One of those days...

Occasionally every cyclist will have "one of those days" where you should have left the bike in the shed and just watched a bit of telly with a nice warm drink. Sunday's ride was one of those days. The ride had serious potential to go wrong from the moment I opened the front door with pouring rain and an evil wind greeting me in conditions of 2 degree above 0.

Half an hours drive later we parked close to the trails and got the bikes out, gearing up ready to go. As we began to climb towards the trails the ominous sight of a river running through the uplift path should have been a large warning sign! Regardless we pushed on and soon arrived at the trailhead after eyeing up some rather large (read 20ft+) drops and deciding to "hit them next time". We began to pedal down the trail which although chalky and wet was running surprisingly well however we soon had to stop to remove our goggles that had become overwhelmed in the appalling conditions rather quickly! The rest of the trail passed without incident and we got to the bottom coated in mud and feeling like Danny Hart after his race run at Champery (google it!) having ridden at a fair pace over wet and new terrain.

Soon after things began going downhill quickly as we got soaked to the skin and began to cool down. Despite out best efforts our temperatures continued to plummet and after a couple more runs we called it a day. The final descent was by far the best as we plastered down the footpath we had climbed earlier that now resembled a river, grinning from ear to ear and smashing it flat out! We reached the bottom to find out the road we'd ridden was also rather lake-like and so we plastered down that doing our best to soak each other in the process!

We grabbed lunch from Truffles in Steyning (who deserve a big thanks for not minding 2 muddy mtb'ers coating their shop in gunk) which was completely delicious and much needed but we were still freezing and not really enjoying ourselves. At this point we called it a day as a legendary, memorable ride but one that would have got dangerous had we continued it!

Overall, Steyning downhill was great fun to ride and I can't wait to go again once the weather improves: there are some big jumps there I want to perfect but in the freezing rain it's less than fun!