Tuesday 25 April 2017

Social Swinley and Sunshine Spines

There are rides that remind you to enjoy being on a bike. On short notice a friend decided to test ride a new bike he might (definitely will) buy. He could do this at Swinley, so I took the day off and went to help him check it out.

He wanted a playful bike and the Bird Aeris with modern slack angles and a bright orange frame seemed to fit the bill and supported my theory that when you ride the right bike to buy you just know. The thing is that the fun factor easily rubs off when you ride in that way and I found myself popping off all the lips I could find. This meant a slower, more social and relaxed ride, which somehow also ended up being quicker on the fun downhill sections.


We tried some new angles with the GoPro, although plans to use two cameras was spoilt by Joe failing to bring anything to attach his camera to anything, so the result was a little linear, but shows the fun of a test bike, I think.


After a fun, poppy dusty ride there I was off to Dorset. Saturday dawned sunny, but slightly hungover in my case, but with kit on and sunglasses in place I rolled out to link up to a ride I’d last been on over a New Year. Bright, sunny weather brought out the full potential of the Isle of Purbeck and was far better than the sideways hail I’d hit last time out. I slightly misjudged the length of the road ride in to the ride, but I was eventually on the end of a track that would lead me along the spine of the peninsular, dropping in past Corfe Castle and then rolling on out with amazing views towards the end. After several ricocheting downhills and a couple of steep climbs I turned off what I’d done before to pick up a beautiful bridleway heading south. I would like to emphasise that it was a bridleway to reinforce my point to the walkers who tried to block my way through on the basis that it was a footpath. To reaffirm, it was a bridleway.

Quickly rolling through Swanage I climbed onto the ridge along the coast. Rolling along dusty tracks I soon began to climb up to a final viewpoint where, fuelled by a quick lunch, I was able to look along the coast to beautiful coves before flowing fast and loose down to the road. From there it was a case of digging in and getting through the road section back to the hotel, holding on to the memories of the hills as I ground out the last of the tarmac.


Rides on dusty tracks with sunshine soaked views of the sea never fail to leave some pretty amazing memories to think about for the next week and talk about in the pub later.

A

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