Sunday 15 February 2009 - Kincumber

Chris and Stephe were trapped in Gosford on a very wet weekend, and found a break on Sunday morning for a quick ride - it looked like Kincumber was the go, but neither had the foggiest idea where it actually was... Eventually found it - managed to mangle through a BB browser to the NobMob website, and get enough info to feed an address into Google Maps on the phone - with a bit of gps work, bob was our uncle!

The day started out wet, and stayed that way - bucketing down almost the whole ride. This was, of course, much good for general fun and getting dirty, but was not too good for navigation of a new location, or for having to deal with mud in the contact lenses...

While it was fun, it's not at all clear why anyone would go to Kincumber. It seemed to be all fire trail up, and moderate to average sniggle down occasionally (barely worth the ups), and there were a lot of places where it seemed the only down was on the fire trail. So it was just up and down a rocky fire trail. That said, we finished on what could clearly be a very good fun downhill sniggle / dh track, so there was obviously fun to be had in the place...

All in all, we had a good time plonking about in the rain, got some great exercise, and got really dirty - but nothing that would make us rush back - were we missing something?

Sunday 1 February 2009 - Old Great North Road

A great ride today, albeit not with all that we hoped, as we had some folk not come along given the forecast temperatures...

Turned out that the temperature was not too bad (probably hit 32 degrees or so, although the cars were saying 39 degrees when we got back - and anywhere where you were exposed to the sun was very jolly hot!), but we still managed to blow up Daniel along the way.

Akis, Nicole, Daniel and Stephe met at the top of the Mangrove Mountain pumping station at 7.45am, and as the fog lifted we set off at about 8am.



The climb to Ten Mile Hollow was, as usual, a fantastic warm up - indeed, we were each comfortably sweating by the time we'd made the three legs of the climb and arrived at the junction of the single track and the Western Commission Road. By this stage, it was unfortunately obvious that Daniel was not going to enjoy riding as much as he might given a well developed cold, and a very heavy bike (not sure what the Giant specs say about a Glory 8", but I'm guessing well north of 15kg...). However, after a quick break to gather ourselves, we pushed on down the single track.

The bush around us was beautiful as ever, including this cute little purple flower that I'd not seen before:



[Update: Nicole informs us that "Flower is Thysanotus - fringe lily- found in moist heath and woodland with dense undergrowth - flowering time spring - summer (yes) and the root is edible apparently - so if you get hungry on the ride ..."]

Akis was 'in the groove', and Nicole has demonstrated the value of consistent riding - improving markedly with each ride - at one point she had set off ahead of the lads, and by the time we caught her, she was certainly the more relaxed looking!



We turned around at the 'mound of death' after a quick break to get some oxygen back into Daniel's legs (note the 'recovery behaviour' he exhibited immediately after a short break):



The ride back was excellent, albeit a little slow - with Daniel cramping up (at one stage, down with both legs out, and then cramping while walking... hmmm, perhaps some better electrolyte addition to the drink in future??).

A typically great Old Great North Road ride, albeit only 38kms today...

All the photos are up (see here), and the track is here (.gpx or .kmz).