KitsuneAndy
New Member
- Location
- Norwich
We spent today cycling around Thetford forest.
Both of us are complete novices when it comes to MTB'ing and cycling offroad other than the occasional gravel trail when we go cycling locally.
I'd consider myself fairly unfit, I'm overweight and dont do half as much exercise as I should, so we decided we'd start on the 'Green' track. Which was well, a nice ride, but fairly dull. (and who had the clever idea of making some of the tracks out of sand? There were bloody dunes in the middle of some of the tracks). Think we did about 6 or 7 miles on the Green track before moving on to the Blue track, expecting this to be more of a challenge. Only it wasn't, it was the same, but longer, not quite sure where the difficulty rating comes from.
We stopped for a bit of lunch and then thought 'we still have some time left, let's attempt a small stretch of the Red track'.
We were a little worried because of the description - "The Red route is a difficult and taxing ride. It is mostly single track winding between the trees and is a step up from the Green or Blue routes. For aspiring cyclists who enjoy a challenge."
Difficult and taxing? No, not really, atleast not in my opinion. But it was great fun, if we'd known how dull the Green and Blue tracks were compared to the Red we wouldn't have bothered with them.
So we will hopefully get back to Thetford soon and our plan is to do the full Red route (we used the shortcut as it was getting on and we had to cycle back to the train station in Brandon). And then move on to the Black route, maybe.
Does anyone have any experience of riding the Black route? They make it sound hard, but they made the Red route sound hard as well....
"The Black Mountain Bike Route is for experienced riders only. It has been graded as very difficult and highly technical. The tracks are narrow and difficult with varied surfaces. There are also very steep rises and decents. High levels of skill, experience and off-road knowledge with a high level of endurance fitness is required."
I'm up for a challenge, but I don't want to die
I think I also need some decent gloves, my hands ache now, argh.
Both of us are complete novices when it comes to MTB'ing and cycling offroad other than the occasional gravel trail when we go cycling locally.
I'd consider myself fairly unfit, I'm overweight and dont do half as much exercise as I should, so we decided we'd start on the 'Green' track. Which was well, a nice ride, but fairly dull. (and who had the clever idea of making some of the tracks out of sand? There were bloody dunes in the middle of some of the tracks). Think we did about 6 or 7 miles on the Green track before moving on to the Blue track, expecting this to be more of a challenge. Only it wasn't, it was the same, but longer, not quite sure where the difficulty rating comes from.
We stopped for a bit of lunch and then thought 'we still have some time left, let's attempt a small stretch of the Red track'.
We were a little worried because of the description - "The Red route is a difficult and taxing ride. It is mostly single track winding between the trees and is a step up from the Green or Blue routes. For aspiring cyclists who enjoy a challenge."
Difficult and taxing? No, not really, atleast not in my opinion. But it was great fun, if we'd known how dull the Green and Blue tracks were compared to the Red we wouldn't have bothered with them.
So we will hopefully get back to Thetford soon and our plan is to do the full Red route (we used the shortcut as it was getting on and we had to cycle back to the train station in Brandon). And then move on to the Black route, maybe.
Does anyone have any experience of riding the Black route? They make it sound hard, but they made the Red route sound hard as well....
"The Black Mountain Bike Route is for experienced riders only. It has been graded as very difficult and highly technical. The tracks are narrow and difficult with varied surfaces. There are also very steep rises and decents. High levels of skill, experience and off-road knowledge with a high level of endurance fitness is required."
I'm up for a challenge, but I don't want to die
I think I also need some decent gloves, my hands ache now, argh.
I honestly could not understand where they got the rating from, we normally cycle more tricky and technical routes to get to Rowberrow Warren where we tend to do most of our mtbing.
But even in bad weather CyB still works because it is very well designed. I love the fact that they have the full range from fireroads to rocky XC. The more technical trails have 'granny stoppers' at the start so don't panic if you seem to be doing an awful lot of climbing for the first ten minutes. 
