MB Swindon October News Update
By Phil Mayger
Curry Night
Our Curry Night was a great success! We have yet to hear the final total raised from the sale of curry on the night, but we raised £220 from the raffle alone! Congratulations to all who won a prize, and thanks to everyone who came along and made it a top night. A very large “Thank You” to Hargroves Cycles, Red Planet Bikes, The Big Adventure Store, Spoke Shirts , Dirt Divas, The Link and The Oasis for the generous donations for our raffle prizes. You can read the eating report HERE.
Oktoberfest
Our MB Swindon Events Team did the club proud at this years Bristol Oktoberfest. Congratulations to Anna Buckingham for coming third in the 8 hour solo female event, and to Wei Hoang and Les Fletcher for their second place in the 4 hour pairs event. Our 8 hour Male Teams came 16th, 19th and 28th out of 45. A great time was had by all the riders who attended – the full report and pictures are HERE.
We’re hoping to do more events like this next year. If there is an event you think we should enter, or if you would like to ride for us at our next event then get in touch with us or post in our Events Forum. We haven’t called our team a “Race Team” for a good reason – none of us are elite-level athletes (however, we do have some elite-level beer athletes) and we compete for the fun of it.
Upcoming Events
Firstly, to all of our Novice Riders. What kind of novice friendly rides would you like to see over the coming months? Long routes on gentle terrain? Tougher terrain but slow and steady pace? Somewhere local? Somewhere new? Let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll plan something that’ll build your confidence and be a good day out at the same time. All ideas welcome, particularly if it involves a pub!
In addition to our weekly Friday night Croft Trail rides, we’ve got two rides coming up between now and the end of October. Sunday 24th is the club ride at Cannock Chase. Saturday 30th is our Novice Friendly ride on The Ridgeway, leaving Barbury Castle at 10am.
As always, details of these events and more can be found on our Events Page.
Trail Building
We now have 70 tonnes of material on site ready for our big winter trail building push, the aim of which is to surface as much of the trail as possible so it can continue to be ridden throughout winter.
We’ve got build days planned for the 30th and 31st of October. We’ll have the probation service on site on the Sunday to move material around for us.
If you’ve not already seen it, Tom has written a fantastic article on Trail Building which explains the ins and outs of what to expect on our trail building days. It would be great to see more faces come along and contribute to the trail.
The “Triangle” section (signposted as “optional loop”) of the trail is now closed for redevelopment. We hope to have it reopen in time for spring 2011, but of course the more help we get the quicker it’ll get done!