The Saturday offroad rides were divided into two groups: Those with GS's and those with enduro/trail bikes, or were leading on a GS. I chose to go with the GS's on my trail bike to push them along...
Some of the places we went to I had seen before on my GSA and decided to take a smaller bike this year to see if I could hack it this time, even in the unusually damp conditions we have all experienced this summer. The ride was simply a hoot and nearly all of us had an incident free first part of of the day.
The ride I was on was led by
Unsuitable (Tony), who I had only met for the first time in the morning, and tail ended by
Womble (Dave), who I met last year on my inaugural GSA OffRoading Disaster.
I had ridden with all the others in this group here and elswhere, except for
Michael R1150GS Adventure, and have to say it was a fine bunch of Tossers to spend the day with. It was a fantastic route to follow and another great day to ride some byways in a wonderful part of the country without offending anybody or getting battered on a rocky trail.
There were two 1200GS's, two 1150GS's (each of those teams had an Adventure model), an 800GS and my Yamaha TT600RE (the good looking team on camp
) and we were all on TKC's except Donnie on his standard 1200. Unfortunately for Donnie his Tourances failed him after ten minutes...
On the whole the conditions weren't too bad considering the rain this island has received over the last few months, I was expecting it to be worse, but these trails are used by all sorts of vehicles and they do have a few muddy patches even though the underlying soils are free draining under the right conditions. Before we left in the morning we had been instructed to have our cameras ready for when the inevitable happened...
Michael has no sympathy when on his 1150GSA with TKCs, and a skip full of experience.
So we ride on along similar trails to seen above, and mostly successfully, but the Tourances stop working again and we have to realign Donnies gear lever after his second slip-up (or maybe from the first which he hadn't noticed too much) but he's a tough Geezer and we carry on whilst trying to find the best path or not, depending upon whether you're on a lightweight trailbike or a GS.
The rides through the woods was sublime. It's the smell of the the trees, the mulched surface and the dipping and diving to avoid the branches from the close trees and shrubs. This is the the kind of exersice which keeps a rider bike fit and on the ball and is thoroughly enjoyable. I thought about doing it when stuck on the A11 but decided better of it: I now know that there are places that can be used as shortcuts to get closer to the campsite if the traffic is heavy around Elveden for an enjoyable ride in next year.
Ploughing on through the sand, ruts and sand, mud, ruts and more sand Donnie takes another moment to test his bike and kit on the fly (I'm not picking on you Old Chap, it's just the way my few pictures line up chronologically) and we arrive at some tarmac for a short ride to the next section but there's a problem...
After a few laps of
somewhere I managed to get everybody in the same palce to look at the the 1200's. Donnie has only 1st & 2nd gear, and Unsuitable has a stalling bike at low rev's. Donnie has to bend the linkage assembly behind the frame to cure his gear selection problem...
...and Tony has to reconnect his loose TPS. It tough out here but fortunately we have Womble and MickDB1 to fix the bikes whilst I smoke a cigar and Michael checks his 3G signal.
Cracking on we get to the next trails, after wherever we'd had our mechanical lessons, but Donnie's tyres let him down again and he has a near
face-plant for one last time so we take him for lunch before his unfortunate early and lonely ride back to base: Let me make it clear here that the last time he rode offroad was last year, at this Tosser event, on the same bike with Tourances, and he did a sterling job then and now but, enough was enough. It was me crashing last year, as Donnie did on the same trails, and now I'd like to think that he and I will be ever connected for what we've done and that next time there will be another member to Boxer Beet Club to spend a morning on their arse: Who will that be?
After lunch the remaining riders took on some very damp and nifty byways, much to my pleasure, and we ended up up here before I decided I was worn out and would take my own road back to camp before anything went wrong...
Four bald men in a field with motorcycles.