With a distinct lack of rain recently, Hurley has dropped down to one gate. While I love being in my boat kayaking, a one-gate Hurley session was not particularly enticing, so Saturday saw our first visit of the year to Hambledon weir. On Friday night, a plan for the weekend was put forward which would see Tim, Martyn, and I enjoy Hambledon on Saturday afternoon, before heading back to Martyn’s for a night out in High Wycombe before heading out for a cross-country bike ride on Sunday afternoon. On top of this, I was planning on purchasing a new boat – a Jackson SuperStar.
I used to own one of the original model Superstars, but this was slightly too small for me and, at the time, I was far from being able to utilise enough of its capabilities to warrant the suffering my feet endured. I replaced this with a SuperFun at the start of 2008 and was perfectly happy with my decision. Well… I was. That all changed a few weeks ago at Hurley when Peter suggested that I have a go in his, new model, SuperStar, which has a bit more footroom than the original version. As soon as I got it onto the wave I was hooked – the boat is simply amazing. It was so loose and easy to throw around. I have been working on my blunts since the autumn, with a limited amount of success. With my first ride in this boat I was able to get them going straight away! I know these moves are possible in SuperFuns, but they are much easier in the SuperStar!
My new boat
The wave at Hambledon on Saturday was not really retentive, although on occasion both Martyn and I managed rides of a few seconds! As I have written before (Driving an F1 car over a ploughed field), paddling at Hambledon can be a bit of a bumpy ride. Even on Saturday, when you couldn’t really surf the wave, the attempted rides where still bumpy. The water comes through the weir at a rate of knots – much faster than at Hurley. Added to the surges of water that comes through every few seconds it makes for interesting times.
Martyn trying to catch the wave
Martyn happy after catching the wave for a couple of seconds
After a few hours trying, and mostly failing, to catch the wave, we decided that it was beer o’clock and therefore time to leave and head to a place where they serve refreshments in the form of curry and beer. After possibly a few too many alcoholic beverages it was decided it was time to call it a night, especially as we needed to be on top physical form for our bike ride the following day.
Sunday dawned with a little headache, just in time to watch the build-up and start of the Malaysian Grand Prix and the realisation that we had to be fit for our ride in only a few short hours time. Before heading to the curry house the night before, we had scanned through the ride-guide and selected a difficult looking ride with plenty of uphill to keep us on our toes! The way I was feeling made me start to question the sanity of our decision!
We arrived in Woodcote, the start of our ride, at about 2pm to meet James and Andy. After getting ready we set off down the road, full of energy. It wasn’t long until we turned off the road for our first taste of single-track descent, scooting down between the trees and over the roots and rocks whilst doing our best not to fall off. A few km on the road followed and it was not long afterwards that we made our first big mistake. We missed a turning onto a bridleway and instead climbed a particularly nasty hill on the road. We continued up the hill and along the top still looking for this turn-off before concluding a mistake had been made. Martyn took a look at the map and thought he had worked out where we were and how we could get back on the right track. Following his directions, we set off again. However, it was not long before we were confused again. We tried to work our way back to the route, before realising that we were no-where near where we thought we were on the map! Having sussed out exactly where we were, we set off again. Riding along the ridgeway it was not long before we had our first off-bike experience of the day. First-off Andy messed up a short ascent and came unstuck, but Martyn was soon to trump that. Coming to a stop, he failed to unclip his shoes from his pedals and slowly toppled to one side into a nettle bush. He would have gotten away with it had Andy not rounded the corner just as he extracted himself from said bush! Aside from one more ‘not quite on the route’ period, the remainder of the ride was relatively uneventful and we rode back into Woodcote about 4 hours and 30+ kilometres after setting off.
I was somewhat surprised when I woke up on Monday morning not to find my muscles aching from the day before. That was the longest ride, by a considerable margin, that I have undertaken since sometime last Autumn. Here’s hoping the pain doesn’t set in later in the week!
More photos from Saturday are available at http://photos.andywicks.com/Hambledon4thApril2009