Sunday 22 April 2007 - Forestville to Manly

T-Bone's plan turned out to be a goodie...

He not only suggested the ride (starting at the Forestville Retirement Village (Cook Street), then ride through Allambie, Seaforth, Manly Vale to Manly Dam and back... ), but actually turned up!

T-Bone, Doug, Matt, Whisperer and Stephe arrived at the Cook Street departure point around 6.45am. It was cool with an occasional rain drop or two, which meant that the close in bush on the single track was wet, but otherwise conditions were excellent.

The ride out to the dam was uneventful, but enjoyable. T-Bone's been pushing far too much weight recently, so found having to actually do useful work with his muscles somewhat unusual, which meant we could try and make him suffer even further up any hills we came across.

Given the pace and the generally smooth ride, we didn't stop much for photos - although Doug snagged a couple along the way (see below). Once we made it to Manly Dam, we joined about a million other healthy folk doing laps (said "hi" to Nick, Gavin and Ryan as we went past while they were unpacking at the water station), but it was still great.

Unfortunately, we'd managed to not get entirely into the groove, with everyone failing to make the technical rock section above the golf course on their first pass (even more humiliating was the fact that there were people on the rocks on each attempt!). Matt continues to show style even when he takes Really Silly Lines up the rocks, and Whisperer also managed to look fairly stylish despite not nailing it with his usual aplomb.

The climb out was uneventful, back across the Wakehurst Parkway to the Forestville return run (with a quick detour 'round the technical section on that side of the road).

The ride home left us feeling peculiarly tired for what was actually only an 18km ride - but it was still fun!

Photos (but no GPS?) from Doug are all up here, some samples below (nice tree wrap by T-Bone!):