Tales of Trails: Springtime In Ticknall

The one where there was some weapons grade faffing, some new faces, some old faces & Howard went over the bars.

Ride Date: 04/05/2014

Distance: 15 miles

Route: Ticknall> King's Newton> Ingleby.

Weather: Temperature - 12°C, Wind - 10mph ↑, Humidity - 70%, Conditions - Sunny.

Riders : Jake, Deley, Dan, Basil, Howard, Carro, Scott & Matt S

Beer: Timothy Taylor Landlord

We had a 09:30 meet at Ticknall village hall for what was to be a change in direction from our recent rides, with this one being a more rolling cross country type affair. the group consisted of the usual regulars, with a return of Deley's lad Scott for his first proper ride with us & a debut from Basil's lad, Matt. We set off almost bang on the half hour and made good pace across the first fields towards Robin's Wood at was at this point my phone started ringing, after wrestling with my bag and answering it I was greeted with "Ay up Serry, I thought you were setting off at 9:30", "We did, and it's now 9:37" I replied. After a few more exchanges and some heckling from the group, myself & Dan set off back to the car park to meet legend & chief faffer, Carro! (Which highlights why you need to let either myself or the ride leader know you are coming on a ride! We could have been a lot further away, or even changed venue) What with with him setting up and a further small delay for Basil to come back and wind his driver's side window up, we were finally underway proper about 20 mins late.
First port of call was Robin's Wood for a bit of technical downhill, Dan was our first casualty, falling foul of the jumps at the bottom, but not put off, he tried them again with greater success. Matt captured the second go on video, so I'll add it on here when it's on Youtube.

Next up were the fast and dry bridleways over towards King's Newton, then back on the green lane, it was here we had our 2nd incident, after some back wheel tunnel vision most of us ended up in a deep rut, some managed to wriggle out of it, however Howard went over the bars, no injuries luckily, and we believe Carro has it on video, again it'll be added here if & when he uploads it.

After passing back past the north end of Robin's wood we were taken on a new section passing close to the Trent along some very sketchy singletrack, with some parts requiring bike carrying and culminating at Anchor Church Caves near Ingleby, time for a quick refuel and a history lesson from Matt.

Howard celebrating after "Draining the Lizard" and on a historical site too, shame on him!

We then headed towards Foremarke School and through the ground taking the long but not unpleasant climb up through Heath wood, lovely Bluebells I might add, and a field of cows that some of the "townies" were scared of! Once at the road we made a group decision to make it beer time and headed back down the tarmac to the Staff of Life. Once at the pub Basil showed great generosity by buying everyone's drink for them.

In the beer garden having a well earned pint

A good ride out all in, although we ended up cutting it short due to the various hiccups and delays. Also a big thumbs up to Scott, who completed his longest ever ride, rode everything that was thrown at him & kept pace with us all the way round, a solid debut from Matt & it's great to see Carro back out on a proper ride with us again, it's been a long time coming.

Finally a well done to Howard, who won the bottle of beer, the actual amount of climbing over the first 10 rides was 19326 feet, his answer was 17850.

See you on the next ride, where ever it may be, no excuse now the dry trails & warm weather are here!