Its flat out East

Way flatter than down in the South West anyway. I have been up visiting family (or faamilllyy) as Grant Mitchell would say. My dear old mum lives about 100m away from Thetford Forest, so mountain biking Thetford stylee is literally on the doorstep.

Being flatter though presents the trail builders with problems though, and to make the trails more taxing they have included some bombholes, some tricky narrow tree lined singletrack and The Beast. To be honest, it' snot that Beastly, and over way too soon, but it is a well thought out bit of single track, and it certainly caught out the two in front of me, one of who is probably still trying to get his bike out of the hedge, I pointed out it would have been easier to park further along, but my humour fell on deaf ears. Miserable sod.


The other aspect of the trails which proved taxing was the mud! There was loads and loads of it, grinding, wearing mud, got everywhere, my disc rotors are still crunching now, a whole day, and a good old scrub down later! I guess they will never be the same again, my gloves certainly won't be, they were expensive you know!

Anyway, it was nice to be out on the trails, and nice to be able to cycle for 10 miles, without having to asthmatically wheeze myself up some horrendous bloody hill, only to find a howling gale at the top. It also had the interesting diversion of F16s flying overhead to land at Lakenheath.

Enough of me though! What has been happening down in the Sunny Cheddar Valley? I turn my back for 1 week, and find out that there has been an altercation on one of the local 'Festive' rides! Apparently the Mendip Roleur has been knocking people off. I haven't got all the details straight yet, but my sources say he was Tweeting an up-date on his beta iPhone6, and the automatic cycle positioning radar he has on his bike malfunctioned (a loose carbon self-adjusting diddlyfoo-foo valve clip by all accounts) and this led to him riding full tilt into a complete stranger. Fisticuffs, pistols at dawn all sorts kicking off. I can't wait to catch up with him properly. Honestly, I miss all the fun.