19th April: Swinley

Everyone loves a Sunday morning lie-in, no alarm set so you can doze until you naturally wake - however these things are not afforded to you if you have or have had children or dogs, so being up at a time that most would consider as waaaaay too early for them was not an issue after years of practice and I was prepared for Dean’s early arrival for a trip to the MTB trail centre over at Swinley Forest.

The day after the Pendine Ultra I met up with Dean, Rob & Stu for a training ride in anticipation of this summer’s expedition from one side of Devon to the other. We all met at Stu’s and rode along the Thames path and the Wey Navigation from Hersham to Guildford and back again. During our final rest-stop for a well-earned pint we planned to meet-up over at Swinley and ride the MTB trails there.

Dean and Rob are regulars there whilst Stu has been a handful of times, whereas on the other hand I am a novice at ‘proper’ trail riding… I had managed to nurse my MTB around the journey to Guildford and back, but it was pretty much kaput afterwards, so it was with reluctance I agreed to join in at Swinley - however I knew the state of my bike would only allow me to roll the course, so at least there was no danger of me trying anything silly whilst there and I could use the time as an introduction to the place so as to begin learning the route for future visits.

Swinley Forest is part of the Crown Estate on the edge of Bracknell in Berkshire, around a 30 minute drive from my gaff. An area within the forest has been designated as an MTB specific area, split in to 3 proper trails - a green, a blue and a red with the colours indicating increasing difficulty in a similar way to how ski routes are... Our plan was to ride the Blue and Red routes today.

Picking Rob up en-route, we met with Stu in the car park which was filling rapidly already even though it was before 9 in the morning!

Rolling-out we took it easy on the course, which involves doing the ‘out’ section of the blue, then the red loop which is perpendicular to the blue, before returning on the second part of the blue to finish what roughly looks like a letter ’T’. We only had to stop for a mechanical issues the once, for Rob to repair a puncture - ironically right after having let some air out of his tyre to avoid having a pinch puncture. Over the morning’s session we covered all of the ups and downs of the course, some decent fast downhills, plenty of technical tight twisting and turning sections through the pine woods and some fiendish but also mercifully short uphills - that with the sandy flinty ground beneath your wheels ensured you had your arse planted firmly in the saddle the whole time to gain some traction and avoid wheel spinning.
 
As I mentioned we took it easy, which suited Stu and myself as we let Dean and Rob push ahead of us through the marked sections so as not to hold them up on any ‘fun’ bits - plus it allowed me to watch for their lines through the routes to follow.

Looks a bit like a small child's Etch-A-Sketch drawing!

By the time we pulled in to the cafe at the end my bike was only fit for condemning - no thanks to Dean trying to properly finish it off by cutting across me at one point causing me to crash and knacker one of the pedals… Even the saddle bag containing my tool kit had been shaken to bits by the ride! At least it finally has made me realise that the bike is finished, so perhaps time to look for a new one.

I took the batch of gels from yesterday to have a taste of them myself and try them on my guinea pigs. Stu refused point blank, but Dean and Rob were game! The feedback was universal: They do the job, they are the right consistency, smell of the summer berries, its just they taste way too bitter at present. Discussing the ingredients with Rob, a chemist by training, he suggested that I switch-out some of the maltodextrin for dextrose (glucose powder) which should certainly act as a sweetener whilst maintaining the carb quota of the gel, so fingers crossed for an improvement in taste with batch number 2. At least I know everything fundamentally works together, its just a question of fine-tuning now.

Regarding Swinley... I enjoyed rolling it, the course taking me back to when I would hoon around BMX tracks as a kid in the woods next to where I grew-up. Once I have some working wheels I certainly will be back to ride it again, and again, and again :)