs of trail) the trail is largely frozen underneath.
3. The temperature is set to stay at around -3 to -1 tomorrow http://bbc.in/fbPioo so it won’t thaw out..
So, I’m afraid to say that the event is too dangerous to hold.
The winter series will now be 4 rounds, next month will now be Spoons, then BBMS in Feb and the special event in March which will be on the Dinner ’til Dusk Descent (MCC).
Here’s a video of the trail, turn up the sound and you can hear the ‘ting’ of the rake on the frozen ground: http://yfrog.us/jc69201837z
Today was ace, the weather was stunning and the trails were sweet. Orange and Trek did the business bringing a fleet of 2011 bikes for us all to play with whilst Richard cooked up some sausages for everyone to eat. We opened the Dinner ’til Dusk descent especially and it seemed to go down a treat; loamy, flowy and loads of fun.
A great day riding other people’s bikes in our back garden.
Well if you think last weeks ride was cold, you should have come out for the 2ndfreezing night ride of the winter. We’re always recruiting new riders who want to join the Tuesday night party, so com’on out, don’t let Mr Winter keep you in the house, we’ve even got lights you can use!
Once we got going we soon forgot that it was cold as Mr Sheppard (a real person, unlike Mr Winter) led us around the nice dry hard packed trails. It reminded us of the summer riding, well, except for the ice & snow. We headed over to the ‘Darkside’ to hit the recently found single tracks, did our couple of hours and headed back to the pub for a beverage of choice sat next to a nice warm fire. Perfect.
