Yet again, just a report of more mileage being covered. It's been good over the last few Sundays not having to work, although the weather has been less than helpful. Three weeks ago, myself and two others ventured over to Wales to the Afan forest, to have a go at the W2 trail, this consists of a link of two of the trails, see map below.

What we weren't ready for, was the -9ºC when we left the car park. Apart from being a cold ride, it is quite strenuous, to the point of 3,000 vertical feet of climbing along with the 44km of off road riding, certainly not for the faint hearted. I'm pleased to say, the only issue I had, was a broken chain, a quick 5 minute fix and I was back underway. Total riding time was around 3 1/2 hours.

The week after nine of us ventured to one of the other Welsh MTB centres at Cwmcarn, this was not as successful as a trip as the frozen ground conditions made it very hard going indeed.

This weeks Sunday ride was a completely different affair with us staying local, eight of us left Melksham, with the intention of doing a 20 mile off-road ride, this however turned out to be a 33 mile ride covering a vast area of the muddy Wiltshire countryside. I however didn't fair so well this ride, physically I was fine and managed the distance with no problems at all, however, I did part company with my bike on two occasions, the first was an over the handlebar incident, which ended with me catching the bike just before it landed on top of me. The second was a spill on the road, due too the icy conditions, the bike just washed out from underneath me and sent me sliding down the road, overtaking one of the other riders as I went, I had quite a heavy impact with the road as I went down, but thankfully no injuries other than a couple of large bruises.

That's pretty much me up to date, looking forward to Christmas and the Spam winter challenge on the 2nd of Jan, 50k of cold Salisbury plain and a trip through Imber village.