Today Emma and I headed back to Coed y Brenin for the final jaunt of the honeymoon. Emma was going to do the Green route again, I was going to hit the Purple route. We had two hours to both get back before we would go and look for each other.

Headed out on the Purple route. Aim? To not bottle any parts I’d bottled previously. I headed out and it felt good. The first section which was mainly rock slabs, drops, bomb holes and very much felt like the first technical section. It was scary before, now it felt great. I nailed it all and couldn’t even work out where I had gone a cropper before. I headed up through the woods to the road.

I crossed the road and headed up the short s-bend climb onto the single track. It was down hill now. Single track and fast. Very fast. It felt amazing. Weaving up down, left right and really was exciting. The track shoots into the woods and winds hard. I felt lit up and everything came together. I got to the bottom and yelped with delight, causing a couple of other riders at the bottom to look at me funny.

It was time for the climb. It started on a tarmac road and skirted the bottom of the hill. It then went up a track and was long. The whole climb covered 190m in total and my legs felt on fire near the top. I didn’t stop and carried on pacing up the hill. At the top I had to take a photo to show Emma how large the climb was – I added it at the top of this post.

Then came some more fast single track. It was good, fast and quite technical. I was really pushing my limits and could really feel my skills improving. The bike responded to my riding and when I pushed more it responded. It felt great. I was grinning, the prodigy was playing in my ears. This was what it was all about. I then met another track road and continued. It wasn’t until I had hit the bottom did I realised that I had just hit the high-level technical section and blasted it. It was then across another road, another sick bit of single track back to the cafe.

Amazing ride. Huge grins.

I enjoyed it so much that I went and did the first section again until the climb. It felt amazing and with being warmed up, the adrenaline was there, the brain was in action. The ride was amazing. I was absolutely loving it. Going back over it having ridden it earlier I was loving it. The whole ride was excellent (you can probably tell from the gushing) apart from a slight accident involving a boulder, my bike and myself (I walked away from it).

Vital statistics: Max speed: 23.3mph, Distance: 7.42miles, Moving Average: 6.6mph, Moving time: 1.07hr.

This holiday I built my skills and confidence and can’t wait to go play again.

Emma and I did the Green Route at Coed y Brenin.

It was fairly leisurely pace and fairly straight forward going. Was Emma’s first mountain bike ride and she did bloody fantastically considering this is her third real bike ride in the best part of 15 years+. The only tweak we made is to reduce the tyre pressure on her front wheel to make her female hybrid bike less susceptible to the bumps from stones on the route.

Max speed: 24 mph
Distance: 6.92 miles
Average speed: 6.2 mph
Moving time: 1hr 6min

The ride was mostly stone covered woodland road with a few bits of tarmac. The ride was nice and the sun was out. There was some amazing vistas to be had of water falls, rivers and tree covered roads. Here are some photos:

Waterfall 2/3rds the way round

Tree or an Ent from Lord of the Rings?

Tree lined road

Water works. Probably my favourite view of the whole ride. Colours just jump out.

Tonight we celebrate Emma’s achievement with more curry and a bottle of pink cava we have been given. Tomorrow Emma is going to do the Green route again. I am going to go play on the Purple route. Then we say good bye to Wales for this trip and head home. It is Si and Narindra’s Wedding on Saturday.

Last night Emma and I headed out to the only restaurant in Fairbourne: a Bangladesh Curry House.

The atmosphere was good and it felt a bit old school because we were allowed to take our own alcohol. The menu was a smaller set that what you’d get in a curry house in Hove, but the selection was good. We ordered various items between us, I went for a Chicken Jalfrezi.

When it came to paying we had no cash on us, only cards. Explaining this to the restaurant, we offered to go get the money. They refused, instead they said just bring it back tomorrow. I asked them if they were sure – they were. They didn’t ask for our names, where we were staying – we could be passing through for all they knew. This left us both shocked and feeling uneasy at the burden of not paying.

It was crazy but, not the first time we saw this.

When I was trying on some Oakleys and wanted Emma’s opinion, the man let me walk out the shop with two pairs (Emma was outside with the bikes) and didn’t seem to worry. To make me feel happier I took my helmet and backpack off and left it in the shop – I guess in a fit of “I don’t want to break your trust”.

Earlier in the day, another shop let me take a spanner outside to check it was the right size for Emma’s wheel bolts – no questions asked.

It is very odd to see this sort of trust in people nowadays. In Hove, Birmingham or various other places, you’d be forced to leave someone, or a keepsake, whilst the other got the money. Are Welsh people, or the visitors to Wales, more trustworthy? Are we in a pocket of high trustworthiness? Is it linked to the size of the community?

I might have to do a survey. Only after I’ve paid for last nights meal.

Twitpic has concurrency issues.

Several times now I’ve uploaded a photo only to find the result is someone else’s.

I can only assume that someone has screwed up somewhere. I’m just surprised that I’ve seen the bug so many times – both for myself and for others.

Emma and I headed over to Coed y Brenin today.

My plan: get replacement parts for show cleet and go for a ride.

Emma’s: spend some time relaxing at the cafe, doing the cross word and hopefully not walking a trail to find me.

I checked out the rides and went for the quick Purple Route.

I was promised single-track lushness, technical riding, some up hill climbs and big smiles. I was dealt those in spades. Having strapped my GPS to my bike, I headed out on the ride. Instantly it was technical-ish stones and I bottled one bit (currently kicking myself). It swooped and swayed and remained fast. There was a small up hill climb, then into the forest for some fast and twisty single track through the trees. I was grinning like a fool. The tunes were playing. The bike responding. My confidence increasing. This was great fun. It wasn’t until I got to the bottom that I found at some point the GPS had lost its batteries. I put some more in (Captain Spares to the rescue) and put the GPS in my bag rather than on my bike. Then began the long up hill climb. It was fairly easy going but long and drained my legs. I pushed myself to ride to the top. It flattened out then went into some more single track (it turns out that it was pretty much to the end). I was treated with some more technical single track and then some really fast twisty turny track again. There were lots of dips, fast turns and by the end I felt I was a better rider.

Great fun. Great ride.

Vital statistics: Max Speed: 25.7mph, Distance: 4.15miles, Moving Average: 5.9mph, Moving time: 43minutes.

GPS track: (you can see where the batteries came out and where I put new ones in)

Finish shot:

Tomorrow Emma fancies doing the less-technical family green ride tomorrow, so we are going to head over there and do that ride. We might have a cheeky bite to eat and then I reckon I shall do the purple route again. Can’t wait. Good times.

These are the first to surface after the wedding on Saturday, thanks to Lou and Mike.

Nice couple shot:

Hilarious couple shot:

Tucking into some hog roast:

Got married at the weekend. A proper report for that will be forth coming once we have some photos loaded into the internets.

We are about half-way through the honeymoon.

The first day we just crashed. We ate some junk food, had a beer, watched some rugby and Monty Python.

The second day saw us on a bike ride. This is Emma’s first real bike ride so we didn’t attempt anything too crazy. There are some bike tracks from around where we are staying in Fairborne, Wales, so we rode over to Barmouth. The total distance for the ride was 8 miles.

Today saw us on another bike ride. This time we ramped up the distance and rode to Dogellau. Ride was about 20 miles. Was nice going with a slight incline and the wind howling into our faces. We had fish and chips for lunch and a cheeky beverage. The ride back was a nice quick affair, it was a slight decline and the sun had come out and the wind vanished. Was a good ride:

(I left the previous days route in the picture to show how much more we did!)

Emma even managed to nail the “foot out”:

From Pitch Hill.

Went to see this last night with Emma.

Didn’t know what to expect – heard good reviews and bad reviews.

It isn’t outstanding. Where outstanding is the sort of film I’ll watch everyday for a month a love it more at the end.

It was excellent though. I really enjoyed it. Emma said that it could have done with some more editing to reduce the length of the film down. As a person who has previously broken my coccyx, I usually can’t stand staying in a cinema longer than necessary, yesterday the film distracted me plenty enough.

The plot was good, it was nice and gritty and I really liked the character development.

As a disclaimer, I’d never heard of Watchmen before the film came out. I am tempted though to obtain the graphic novel it was based upon.

Since coming back from Brazil (with wind every day), we have not really had a whisper of wind (apart from a few days when I’ve had to work). However, this weekend it blew in big style.

I woke up. It was sunny. It felt warm(ish). I had to drop my bike off to be serviced. Most bike shops will service a bike a month after purchase to re-align the gears, the brakes and make any adjustments required. Even though I’ve made a number of tweaks myself since I got the bike, there was a rattle in the headset and the rear brake needed tuning. As Emma and I are heading off to Wales with the kite kit and the bikes for the honeymoon, I wanted to get it functioning correctly. Damn. I legged it up to Horsham to drop the bike off. Being told it would be ready within an hour, I could feel the wind and decided to leave the bike and blitz it back to Hove.

Got back. Picked up the kite kit, said hello to Emma and then headed out to dodge city.

During the drive over to Littlehampton, I could see the sky becoming more grey. The predicted storm was on its way which mean that hopefully the predicted wind was also on its way. Windguru said it was going to be 28kts blowing to 35kts. Fingers crossed.

Arrived and Karl was out on the water. Jamie and Tom where sat on the beach. A quick sit-rep told me everything I needed to know: it was blowing, it was blowing strong and yes, my 8m sonic would be the kite of choice. I went back to the van, got changed, put my fins back on my board. I headed back to the beach, pumped my kite up and rigged the lines. Got a launch from Karl. It started to spit. Damn. It hadn’t turned into a squall and the rain was here, maybe we were going to be lucky. I headed out determined to see if I still had my sea legs. Put my board on my feet, dropped back – bringing the kite down at the same time – blam. I was lit, the board felt smooth as silk, I sat on the rail and edged nicely. Each and every little wave acted as a very tasty kicker. Everyone I’d hit, quick tug of the bar and lovely soft landings. It was clear how powered I was at how quickly being air born pushed me down wind. I had the biggest smile on my face. It felt unbelievable. I understand why alcoholics must never touch a drink again, once little taste and the addiction returns. I could feel the repressed kiteaholic in me return. Everything felt great.

Until it picked up stupid style.

I could see Karl having problems down wind of me. Another guy further up the tack line was having problems. As I got closer to the beach the sonic started to twitch. The squall, although late, had turned up. It had gone nuking. I couldn’t hold an edge and I was rapidly working out if I could hold the kite or it I was going to have to pull the safety. In the end I popped it about the same time Karl pulled his. Various others followed suit. Things really were starting to get hairy. I’d not felt wind like this since Borth went the wind went nuclear and over 50mph. Jamie came running out into the water and grabbed my kite. I beached it and then ran back to the water to help people in. The wind was blowing so hard that the rain felt like small stones hitting your face. Everyone decided to call it a day. We packed up and went to the pub to pad out the afternoon.

It was excellent to have some social and even better to have it after some flying. I think everyone got their adrenaline buzz. It was also nice to see how well everyone at Littlehampton helped each other when things got interested (for all the bad definitions of interesting). I’m still smiling now.

Anyways, as a first session in the uk this year it was great, and the water wasn’t that cold! Can’t wait to go out again

In conclusion. Last night Emma and I walked up to the cinema to see Watchmen (next blog post). On the way I was blabbering about kiting and the weekend as a whole. Had I not flown, the mountain biking on Saturday would have been enough. Had I flown and not gone for a ride on Saturday? That too would have been enough. But a sick kiting session and a ‘lush’ biking session in one weekend? I’m a lucky boy!