Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th March

2 good spins this weekend.
On Saturday, present and correct were Nigel, Tom(christening his shiny new NRS) Andrew, David, Mick, Roddy, Christian and myself. Kilmashouge became a lot easier than ever before because of the hard, frozen conditions underfoot, or maybe it was just the different scenery that distracted us from the pain!!
We were joined by Mark Cosgrove and the UCD posse of Rob, Brendan and Oisin before heading down the wocawocas, again the icy conditions made for some interesting riding, but everyone commented on how spectacular the day was….beautiful sunshine and glistening mountains and trails opening up before us. Across, around and over Price Willies and some tough climbing while skirting along the top of Cloon and across to Glencree. Its amazing how much your riding changes on the trails you ride so regualarly when the trail disappearing from under you becomes a distinct possibility and the lottery of whether or not the ice will hold or crack comes into play. In Glencree we met a nice family who, it seemed, were hungry for blood and gore as Mark and Mick took on the gravelly chute…luckily Mark didn’t disappoint by squirreling off the jump and landing at their/our feet to the cheers of the kids,despite the fact that he did the hard part and cleared the chute, but no blood, fortunatley. From there it was the long and tedious road spin down to Masseys before heading for home.
Sunday saw a lesser crowd of 5 including der fuhrer Morgan, Nigel, Mark Cromie, Paul (who only flew in from Barcelona last night!) and myself.
A route was loosely decided upon and we headed up through Masseys and onto the Military Road, being (jokingly) half tempted by the lures of a clouded Kippure before turning into Glencree for a second go at the ice ridden puddlefest in a weekend. Unfortunately the sunshine and warmer temperatures brought about somewhat of a thaw and the trail became energy sappingly sludgey. Across and into Cloon and down the sweet DH track there, it was here that Paul heard the call of a motorcycling event and turned for home. Upon deciding to head over Knockree, Morgan decided on a bit of exploration and brought us through an almost unpenetrable wood and a long hike-a-bike section through very gorsey gorse ending up back where we started 40 mins later as Nigel then confessed to having a map in his bag! picking out a suitable fireroad from it, we descended only to find that the required junction doesn’t exist and had to climb back up again! 1hr 15 mins later, we still hadn’t advanced any further than Cloon carpark, but now had a wealth of knowledge of where not to go in future! From Cloon we decided to abandon plans of Knockree and head back to Enniskerry and home….having some fun with a super fit old guy on a clunker bike and a young roadie trying to put on a show for us as we went.
All in all, 2 splendid days of offroad fun, my speedo tells me I did 103km over the weekend.
Also, if there is further demand, I’ll put up my Flapjack recipe so they can become MAD team issue food.
See you all again soon,
Sean