MTBBerkhamsted goes jumping

 Pics by www.englishbayphotography.co.uk

About once a year I grab my little DMR jump bike, blow the cobwebs off it and take it to Chicksands to remind myself I`m too old and scared of hurting myself to be messing about trying to mix it with the crazee kidz on the dirt jumps.

So, last week Polish pal Lukasz and I headed down to Chicksands and hoped there wouldn`t be too many nutty back flippin  teenagers there to show us up. Well, show me up, Lukasz actually being quite good at jumps and stuff.

The car park has doubled in size since I last went and it was full by mid-morning on Sunday, indicating the trails themselves would be busy. And sure enough there were plenty of riders on everything from titchy jump bikes to full on DH rigs.

 

 

We started on the dual slalom track, the ground soggy and tacky but not too bad and the old dual actually riding pretty nicely. A good few runs and we headed over to the more recent 4X track, feeling a bit nervy on the bigger jumps but the speed coming as the surface dried and got faster.

Then they fired up the proper air-powered start gate and we could pretend we were proper racers! Lukasz was finding it heavy going on his weighty downhill tyres but we had some good elbow-to-elbow tussles on both the 4X and dual tracks, at one point touching tyres mid-air on one of the tabletops! A quick explore of the dirt jumps and north shore ticked those boxes, the woodwork suspiciously green and greasy and best avoided.

 

 

And the cool pics? These are from Steve at English Bay Photography, who was there with a proper flash set up on the dual track. All it needed was a few people with cowbells and klaxons and it`d have felt like a proper race! If you're a regular at Chicksands check out his site - there's a good chance he's got a snap of you too! So, the DMR is now back in the shed and unlikely to turn a wheel for another year. See you there in 2011!

Dan

Links Chicksands: http://www.chicksandsbikepark.co.uk/

Photos www.englishbayphotography.co.uk/