South

With things very quiet on the freelance front through end of Sep and start of Oct, i headed south to see my family for a few weeks.
With them living not far from Dartmoor and Exmoor it was a great opportunity to explore some of the mountain biking of the area.
The quantock hills offered beautiful views of the surrounding area, looking out to Wales and further south over Exmoor.

 

The riding there is brilliant rocky forestry track, however, if you are looking for sometinhg harder, over at Triscombe Stone there are at least 30 fairly well contructed down-hill trails, ranging from fast and flowy to big a scary!
I also managed to head over to the trail centre at Haldon Forest, just north of Exeter. This has several long trails of blue and red grade and an optional black loop that branches off the red route.

When the rain arrived a caught up with a few local boaters and headed over to the river Dart. Stonking levels provided big volume with the West Dart and Upper Dart being continuous alpine style grade 4/5 in these levels, and rapids i thought i knew well being unrecognisable to me! At the car park i jumped back on for a super quick blast on the Loop section with some members of Exeter Uni.









It was a reminder that whilst Scotland is breathtaking, there's always some amazing fun to be had in the South West of Britain!