Despite the rather brash thunderstorm which rocked up in the small hours of last night the SE raggers met up for a quick ride and build session this morning. Den, Rod and Srdj made an amusing vid of the track for the CGCC guys and I spent most of the morning building more ladders with Ed, who was on building duty due to having some freshly damaged ribs from the list riding session.

The main ladder area is looking pretty nice now, the leftmost ladder seems to be the one which catches most people out as it is not always on-camber and becomes a little lively when wet. The central ladder section is flowing nicely though, my favourite bit being the little kick at the end of the bottom which sends you off nicely on to the bottom section.

Today we worked mostly on a couple of new ladders which, when complete, will form a path along the rightmost edge of the tree-trunk. I think these are going to be nice when finished but will require good skills since there's a vertical drop of a good few feet if you come off the right hand side. I took a couple of pictures with my phone for posterity in case the whole thing gets wrecked by the local woodland dwelling 'community' like some of the other stuff we've built.

1: Upwards view of the main ladder section:

2: Downwards of the same section:

3: Downwards view from the top ladder:

Oh, and I managed to make the ultimate trail building mistake of mistaking my Thumb for a nail

This year there were approx 250 entries, this was up on last year's entries which were around the 180 mark apparently. Most entrants were quite sensibly on full suspension bikes, in addition to the full bouncers I counted about 10 hardtails and a single full rigid bike! I was one of the few hardtail riders so was expecting to be pretty slow and get a fairly comprehensive battering on the downhill stages. I rode with the guys and girls of Crookes Gentlemen's Cycling Club (CGCC) - a top bunch mostly based in Sheffield and Leeds.

Saturday was practice and qualifying (a.k.a. prologue) day, after a good cooked breakfast courtesy of CGCC Nick we rocked up at Kielder and rode each of the stages for the first time. After practising the first stage once I felt that some of the roots on the stage had it in for me so was pretty nervous, however as we rode more and I continued to keep the bike rubber side down the nerves relented somewhat. Prologue was a timed run of stage 4, by this point I was quite tired but had a good crack at it, I was a little disappointed with my 169th position after qualifying but in retrospect it seemed fairly reasonable considering my lack of fitness and bike handling finesse!

My start time on Sunday was 09:54am, the weather was largely pretty warm and sunny, with the exception of a few short spells of rain and cold at the top of a few stages. CGCC were pretty spread out across the qualifying rankings so I spent most of the day chatting to the guys who had qualified around me and the various CGCC peeps I saw through the day, there's a great level of camaraderie amongst the riders at these events with everyone spurring each other onwards!

CGCC did really well with several people finishing in top places amongst the pros, I finished in 149th place - 20 places up from where I started  which was quite pleasing, particularly as it meant I must have beaten people riding full suspension bikes on my hardtail! :-)

Thanks to all the CGCC folks for making me feel so welcome, in particular Nick for organising the accommodation and grub, Fuller for driving up from Sheffield and Alec for helping me get my puncture changed quickly enough to avoid a time penalty before the last stage!

Some photos have already surfaced from the event, here are some links so you can see what it was like for yourself:

Various Flickr Photos

CGCC John's Photos

Oliver Coat's Prologue Gallery

Oliver Coat's Stage 1 Gallery

Oliver Coat's Stage 3 Gallery

Oliver Coat's Stage 6 Gallery 

EdD