Sunday 5 March – Menai

We like Menai! A large playground filled with interesting and differing tracks – from open, sweeping runs, through to fast downhill sandy sections and treacherous rocky shale climbs (and drops). There’s also an abundance of larger rocks on which entertainment can be had (and the ‘playground’ areas off the edges of the main tracks, for even sillier folk…).

With all the sand around, we (just Doug, Brian and Stephe today) spent a great deal of time with the front wheel sideways, gliding across the ground in the loose dry sand. After getting over the sheer terror of racing down a hill with extremely limited front steering and braking (!), this was actually quite an entertaining experience – which Doug likened at one stage to surfing…

Unfortunately, the small group meant that Stephe’s complete lack of fitness (although his defence is that it was an absence of carbs for dinner last night) showed up – and both Doug and Brian moved into sympathy bypass mode after the first of what needed to be many stops to wait for him to catch up.

Some limited playing around on rocks produced the only injuries of the day – but far and away the most entertaining event was when a spider the size of a house decided that if Doug was going to take out its web, it was going to take out Doug (see the photos for further amusement).

We still haven’t quite worked out why the FatBoys club chose the particular tracks they mapped through this wonderland, but we’ll keep on working on it (see this slide: green is this ride, purple is FatBoys, red is last ride – lots more looping back on ourselves on this ride, which is not entirely apparent on the maps)

Photos up here, some samples below: