We had two meeting places tonight, Houghing Jax and Matt The Camera led from Langdale. Pickering Dave led on his home turf. Boy, not quite what i expected.

I thought we would have a fair bit of road before we hit dirt, but no. Within seconds of leaving the car park we were off. First a roller coaster, which most of us would have been happy to ride around a few more times, but no we then got tree routes, and boy does Pickering do BIG when it comes to tree routes. Brendon and Nigel lapped it up, the Pickering 3,( looking even more handsome  tonight!) flowed along well, the rest of us rolled, dabbed, fell off, walked but got thru. Desperate Dan, was testing a Giant 29er, it's safe to say that he wouldn't recommend the tyres. It seemed every time we stopped he let a little more air out in a desperate (hence new nick name) attempt to get more traction, by the end he was running on empty but still no grip. We then hit the woods and boy does Pickering do MUD! Great fun tho. We crossed a bridge high over a fast flowing river with some very worn and tricky steps and a rather nasty gap and big drop to the left. We all carefully walked our bikes over the gap, amazingly  Nigel choose to hop down on his bike off the bridge but  Brendon topped that by bunny hopping off in style! We then climbed, descended, climbed, desended, hit mud, hit rocks, no one fell in the river, but then Tedman wasn't there! Ravenscar Chris, Father Baked Bean( great to see him back out) and myself spent some time looking for the line thru a rock garden. There wasn't one. Sandwich Chris and Brendon seemed to think there was a requirement to ride 50% of the route on one wheel, there wasn't. How do the do that? And talk at the same time? I thought only women could multi task?! Too Tall Tom breezed through it all, tho i did catch him gazing enviously at Desperate Dan's wheels once or twice! The end was a long Debbie Downhill ( that means up as well as down) to the cars. There was an off road option but it meant more mud and some nights you can have too much of a good thing. We will do it next time! Thanks for a great ride Dave 

good ride, thanks to everyone for come out to pickering .

i tried to put a bit of everything in to keep everyone happy

Hi all nice to see u at the pickering meet was a good ride bits for everybody, well dan wot can i say let u hav the hill make u feel better for the race i wasnt 10 mins behind you lol  roll on april, me,stu,tom had a good 25 mph back to town had brill ride thanks dave good to see the rest of you happy riding.

Nice one, Rich. Yeah, roll on April.  Plenty of time for trash talking and talking up our chances before then. Can I start? I was freewheeling at 24mph.