St Leonards: 3 Rivers Ride

Saturday 19th May saw us return to St Leonards Forest with the objective of riding the singletrack we already know and also exploring a couple of areas that we have skirted around but not dived into. Both the wide chalky fireroads and the wooded singletrack were surprisingly dry considering the rain of the past couple of weeks and shortsleeved shirts and shorts would have been the ideal riding gear. I was rather hot in trousers and long-sleeved shirts.

We followed the loop from the recent Muddy@rse ride including the first water crossing until we popped out on the main drag 100 metres north of Mick's Cross. From here we headed back into the trees and scanned the left for either route into the trees or a deertrack. We spotted something and went in. We were on an old trail that had been used by bikes as many stumps and logs etc had chainring marks on them. On we went until we found ourselves on a narrow singletrack that followed the contours around side of a hill with a stream below us on our left. We assumed this was the stream we had previously crossed and confidently followed the singletrack to emerge at a log bridge across the stream, over the bridge and uphill to the left. We were back where we started! Puzzling. After scanning the map for ages we realised that this was in fact not the stream we thought it was eg our first stream crossing of the day. Undeterred we headed back up the main chalky fireroad looking keeping our eyes open for signs of trail activity. We were starting to get our bearings and realised that there is much more good riding here than we first thought.

At the fireroad crossroads just north of Mick's Cross we headed into an area that we had not previously explored. We soon found a narrow singletrack, initially through trees but then just kissing numerous gorse bushes as we crossed an area of scrubland, across a fire-road and we continued on another twisty trail through the woods. Following this we emerged above yet another stream, over it we went and turned down an interesting looking twisty trail. After approximately 100 metres an air of recognition came over us and we realised that we were retracing the route of the Muddy@rse ride! At this stage we had been riding for 5 hours so decided to call it a day and headed back to the carpark via our newly discovered contour hugging singletrack.

A great ride, the highlight for me was discovering a new belting bit of singletrack that can easily be added to our usual route to make a trail of singletrack heaven. The highlight for my buddy was following me as I blattered along the newly discovered singletrack straight between two trees that on inspection proved to be 2 inches closer together than the width of my handlebars, my buddy arrived laughing loudly and proclaiming that it was obvious that I would not get through the gap just as I was picking myself up from a bog of leaf mulch and water. At least it was a soft landing!