Category: BCC

I think the headline tells you most of the stuff you need to know so get it stuck in your diary and follow the instructions below for a festive evening of general merriment.

The evening will start at 7pm with the aim of eating at 8pm. Some hardy night riders may wish to do a short ride before and arrive at the pub around 8 o’clock.

This social is open to all members plus a partner (please contact me if you want to invite additional guests) and I would like to think that a good mixture of XC, DJ and DH riders will attend. This will be an excellent opportunity to meet other members or catch up with members you may have ridden with but never seen without a full face helmet on!

The Horse and Groom can accommodate 32 diners so seats will have to be on a first come, first served basis. Alternatively, you are welcome to join us for drinks.

The next step is choosing food from the menu

Please e mail me (simon.truelove@blackcanoncollective.co.uk) with your menu choices and send me a cheque (payable to “Black Canon Collective”)  for the full amount (£16.95 for 3 courses or £13.00 for 2 courses). If you want to pay by cash (do not send by post) I will be at the tickertape jam at the weekend and I’m usually out on the Tuesday night rides too (but please bring the correct amount as I might not have change).

For the address to send cheques to please see the forum thread  http://www.southerndownhill.com/forum/index.php/topic,211588.msg1752645.html#msg1752645 or ask for my address when you send your menu choices.

There are a maximum of 32 spaces – lets see if we can fill the whole joint!

Please send me your menu choices and cheque before next Tuesday so that I can confirm the number of attendees

See you all soon

Simon

…then come along to the TickerTape mix-up (held the Sunday of every BCC Weekender) and dish them out.

As my bleary eyes cleared and my ears became accustom to ignoring the Garmin Lady’s voice, Andrew, Ian and myself rolled into the sleepy market town of Leighton Buzzard to meet Ian Warby. Ian is the Senior Off-Road Development Officer at CTC (since 2006) and is working to develop the mountain biking scene nationally in partnership with leading experts in the field, or more likely in the woods. He is also developing the CTC’s mountain bike skills training and a National Standard for off-road skills training. We were here to visit some of the projects he was working on, have a guided tour of some projects similar to the BCC allotment and generally get inspiration for our own trail system.

Leighton Buzzard must be the luckiest town in the country. Due to money from the lottery/Olympic future thingy, the town has £30 per person for a population about the same as Frome to develop a range of cycling venues around the town. We visited the future site of some dirt jumps, a pikey jump spot made good, a pump track in the initial build stages, and a mini north shore style trail also in the initial build stages. All with the aim of making kids so tired they “can’t be arsed to smash the s#*t out of a bus stop”

For lunch we grabbed some pies and headed for a Dirt Jump picnic. The jumps had been built on landfill capped with clay so drainage was proving to be a bit of an issue, but they had built 4 sets of jumps varying from beginner table tops all the way up to large advanced gap lines and a cheeky pump track at the bottom. Ian described the problems involved in the build, emphasising the need for a digger driver that understood what was trying to be created and the priceless knowledge of a local trail boss to really help shape things up.

Next stop was Woburn. Many of you will have seen the legendary Woburn dirt jumps on video but seeing the trails is something else! This place is incredible, the shear size of the jumps and the variety of possible lines boggles the mind. Coupled with a maze of random downhill trails we were running around like kids in a candy shop when the shop master had popped out back to restock the sherbert dib dabs. The dirt is very sandy which makes building fast and drainage of no consequence. It turns out that Woburn’s maze of downhill tracks are both a blessing and a burden. Unlike many “bike parks” (for want of a better word) Woburn has no club pushing the area in a specific direction, instead this area is allowed to exist and has evolved with people building new lines all the time creating a bewildering lattice of trails rather than a selection of fully resolved trails. The trails looked like good fun to ride but we jumped back into cars and set of for Chicksands. 

Chicksands is  is primarily managed by the Forestry Commission and run by Beds Fat Trax. 

Links
http://www.ctc.org.uk/

It seems that getting across the nature of what we are doing, our motives and the details of how we operate may be the difference between this project succeeding or failing. Before the website existed we came across some hostility from those who had assumed that we were trying to exclude others, con or turn a profit – the lack of public information lead to people filling in the gaps themselves; offering us little benefit where they had doubt.

So over the past week and a half we’ve done our best to create an informative website where people can learn all there is to know about this project. It’ll be an ongoing effort as we will have more to say and will hopefully learn how to convey it more effectively but is a good start I think.

Unfortunately this will amount to little if the websites existence is not publicised effectively: So I have sent an e-mail to every British Cycling affiliated MTB club in the South and Southwest regions to let them know. We can’t cater for everyone joining up, but then that isn’t the intention, we simply want to make as many people aware of the situation as possible to avoid misunderstanding or wasted journeys.

We must remind ourselves that it is our responsibility to inform others, ensuring clarity and transparency at all times, but also that it will be beneficial to the success of the project. It is natural to be protective over things, especially when they are as special as this project, but such an approach simply leads to confusion, rumor and ultimately failure. Already since erecting the signs around the allotment and placing the website address in a few key places we’ve had three new (full) members, and that’s just today!

Communication is our friend.

We’ve just launched our new and improved club website (you’re on it now!) . Its two main purposes are to inform people of who we are and what we’re doing, and to give BCC members a place to share and communicate club information. We are planning to add a photo and video gallery, events calender, and a building blog in the very near future.

We hope you like it.