Friston Forest: Twist & Shout

Today saw an eventful ride at Friston Forest. We did our usual route following the marked ‘Technical Trail’ from the visitor centre over the south side of the forest, dropping down the chute to the road followed by the uphill slog to the two bomb holes. The going was tough as the mixture of slippery mud and leaf mulch made every pedal turn an effort.

We rode the route over the tree stump half way up the edge of the first bomb hole and headed for the second where after multiple slips and falls the climb around the tree was conquered. After this we had the straight run back to the car-park on the sneaky singletrack section that leads down from the dew pond. This is my favourite type of riding, singletrack with roots and lots of logs and deep depressions and all the while we were trying to ignore the nettles that were caressing our legs. Before picking up the final blast down the stump strewn section we visited the North Shore area where unfortunately most of it had been knocked down and broken up.

It was on this final section that two events occurred 1) our leading rider had a glorious ‘off’ and 2) we laughed ourselves silly. The tumble was a marvellous gymnastic display, those of us in the following group heard a shout and looked up to see the victim going over the bars while turning the front wheel perpendicular to the bike frame. The rider was undamaged but then we looked at the bike. The front wheel was so badly buckled and twisted that it was jammed against the fork leg and would not rotate at all, in addition a number of the spokes were badly bent and broken. A log 2 inches in diameter was freshly broken into 4 pieces. We deduced that the log had passed through the spokes of the front wheel, hitting the fork and instantly locking the wheel thus sending the rider over the bars. How lucky is that?

We were able to straighten the wheel sufficiently (by standing on the rim) so that it would rotate through the fork legs and the bike could be slowly ridden (without front brakes) back to the car.