Tuesday, 1 April 2014

The Three Musketeers

The one where, Basil had his new bike & Deley's front hub failed.

Ride Date: 23/03/2014

Route: Ambergate Woods > Black Rocks > Crich Chase.

Weather: Temperature - 4°C, Wind - 15mph →, Humidity - 86%, Conditions - Cloudy.

Riders : Jake, Deley & Basil

Only three this time on a cool morning in Ambergate. We met, as usual in the Hurt Arms car park, where Basil unveiled his new beast to us, and very nice it is too! With a fairly stiff wind we opted to climb up through Ambergate woods (I found out the road was slightly quicker on a recent ride). We set off at a good pace and were soon passing the cottages where we normally enter the woods, however this time we continued on up the road right up to the tip of the wood.
This is a new section, that starts off with some twisty single track with plenty of roots & rocks and then it opens out slightly into a full on blast with lots of options for a bit of air via various roots & stones. This brings you out on the fire road we would normally use with the short sharp climb up to the ridge.
The ridge was in pretty good shape, mostly dry, this time we passed the usual point where we start the descent and carried on to another new section, this one is better flowing and longer than the previous one and joins up with the same bottom section. It's known locally as "Millstone" presumably named after the millstone that Deley spotted part way down.
The view from the top of the Millstone Descent
Black Rocks provided it's usual standard of fun, with only one fallen tree blocking the trail, once down at the canal we discussed the options and decided to do some exploring in Crich Chase.
We started off with the same top section we had ridden last time, but kept left where the trail split, this turned out to be the full official "Bishop's Pointy Finger" Descent and it was pretty good, throwing up loads of options and good technical stuff ultimately joining up where our previous ride did with just the last few hundred metres left to the canal, it was in this clearing we met a random bearded bloke on a lapiere, who said that despite several years riding the area, he was still finding new trails & proceeded to point out several options from where we were stood.
I'm really starting to like Crich Chase, with just under a mile of descent and more trails than you can shake a stick at, I think it's got lot's more to offer us in the future and the climb up there is probably the easiest of the 4.
2D Gradient Profile

3D View of the terrain


Anyway, that's about it, the next ride will be our 10th weekend ride, so look out for a competition in the next blog entry.


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