Wednesday 16 June 2010

The ups and downs of mountain biking

There was a bit of a weather window this morning with that seemingly rare commodity, blue sky, putting in a special guest appearance. Quick, make haste, up, out, mountain bike in car, Plateau de Beille for some VTT action with P&K. Obviously with all the rain that we have had recently, the going was soft to downright soggy under wheel which made for a couple of interesting moments. It was quite a surreal outing, as we watched big black clouds build in every direction - we fully expected a downpour at any moment but amazingly we stayed dry in the Plateau de Beille's own little micro-climate! Some photos for you;None of the tracks up there have yet been properly signposted for mountain biking so we had to make it up as we went along. Which was fine up to a point. Until P&K thought we should pick up what would have been a black piste on the cross country ski circuit this past winter. Great I thought, this descent is fantastic! Technical in parts, fast and furious in others. What fun! Until Kev pipes up 'Er, hang on, I think this track is taking us down towards Ax. We should be over there (pointing across a big ravine to the hillside opposite on top of which was a lone cabane).' We had done approx 200m of descent over 3kms. Please don't tell me we now have to reverse it?! But that is exactly what we had to do. We had missed a left turn somewhere near the top. Doh! But do you know what.... the legs felt fantastic and it wasn't a problem. I felt strong. Thank goodness I did that stretching last night. It was a cracking outing. I love my mountain bike :-) Sum total today 20kms and just under 2 hours of riding. Stats on the usual site.

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