Ainis

Jay

Pete

Andy

Chris D

Jason

Terry K

We know you're out there, Earthlings, but have you gone off Sunday rides? Yet again the turnout was scarce but for the few that bothered there was plenty in this "unusual" ride to please. We started away from Jedburgh town car park at 1030, ducking under the A68 and crossing the little bridge over Jed Water before hitting the Jedforest Trail north with a gentle upslope for the first mile or so.

Oh, before I forget, Pete graciously pointed out to me that today, probably historically, hardtails outnumbered sussers. What he meant to say was pricks outnumbered men.

Once we'd sampled the superb opening singletrack behind Andy on his rapid carbon Rocky Mountain hardtail we turned steeply down towards the A68 again with that ultra fast rough dual descent enough to make you cry, for some because of the wind hitting your eyeballs, and for a Gollum the thought of losing all that hard-won height almost immediately. At the bottom, the six in front of Terry turned right and vanished, while he watered a tree and awaited their return, as he wanted to turn left!

Regrouped, we were off on skinny tarmac back towards the town looking for the way across the main road and up into the hills to the west. Checking map and GPS we discovered where we needed to be and shuffled along in front of the Woolen Mill, past the rugby ground using the trail at its edge then rising again to cross the '68 one more time.

This put us in the woods and a brilliant singletrack climb which seemed to last forever, but it wasn't so steep as to completely drain the old legs. Emerging onto tarmac at the far end we decided to trust the published directions rather than past knowledge and found ourselves at the "wrong" end of a fast singletrack with jumps and berms which at least three of us remembered doing in the opposite direction a few years back. So when we got to its end, mainly uphill, Terry suggested we soak it up again in the proper direction so we enjoyed a fast blast back the way. That left us unsuccessfully seeking a different return path so we had to use the same bit for the third time in 15 minutes to get us on route again. No problem though as its a nice trail whatever your speed through it.

The remainder of it isn't quite so entertaining though, with horses and rain over past months creating a bumpy, heavy surface that sapped our energy until we cleared it and found yet another entertaining section with trees in very close attendance. The to-ing and fro-ing took its toll on the clock and midday passed without us noticing. However, a short time later Andy did figure it out and we found a nice little clearing in the trees for lunch.

Out of there around 1400, Jason suffered a hole in his rear tyre. That took a little time and effort to get the hole sealed but at least we didn't need one of those funny tube thingies. Another quite long, arrow-straight singletrack took us to the far side of these woods out to the south west of the town and then a short descent led to the start of a long, hard pull past Dunion Hill up to the radio mast at Black Law. We had planned to continue south from here all the way down to Swinnie Plantation, but the time and the black clouds approaching on the southern horizon had Terry changing the plan. So instead of hitting the open moorland into the wind, we chose to skirt the edge of Merlin Dean and true to its name it provided a magic singletrack descent with natural obstacles, berms, jumps and boardwalk all the way down its length. Got a very deceiving vid of Chris splitting trees here but it doesn't really do him justice.

That left us with just the return run down into the town to complete the ride and the route we chose, almost accidentally, provided a very fast, steep and racy end to the ride before we stopped for a pic with the Abbey as backdrop. Andy's bike PC clocked about 34k if I remember correctly (so probably not) and we finished at 1500. I've also missed out substantial chunks of the ride here, but it's all gone now. I do remember it started raining just as we left Jedburgh and we piled into the cafe at Rochester for coffee and cake, very nice.

Pix here.