2010 - The First Ride

The plan was to try and organise a ride for Saturday 2nd but unfortunately due to the New Year Celebrations a number of the riders were away or too tired due to a late night on the 31st. Well they do say as you get older it takes longer to recover. So Saturday was given up as a lost cause.

All was not lost as Roy was available Sunday so it was agreed we would get out for a few hours in the morning. We decided to ride locally so the first ride of 2010 for two of the Over the Hill bikers was not through the hills of the Surrey countryside but through the trails of Swinley Forrest in Berkshire.

08:30 was the agreed start time and we both arrived a little early so by we had a prompt start on a cold (-3) but beautiful morning. Roy was familiar with the area, all be it mostly at night, but we were soon experiencing the delights of the Crown Estate. The forest is a labyrinth of single track with some interesting features which just appear to feed into each other really well so very little time is spent riding on the fire roads.

The main difference between Swinely and the Surrey rides is the hills, Swinley has a lot of climbs but most are short lived and many are incorporated in the single track so you do not seem to be spending lots of time just climbing hills, the down side of this is of course there are no really long downhill descents. Some of the trails are very similar to “Yogurt Pots” , “Telegraph” with some smaller versions of “BKB” but without the great berm, but it also hosts some of it’s own individual and very interesting trails.

Roy - many thanks for the real introduction into Swinley Forest.