Puddletown woods, camera testing

It feels like ages since I've been out for a good mountain biking session, but today I put that to an end. Ewart and I headed to Puddletown woods in Dorset. A great place for some DH, Freerideing, 'Shore and dirt jumps. With masses of trails and masses of styles of trail there is loads to choose from.
We started off with some straight forward flowing trails and jumps, on one of the open sandy hills. Check out the videos below for a taster.
Then we headed over to one of the other hills, and had a quick ride on the dirt jumps. Where I crashed lots!! Then it was on down the hill to the Northshore. It was the first time I'd been to the shore here and I was impressed by what we found. Unfortunately the camera batteries had started packing up by this point and so I've not got anything to show for it! We also managed to find some Monster Big 'shore that was still under construction. It looks like it'll feature a 10+ drop off when it's finished, that pretty big!!!!
The trail that flows through the shore, named creepy hollow, is really good, lots of small sections of shore, and lots of swooping turns and drops. Brilliant!
Then after a quick ride on a few other trails, and a quick jump session on the 'bmx track' section of trails, we headed back, via a great sandy sweeping trail back to the van.
What a great days biking, why haven't I been doing this all summer!!

Some of the new BIG shore

The Big shore

Ewart stood below the unfinished BIG drop off





I've also been testing out the new Go Pro digital hero camera. Its a small waterproof, shock proof camera, capable of stills, video and stills sequences. All these pictures and video are from it. Next I'll be water testing it. Then I'll give it a proper review.

Playboat in the surf

Well after waht feels like a summer long flat spell some swell finally hit the south-west. Shame it came with howling onshore winds! The north coast looked chunky but pretty messy, and I decided that I couldn't face a long drive for some poor super on shore surf. So instead I bimbled along the south coast, checking out a few spots, they were either really clean but tiny or moderate sized and messy. So in the end it gave in and went to Bigbury, where it was just about cross off shore, but blowing a gale.

Setting off on not a bad looking wave

The wind was so strong the van was rocking on it's suspension in the car park, and out on the water I had to paddle non stop just to stay in one spot! It also brought home the reality of 45 degree feather playboat paddles, great for playing, but terrible in a head wind!

I managed to get a few good waves, and even a few good moves, but after an hour of non stop paddling I was shattered!

Launching a big bounced blunt

Mind you the wind surfers were loving it, ripping along, surfing into the beach then charging out back to do it all again. One chap was getting some major airtime, and really knew how to pull a good cutback. But there did seem to be one downside, it they fell off inside the break, they then had to sort out their rig and try and do a water-start in between getting pounded by the waves! After seeing that I decided that while the air time looked good, the beatdown looked horrid!

Some old dude on a windsurfer getting a sweet floater

Video!

Well if all goes to plan, above should be an old bit of video of paddling at the the Pots. Hopefully the new Video hosting part of blogger will work and I'll be able to share a few bit of video with you.

Here goes, fingers crossed!

It's been a while

Hey there Blogging fans. Sorry it's been a while since I've really blogged anything, but my summer has been a bit slow, and I've not really been up to much. But heres a bit of a catch up of what happened in the last couple of months.
After a terrible start to the 'summer', endless rain but nothing paddleable whilst I was free, and all the local mountain bike trails horrid and muddy, I finally got something sporty done and went to France paddling (see my previous post!). I also went to the Eden Project to see Lilly Allen, wich was awsome, I can recomend going to see a gig at the Eden Project, it's great!! Since then though things have been thin on the ground again. I've been trying to paddle at least once a week, but it's mainly been flat water, just messing about in my play boat, so nothing really blog worthy. I've been out on my bike a few times, but not often, and I seem to have been unable to hook up with anyone else for a good riding session.
There were a few wet days towards the end of August that saw the Exe come up, and the mighty Pots show itself, check some of the pictures, for the second, and lower days padlling.
Since then I've entered the world of Kayak fishing, and it's brilliant, check it out on Ewarts blog at http://www.3bsports.blogspot.com/ I've also been out biking on Dartmoor and at haldon recently, but more bad weather has meant that the camera has stayed safely tucked away in the dry.

Some of the Haven Banks boys ripping up the Pots, in August!!!!!

The Eden Project is an awsome venue, and Lilly Allen rocked!

Well thats all for now, but hopefully more will follow!