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Good company, dry trails, ace skies and cake. Splendid :)

This morning – dry, cold, sunny, slight tailwind, beautiful.
This evening – very wet, cold wind, bloody miserable.
Just about thawed out now.

96km, 3hr18m

Best commute of the year, fastest too. Bloody cold this morning though.

Arranged to meet Dave, Sim and Mats at Penmachno this morning. As I’m meant to be training for CLIC24 I decided to get there early and do a pre-ride ride. A navigational error meant I got there 30 mins later than planned but still took the risk of heading off for my pre-ride hoping I’d get back in time to meet the others. This was a bit of a risk as I had absolutely no idea how long it would take to get round Loop 1 having never ridden it before! We’d arranged to meet at 11 which gave me just under 1h15mins to get round. Luckily the Remedy 8 I’d borrowed from work climbed pretty well and flew on the descents and after a pretty relentless 75mins of riding I arrived back at the carpark just as Dave’s van pulled up. Great (lucky) timing.
After a chat and some food we set off up the first climb. Reaching the point where you have the choice of Loop 1 or Loop 2 we stopped to chat to a couple of guys that were there. They explained that Loop 2 was about a 10km add-on to Loop 1 which it then rejoins. Sounded good to us so that’s where we went. The trails on Loop 2 were built by a different team to those on Loop 2 and had a different feel but were great all the same.
By the time we got to the last series of descents I was feeling a bit tired and a small error led to me clipping the bank sending me flying down the trail and the bike off the edge (it luckily stopped before it tumbled hundreds of feet to the bottom of the valley!) Took a big hit to my left thigh and arm but nothings broken so no need to worry. Took it very slightly easier on the last couple of descents but still went fast enough for lots of fun. A big thumbs up to everyone involved in building the trails there, they rocked :) The fantastic spring weather with sun, blue skies and singing birds made it even better.
Rubbish journey home with the A55 being shut leading to massive tailbacks. We eventually made it to the services at Chester for food and drink before heading off home. A fine day.

50km|3hr30 pedalling time|1670m climbing