Angmering Park

Angmering Park, just north of Worthing used to be one of our regular playgrounds and from experience we know that it turns into the 'Somme' after rain and during the winter months. Hoping to take advantage before mud-onset we headed there for the first ride in almost two years. The drop down from the carparks above Storrington was suprisingly mud free but we didn't want to put a curse on the ride by suggesting that this may be a good omen. As it turned out our luck was in and there was virtually no mud and what there was we could easily navigate around.

We picked up the usual singletrack that starts near the gate and turn sharp left across the stream before working its way through the trees. Plenty of tree cutting left the route blocked so we cut out to link up with the trail where it crosses a fireroad. This was much better a barely visible trail with a couple of fallen trees and branches to muscle over we blattered it. Then it was straight into the old bomb-hole, over the rooty drop-in and pedal hard to make it out of the otherside into yet more singletrack. We headed south to the trail with the horse jumps that were the cause of much merriment as we rode over them with varying degrees of finnesse. We had so much fun from the fireroad onwards that we did it a couple of times before making our way back towards Storrington with careful balancing to ride along a small ridge in order to avoid both the mud and the bar-grabbing trees.

Highlights included me with a section of sawn tree-trunk that rolled as I tried to ride over it, in a seperate incident I rode confidently up a mound of dug earth while chatting only to be faced with a trench two feet wide and two feet deep, I got the front wheel over but that was it - dirt eating time!