Exercise Border Dash 3

Don’t mention the “R word”! Famous last words before a trip out to North Wales in winter.

Rainy or not though, it has some of the best mountain biking routes around, accompanied by breathtaking landscapes so good you’ll forget it’s even cold. Add in a number of great personalities and a bit of takeaway food, and you have muddy smiles all round. Exercises like this are a great way to get to know people within the RAF Cycling Club, and being relatively new to it, I jumped at the chance when I heard that there was a trip to such a great location.

Friday 7th December came quickly; approximately 24 members of the club filled vans around the country with bikes and kit, and headed off for North Wales where we all met in the small town of Dolgellau. I shared a lift thanks to Ian Hollington and our van of four arrived mid-evening to a cottage full of smiling faces, pizza and Chinese take away.

After an early start Saturday morning we were off to the renowned Coed-y-Brenin trails, where after a quick “team photo” we were straight out up the hills, splitting into two groups based on speed, with qualified leaders in both. Whilst I had no ambitions to go in the fast group, the second group definitely held a respectable pace over the weekend, despite various mechanicals! I snapped my chain not far into the first days’ ride and Mark Goodacre managed to “pringle” his rear wheel on some of the many large rocks on offer-a fine job he did too causing many a grin, and a visit to the local bike shop for himself. Not only are the hills in the area a great test of fitness, but the challenging man-made trails can be very technical - a good test of both rider and bike (and kit planning!)This added to the atrocious weather which can make rocks very slippery. Club member Rich Elder brought a civilian friend (novice mountain biker) along for Saturday, who did a great job of getting “stuck in” despite at least 7 crashes!

The groups met up for a late lunch sodden and muddy from the mornings’ ride. I was famished but smiling - a mixture of high speed, mud, rocks, jumps and drops really does get the blood pumping. We all refuelled on a mixture of jacket potatoes, cakes and coffee at the fantastic trail centre, before heading back to dry off our kit, whilst some hardcore riders stayed out for more.

After showering and sorting out our soaking riding gear, we all headed into Dolgellau for some food, accompanied by plenty of banter about the days’ events. Back to the cottage to fettle with the bikes, and then return to the pub for more banter and to relax in the dry...

Sunday morning start was another early one, with but a few casualties from the previous night. We headed off to the stunning Penmachno trails in Betws-y-Coed where we again split into two groups and headed straight up a considerable climb. The climb backed off and it was a treat to find some brilliant challenging single track, albeit with a worrying “edge of the world” drop on the right hand side. Still, mountain bikers don’t know what fear is so we all hammered down the trail doing our best to predict what was coming next. Unfortunately, Brian Crossman couldn’t have predicted that his seat post clamp bolt would shear soon after, cutting his riding short for the day.

A lot more climbing ensued, but we were rewarded at the top by fantastic views and then spoilt by some brilliant but treacherous down hills, made even worse for the clubs’ web guru Cpl Ged Doyle as by this point he had no brake pads left!

All in all that was a great finish to a great weekend-lots of credit due to Rents (SAC Richardson) for organising it all and displaying complete lunacy/great fitness by riding a single speed bike up all those hills. Helped by the fact that mountain bikers are usually all round good chaps anyway, the club really benefits from a non-elitist approach, which does not mean in any way we don’t have great riders, it just means we encourage developing ones and are always after more! It’s as extreme and challenging as you want it to be and training like this really helps bring peoples’ skills up for competitions, which in turn can only lead to good publicity for the RAF, after all-the club is a brilliant way to advertise the RAF to the public whether we’re flying past a crowd at a race or covered in mud and smiling at the end of a trail.

Rain?!? It’ll take more than that to put us off.

SAC Wilson
RAF Lyneham