MTB- Intermediate Holmbury St Mary

We all woke to a lovely morning for riding in the sun, with light frost in valleys and clear blue skies so we headed off for the surrey hills, or so we thought….after reading Adrian's email  Sue headed for Warlingham! Fortunately she had her satmap and reports she had a lovely ride. This left a few of us in the Surrey hills.

It was great to have Terry out with us after such a long time. Our first challenge was meeting the YHA car park to where our first challenge arose.  It turned out we were not the only ones who thought it was perfect cycling weather. In addition to us at least 4 different groups and a children's mtb club had decided to meet at yha. The cars kept pouring in long after space had run out. We ended up being split across two car parks and in the mayhem we lost Moji, last seen doing a 3 point turn in the grounds of the yha. After some back tracking we found her and off we went.

 

I have to say it was a lovely ride with nice company, sun pouring through the trees pretty good trail conditions. We explored holmbury Hill using long forgotten single track some of which we did on the clubs first single track ride in the area just a few years ago. 

We flowed through woods twisting our way between trees then some, narrow trails through hurt bushes with cheeky hidden drops and dips then more sandy rocky trails with steep exposed ascents. Ever so often I heard people commented  'I didn't know this existed' 'where are we, this is new' we would come across areas people recognised but could not place until we hit good old faithful bkb, running beautiful as ever.

 

We the crossed Walking Bottom and took the short sharp route out and into trails strewn with fallen beech leaves. the deep layer of loose leaves caused a few laughs and the odd tumble as they hid a few obstacles such as  pockets of mud. We traversed Hurtwood past the Carpet Land and old Secret Santa and the looped back up to Super Nova and John Webb and a fast descent to Peaslake and tea.

 

After a nice cup of tea and much to Stuart's delight I was able to show the group a single track ascent up to Yogurt Pots. As trail conditions were so good we did YP twice before our final fast descent down Telegraph where we all finished with smiles on our faces. 

 

Thank to everyone including Sue as our ‘elite warlingham rider’, for a great morning.

Helen

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MTB- Intermediate Holmbury St Mary
MTB- Intermediate Holmbury St Mary