The alternative MTB club run - 16th Nov 2014 - The SNCC boys go on safari to Woburn and fall off

Well something different from the usual club run whereby a few of us vouch to go to Woburn and indulge in some mtb.

First of all a massive thanks to Dave Hennessey for arranging the collection of hired bikes from Grafham Water and supplying the 5 star transport to get us there, great stuff mate.

Now I had built up a picture in my head of Woburn being a relatively flat non technical boring nothing to see or challenge type place to ride a mountain bike. Wrong on all counts because it had everything, steep ups and downs, wet tree roots, sand, bogs and lots of horses. So we all meet up in the car park and we are greeted by Jon Sheasby with a rather sinister smile on his face, which to be honest I’ve seen before - and I knew immediately that it was going to be one of those days, sort of "I love cycling but don’t quite know why" type days. And so there we were and now here is the roll of honour:

Dave Hennessy plus Jake in his fetching pink little number
Joe Finucane
Gary Newman
Simon Rinaldo
John Keefe
Jon Sheasby
Me

And quite a few others unbeknown to me but all good eggs.

So to begin and off we set at a rather unrelaxed pace with lots of twisty bits that came along quite quickly and quite close together, and again quite quickly came the first quite steep descent at which point I could see Joe at the bottom lying on his side but still in very good spirit. The group quite quickly broke up but the lead riders would always stop at various points so as we could all re-group and discuss how good or bad or just how scary that last segment was. All throughout the terrain varied and threw up its own particular challenges. On one particular rather steep descent there was a quite technical drop off which I think the first two riders (Jon being one of them) cleared quite well by all accounts unlike poor Simon who decided that freefall was the way to tackle it plus throwing in two rather impressive forward rolls and subsequently landing hard on his shoulder. It took him a while to get his bearings but like a true warrior he eventually got back on the bike. I think most of us took the easy option and walked the bike over. For me at this point I was finding it easier to descend sideways either with the bike or without it and it didn’t help that I chose the bike with an unofficial semi slick rear tyre, which is never a good thing in wet conditions.        

To be honest I think most of us were experiencing unfortunates and some more than others with me being one of them and at the start of yet another steep descent I had committed to a drop off and completely misjudged it forcing me to come down quite heavy on the top tube and smashing my gentleman area which is never pleasant. So now I was suffering in silence, Joe had crashed again (1 of about 12 I think) and his previously damaged elbow was causing problems and Simon had crashed again coming down on the same shoulder as before. Simon and myself had now decided to call it a day and went back to the car park with Dave and Gary whilst the rest carried on.

We all eventually met up in a pub in Woburn and I by now having to walk quite slowly. It did seem that the ones that carried on were still involved in various crashes with Jake being one of them. In essence quite a lot happened in a short space of time and too much to remember but what a fantastic morning out and just to do something different on a Sunday has to be a good thing and I for one would highly recommend this to all our club members if this was to become a more regular thing. Thanks everyone for making it an enjoyable morning out and I hope the aches and pains disappear quickly.

Terry D