There are only a few trail builders in the world who don’t use play-doh to model the 3D doodles that fly around in their heads, and we all know that they use marzipan.
In light of the fact that we’d all just eat the marzipan, we stuck with the multi coloured joy doh and started 3D printing straight from our noodles.
That’s right, play-doh makes you giddy.
Having got some ideas down, we’ll be focusing on designing lines 1 and 3; something that Chris Smith can tell you all about….
The above (grainy) photo shows the first bench cutting on the new singletrack that was constructed last Sunday (along with a LOT of raking) by Me, Chris, Dave and Marjory (as well as Curtis as it began to get dark!).
Last night we had a short meeting in the horse and groom
The Night Riders were there on mass, steaming, dripping, chatting and drinking
We talked about Ride Leader Training; all the ins and outs
Neil ate some cheese cake
Mark told of his love of blood
Marjory pitched her new hybrid sport of pump-track-curling
and I tried to make Insurance sound…well…less uninteresting.
We’ve got some preliminary dates and are hoping that by the end of Feb next year we’ll have at least 6 fully qualified Ride Leaders and outdoor activity qualified first aiders!
That said we may be able to train some more, so if you’d like to be trained (either First Aid or Leader), but aren’t part of the BCC please get in contact anyway; if we get 12 people together, for both, the costs are significantly less for all.
andrew.denham@blackcanoncollective.co.uk
Cheers!
This months TickerTape was a right messy affair!
Almost everybody was wet through before the riding even started thanks to an hour of raking and taping the course. None the less everybody got stuck in and had a cracking time; fighting mini battles with each other and the elements. The timing board had a malfunction (it got wet) pretty much straight away, so we had to resort to new type of result recording that relied on both honesty and the ability to remember stuff (memory). Many would have taken advantage of this relaxed arrangement, but remembering that times count for nothing if you haven’t got beans most just concentrated on giving it some.
As already announced ; Will Hardy, Ben Batt and Simon Truelove won the Transition Bikes prizes for giving it the most and so are the proud new owners of these lovely goodies!
*Neil got the fastest time of the day , so expect to see a rush on sepia lenses amongst the TickerTape regulars!
Many of you will be aware that the trails at Still Woods have been closed down, this is terrible news for the local riding community but not unsurprising given it’s scale and illegitimate nature.
The good news is that the locals have teamed up to save the trails, working hard towards a lease agreement (or similar) with the land owners.
Now this is pretty much exactly what us Longleat locals went through a couple of years ago, so we’ve offered to help in what ever way we can. We’ve sent over club documents, important contact info, and any and all guidance docs we could lay our hands on, hopefully this will all help them get to where they need to be quickly.
If you want to keep up to date with what’s going on or would like to help please check out their website below:
They’ve worked hard and fast to get themselves organised as quickly as possible, launching their website and producing a great document outlining their intentions (see here: http://www.bristoltrailsgroup.com/downloads/StillProposalfinal.pdf ). It’s clear to see that these guys respect the place and deserve to be taken seriously by the land owner and authorities. As has been proven many times before – when user groups and land managers work together everybody benefits. Lets hope that the land owner realises what a dedicated and passionate group of mountain bikers they are , and gives them the chance they deserve.
It’s that time of the month again!
With so much rain the trails will be riding very differently from those dusty days only a month or so ago. .. Depending on the ground conditions we’ll be running OneFourThree or BBMS, into Moron. Either way you can expect a great day of racing riding and the chance to win some great Transition Bikes prizes.
Hopefully we’ll have a good turn out this Saturday as it may be the last chance to ride a TickerTape until the Bumper event on the second of January.
If you don’t fancy pitching yourself against the clock, no worries ; the other two trails will be open as usual.
Remember ; if you do want to get involved you must be a members and wear a full face helmet. Non members are welcome to come along and watch though.
Cheers
A few weeks ago Stacey organised a trip to Cwmcarn for a day on the DH uplifts. It was an awesome day despite the weather, with all the newbies finding out (the hard way) what riding a bigger track is like….
Jim snapped his seat post flipping into some trees, Nige’s crashes gradually robbed him of clothes (though he did look very comfortable in those bottomless…..), Stace found out how hard rocks are and Bart managed to break his forks, discs and tear a pair of CK waterproof chaps. Burv…., well Burv was in a league of his own – wearing an all-in-one baby grow that was disturbingly tight around the crotch leaving most of us feeling dirty and very confused.
Dispite all the trauma (did they really need to be that tight!?!??) , everyone was buzzing by the end of the day, no one more than Chedge who was like a silent assassin – getting quicker with every run.
We finished the day with coffee and cake in the cafe, then I got punched by one of the canteen staff for offering to buy her a muffin. Wales is a funny place.
We’ll be organising some more trips to uplifts soon so check out the club forum for more details…
(Click on the image above to view the photographers images)
Over the next few months we’ll be working to design and build three new trails / trail areas; project Groovy Blue, project Skills Area and project Spine.
Chris Sheppard, Chris Smith and Ian Crook will be leading each of these projects respectively, with the full support of the rest of the committee.
These projects have been the topic of discussed for some time, but with so many things going on in the club we’ve been unable to fully commit to any of them up until now.
We will be following the existing industry best practice so that we can ensure we achieve high quality sustainable trails. The Forestry Commission highlight 7 stages of Planning, Constructing and Monitoring Mountainbike Trails:
All three projects are currently hovering around stages 1-3, but we’re aiming to get to the end of stage 4 and start of stage 5 by April 2010. This won’t be easy, and will require a lot of fund raising, so we’d really appreciate your help. Keep checking the website for progress and please contact any of the project leaders if you have any questions.
Thank you!
I’m pleased to say that we now have a number of people interested to learn some more about becoming a Ride Leader. This is obviously great news!
It’s interesting to hear that many people just don’t know what the role entails, or in fact why it’s so important. To be honest I can completely understand, after all; BCC rides are very informal and basically identical to any other ride with mates, and lets face it we don’t need qualifications for that!
The truth of the matter is that because we are an organised club to which people pay a membership fee and we organise club rides… well because of that ‘formal’ structure we are obliged to be able to do so with a reasonable level of safety. To ensure that this is the case the CTC and BC insist that club rides are led by qualified Ride Leaders. This ensures that each ride is conducted safely, and allows the participant to take part confident in the knowledge that they aren’t going to be led down an unreasonably dangerous trail.
The CTC sums up the purpose of the role with the four E‘s
As you can see the qualification means that the Ride Leader is able to do a lot more; really adding to the rides that they lead, not just acting as a chaperone.
But it’s really important to realise that the technical entry requirements aren’t very high, with greater focus being upon having the right mentality and nature.
The CTC’s requirements are as follows:
So if you think you might fit the bill, or would just like to learn some more please get in contact.
I plan to have a pub outing (for those who are interested) at which we can a have a drink and ask some questions – So if you’ve shown some interest check out the forum (http://www.southerndownhill.com/forum/index.php/topic,198948.0.html) where I’ll make the arrangements….
(If you haven’t already seen, all the course information is here: http://www.promtb.net/courses/leaderawards/trail.htm )
Cheers!
Good news; it’s looking like we’ll be able to get some BCC t-shirts made in time for Christmas!
The printers are sending us some blank samples, so after a session of Clothes Show style prancing around we’ll choose the most, well, a la mode design and get a batch made.
We’ll be launching this exciting new range in Primark, H&M, Williams the butchers and halfway down 143.
Beans.