Great ride today with Nelsie and Pete. We met at Ferrymead bridge (Nelsie and me in our cars, Pete having ridden from home). Reminding me of the PFMTBC days, we headed up St Andrews Hill, right on Marama then continuation up Canon Hill Crescent to the park, up through this (the steep way) then on Major Hornbrook up through to Long/Clear/Ridge/-views, over the fence where the bath used to be, and on up through the cute wee lambs on Britten. Pete not been on the bike a lot in the last 6 weeks, neither had Nelson really either (still a whippet tho)...
Around the front of Britten at the top and over the fence for the short climb up onto the descent of Mt Pleasant track down to Cavendish Saddle. From here, up the steep walk track for a start (old lower zigs overgrown), cutting right, through the tightly sprung gate onto the old zig zags, more of them than I ever remembered, up the back of Mt Cavendish and over through behind the Gondola building. Onto the steppy track, I took the lead, and we bomboed down, then took all the lines through over, cleaning all but a couple of spots, to the Bridle-top. Through here and straight up the road.
At Castle we schluffed up onto the Tors track and took a short break - snack, feast on the view, and to allow a couple of runners through on their track. Off again, I led the way, and we headed across and down through the good tech - dabbing the usual(s). Across onto the walk-track-above-the-road, enjoying it's flowy tech around til we got to the gap in the fence to climb up to the top of the Pirate Duncan track.
Picking our way over the top, was bloody hard to see where the line used to go. Obvs not many people are using it of recent times. The worn-in track near the fence seems to have seen some use, but the tech offshoot lines not at all. Nice run down the easier bits, then we diverted up to do the wooden feature which Nelson dropped, I detoured around and Pete baulked up on. Down then sidle up onto ridge and fun tech rock Alex' stylez. Very enjoyable. Lower down, into the grassy bits, really hard to work out where the lines were, found a couple features we used to drop down but no way to piece them together. Over the fence into the trees, a well trod line down through the right hand top across then down into jumpszone.
Out the bottom, down next to the horsey paddocks, mud, then split from Pete around through Heathcote under the railway down past Ferrymead, brief play in new pumpzone and back down BridlePathRd to bridge and cars.
A rather interesting classic style, up around and down - 16.36 kms, with 713 m elevated.
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