the double death drop ride

wyre forest drop, a photo by rOcKeTdOgUk on Flickr.

got picked up and driven to the Wyre Forest, such a luxury! (thanks Ian)it was very chilly to start with but we soon warmed up, the trails weren't as muddy as i feared they might be but even so i was glad i changed the very summer orientated Racing Ralph tyre on the back of the bike to an Ardent which gave me a lot more confidence in turns. We did a couple of trails ans then began "0ff camber" it was very tacky in places with a definite "line" of ruts that if you broke away from sent you careering towards the edge (and there is a good 30ft drop to one side in places. starting a recurring theme young Alex was using the flora and fauna to slow down as his brakes were a bit rubbish, he'd go on to use a tree to stop later, unfortunately using his knee and earned a nice deep cut to it. at the end of Camber we met a couple of guys and had a chat about trails and they mentioned "double death drop" and offered to show us, but we had other trails to do and we went our separate ways, i was riding a rigid forked Hard tail and the forest does hand out punished to the arms! about an hour later over another side of the woods we met the same guys from earlier and this time followed them down the double death drop,which you can see here

it looks quite tame in the video, maybe this was the position of the camera mounted on the stem but the drop is completely blind when you approach it so it was a bit of a leap of faith but everyone made it down. after that we thought we'd earned a cuppa and a slice of cake at the cafe. suitably stuffed we took in the other side of the forest on the way back to the car. Bikes packed away we started home then Ben suggested Beer, well it've been rude not to, so stopping in bewdley we bemused the locals by walking in in muddy cycling kit and ordering 3 pints of Enville ale to drink outside in the afternoon sunshine, a great end to a great days riding
ride 55
15 miles
total 1016
commute 295.5