Groovy ride with Nelson tonight. Drizzle had started to push on the blustery wind on my way home from work, and I nearly called it, but he said it was fine at his place so we figured we'd manage...
Got to his and it was fine, so bikes on his car we shunted up to Upper Major Hornbrook where it was humid and very windy, easterly/nor-easterly. Hit up Britten, not really knowing where to until we got to the top of there... Decided on Castle Rock, so off we went around top of Britten, staying high, then up Broadleaf to get to a nice blast down towards Cavendish. Nelson OTB'd not long into the overgrown, twisty, rocky singletrack. No harm done, so onwards, and I didnt get any flow on until we were on the long traverse towards the west, nice tail-wind behind. Nearly lost it on the fateful corner of time's-past, but kept it reigned in and we were over the stile and down to the saddle in good time.
Up the ziggy zaggy to the top of Cavendish, around behind the building and into the steppy steppy rockville down to Bridle-top. All good. All fun. Although I dabbed a fair chunk of some sections. As we climbed to Castle the cloud lowered, the wind pushing hard, and we dropped into slicky rocks and drizzle driving into the eyes making for some seriously blurry descent. Sketch was the way. Greasing gingerly around the hairpins and between, then Nelson powered off on the climb while I was committed to muppetry, slip-pinging all over the rocks as I ascended, rolling out to the road to where he was waiting.
We ventured around under the gondola. Nice and calm out of the wind around here, then full facial blast around the corner, but only briefly - finding that a little further up the road it was sweet calm again. Weird wind direction. The drizzle certainly wasnt relenting tho. Low visibility up around the road through the cutting, a couple of cars encountered, then dropped off into Britten, for a keep-it-to-the-lowest-common-denominator roll around in the slick rocks. Full blast wind around the outside edge, then down the new(ish) sprayed in trail to the VeeTwin descent, which we just took back to the car, wetter and wetter as we descended. No mudguard on Nelson's bike meant his face was splecked up good.
Surprisingly miserly 10 kms, but with 457 m climbed, not a bad climb:distance ratio
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