Mountain biking is great fun! But every now and again its even more exciting to go somewhere new… Today we went to the Forest of Bowland to achieve just that, try out a brand new (to us) purpose built mountain biking trail, the “8” at Gisburn Forest. This trail is graded “red” which is supposed to mean it’s difficult, and is our normal baseline standard. For example the 7 Stanes trail at Newcastleton, the North Face trail at Grisedale, or the Altura trail at Winlatter. However, we throughout the 8 at Gisburn was quite a bit trickier than any of these other red trails we’ve tried. π Perhaps we are out of practice, or yesterday’s trip up to Scafell had left my legs more knackered than I thought. Either way it was tough going. But wow it was worth it, swooping purpose built runs like the Hope Line are awesome! π Although it was a bit of a shame that some large sections of the trail were cordoned off to allow for an organised time-trial. But on the positive side that allowed us to watch a few of the riders tackling some big jumps while we ate our lunch.
At one point I thought I was just taking my bike for a walk!
But I got my bike legs back, and then I broke my chain. Lots of bikers offered help, despite making their way up the hill to the start of the time trials. They were very generous with their time, and even leaving their chain fixing tools with us, trusting us to hand them in at the race sign in tent. :star: π :star:
Hey guys well done.
Yeah, me and Bernie go Gisburn quite a bit. We likewise got sandbagged on that ‘red’, walked some of it!