A day out at Coed y Brenin
Although it was the Boardwise Demo weekend at Aberdyfi, there was no hint of wind so after taking Morgan swimming in the morning I met Steve and Darren (Bad Excuse for a Sailor or BEFS) at Coed y brenin for a MTB ride.
It was a warm, sunny day and the car park looked quite busy so after pfaffing for a bit of time in the car park we headed off for a ride around the MBR trail to start with. This was Steve’s first mountain bike ride since his knee op so he took it easy on the first rocky bit out of the trail centre but seemed OK. BEFS and I waited at the end of the section for him, and I checked my spokes in my rear wheel at every opportunity after snapping a couple last week. I had since had the wheel checked over and all spokes re-tensioned properly. My bike also started its annoying squeak again and I can’t work out where it is coming from as all seems OK when I’m not on the bike… I don’t think its my joints!
I hadn’t done the MBR trail before so was a little surprised by how rocky it was, but soon got into the swing of things. Steve punctured farily soon and joined the ranks of other people lining the trail fixing flats. I was to join him later too. My first puncture for about a year since going Ghetto Tubeless, and all because today I was riding with the rear wheel in standard tubed format because I hadn’t had time to go tubeless after fixing the spokes. Just goes to show how successful the Ghetto Tubeless system has been for me beause as soon as I have a tube in there I get a pinch flat.
The ast section of the trail is still closed so we were soon back at the visitor centre having done about 9 miles. We then headed off for a trip around the Tarw trail. The first couple of sections were closed so this started off with a farily steep climb. BEFS then took a spectacular tumble on the first section of singletrack (Heart of Darkness) and Steve followed suit soon afterwards. Steve also had another puncture later on and started cramping up so was taking things easy. This all came to a head on the final road back to the visitor centre where his legs seized up and he fell off his bike in the middle of the road and then couldn’t get up as he couldn’t move his cramped legs!
BEFS and I obviously found this quite funny and were unable to help him as we were laughing just a little too much! We did eventually help him up and we all made it back to the cars in one piece. Although i did seem to have sustained some chafing which will probably put pay to a ride today as planned. Never mind, I can play on the beach instead.
Anna and Morgan seemed to have a good time too as they had been to the Aberystwyth Show (I’ll let her blog about that!) and then we all had yet another weekend BBQ. This could be the summer of BBQ’s before long.
