Most recent activity
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I finally got out for a proper explore of Redlands. As @t_w suggests, there are some pretty mega and steep trails round there. It's not often I go out purely to lap a hill and ride some trails, I'm normally more into the crank out a nice loop and link some bits up kinda guy, but with the fork still freshly serviced, slackerizer headset recently installed and some new pedals, it felt like a good day to push myself.
Also enjoyed having Test Match Special in my ears for the climbs and my first post lockdown pint at the plough. Almost felt normal out there. Apart from the strange 'le blanq joyride dining club' refuel stop outside the pub. Proper golf club cycling.
Pick of the trails for me was certainly Black Brook Blast. Swoopy technical fun at the top, some tricky chutes in the middle and another swoopy fun bit at the bottom. Smiles for miles.
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Looks good, but think you need to:
"Sort that brake lever position out!"
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I've finally tracked down the publicly available dataset - If anyone is interested, the 'figure 9 tab' in this spreadsheet is the one that apparently gives you Tier 1&2 positive test rate per 100,000 pop by local area.
Yesterday was the first time they published this data. I'm reassured to see that over here in Kingston we're right towards the best at 1.1 per 100,000, which means we did have somewhere around 2 positive tests in the week of the 14-20 June. Actually looking at what was previously published, we had no new cases that week (Tier 1) so all the new cases were in Tier 2. Not sure how much I trust the new stats though. Some have serious questions over how London boroughs in general seem to be doing unexpectedly well.
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The pillar 2 testing / results debacle is insane. It seems we actually couldn't be further from having a "world class track and trace" system. Somehow, officials in Leicester only learned they had 90% more positive cases than they thought 11 days after Hancock said they might have a problem.
FT article here - wasn't paywalled for me today, but seems a bit random.
https://www.ft.com/content/301c847c-a317-4950-a75b-8e66933d423aI'd been reassured recently that our borough was averaging less than 1 case a day over the past couple of weeks. It appears that's absolute crap and there is no way to see how many positive cases from randoms in the local community have been cropping up. Why is the government continually publishing meaningless numbers? The ONS needs to give them an absolute kicking for this.
The article I've linked still doesn't make complete sense, as the final para seems to suggest local authorities did have access to this data via some dashboard, but I can't square that with the fact no one seemed to be actually using it. What an absolute shit show.
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Good stuff. Just a set of tubeless gravel kings away from perfection!
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The air forks are the ones to look out for. This suntour one is specced on a few high end 24in bikes.
https://www.bike24.com/p2233414.html
I also worry it will just end up being left out in the rain / worry locking it up outside school (and in the rain).
Another one is the Spinner Grind forks, but seem hard to get hold of now.
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To be honest, I'm sort of the same, although it's only about 10 years of pootleing around that area for me.
Trail forks is just the best way to check out what you've been missing out on / hidden new spots. I'm not really into Strava as I rarely record anything.
I tend to pick a loop, then use trail forks to see if there is anything good I've missed in the past. The irrerverant trail names serving only as something easier than trying to explain where it is...the only thing trail forks is missing is an OS Map overlay (or similar) so you can find your way to some of the ones that just start in the middle of a wood. The map layers they have can make it hard to work out where some bits are without some local knowledge already.
The China pig trail off box hill was new to me. In the past I've just blatted straight down Juniper bottom on the bridleway, never realising there is an awesome swoopy single track about 300m to the right.
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That is where it goes, but according to trail forks, flinty badman is further west and drops down towards Chapel Lane/ into the valley. That's still on the list, along with Golden Nugget, which is in between and finished half way along the Ranmore Common Road climb.
It's all on trail forks. I'd be lost without that app.
Hmmm, don't think so. Not sure I found that one. It was pretty solidly woodland everywhere.
Half way down the inappropriately named "Turning Japenese" the woods got really dense and very dark. I realised then the name was related to what you had to do to see where you were going...