After borrowing a bike a couple times before Christmas, then biting the bullet and getting myself one earlier this year – I have been getting pretty into mountainbiking. I started off just riding up to the local woods and bombing around the fire tracks. Then I moved onto the trails but a lot of them have been ridiculously muddy. AJ has also got into riding which helps keep the enthusiasm up! The next step was to start building and clearing a few trails of our own and building little obstacles. This has been pretty fun.
This week AJ got himself a new bike (was riding a single speed dirt jump bike before) – so now we both had working bikes, we decided to kick it up a notch and visit some proper bike trails. Rou had sent me a link to his IMB report on the Forest of Dean and I figured it was well worth a visit!
Luckily for us, the Forest of Dean is only half an hour away. It has a well maintained set of trails and rides surprisingly well in all weather. It is all pretty civil really – for £3.50 (the car park charge) you get to use all the trails totally free of charge. The scenery was stunning. The trails were even better maintained than I expected and despite the rain we have had all week, rode really well. It was pretty quiet when we got there (9am on a Sunday), but the car park was busy by 11. Although you could see bikers here and there, we never actually caught up with anyone or had anyone catch up with us on the trail.
The bigger, longer trails were more technical than I am used to, with more climbs than I am used to. I will no doubt ache tomorrow. There is no doubt I will be heading back to the FOD trails pretty soon.
