A chilly, misty and overcast morning turned into a nice mild and sunny day for our Chiltern Hills XC Group Ride and with a couple of weeks of reasonably weather recently the trail conditions were superb. On the whole most of the trails were bone dry, fast, and even dusty in places. Only a handful of trails were muddy still showing the tell tale signs of a hard and wet winter again.
Our ride technically started twice - Bernie had to pick himself up from the dirt for take two...it wouldn't of course be a BucksMTB Group Ride without the odd tumble here and there. This months ride started from Wendover Woods main car park at 10:30am and initially our group of twelve headed out of the back of Wendover Woods to pick up local Bridleways through Pavid Wood out towards Wiggington direction. Our route took us through Pavis Wood, taking in bridleways and byways near Hastoe - this section featured a superb long singletrack descent but unfortunately did lead to a huge climb back up again (several moans were received!) before heading South down towards Cholesbury. From Cholesbury our route took us down towards Lee Common before swopping back towards Kingswood and Lee Gate. From here we headed via some great singletrack near Kingash back towards Wendover. We picked up the Ridgeway for the final blast back towards Wendover before picking up a short road stint on Hale Lane to get us back into Wendover Woods before the final climb back up to the car park. The ride was completed by my good self having a crash on the last descent of the day....typical...wouldn't be a group ride without me coming off somewhere along the route...
We had a superb group in attendance for this ride, including Club members, some regular familiar faces and also some brand new faces - it was great to have such a superb turn out and to have people from so many backgrounds and MTB experiences.
After the ride a handful of us rode over to Aston Hill to watch the downhill racers complete on the infamous Black Run track. Full report and photos to follow online shortly.
A big thank you to Adam, Alistair, Bernie, Dan, Jav, Mike, Natalie, Sarah, Steve and Tim who attended this ride, and thanks to our very own BucksMTB Mike for helping me lead the ride.
Another very successful ride, and thanks to everyone who attended. Our next Group Ride date and venue will be published very soon - check back to the website soon and keep your eyes peeled in your email inboxes for more news and updates coming very soon...
Best Wishes
Scott | BucksMTB Club Chairman
