Cannock Revealed

Yesterday some of the Knobblies posse met up at Cannock Chase where a few new faces could be matched to Blogger id's :p The initial plan was to hit Follow the Dog and then use DangerousDave's fair knowledge of the area for an explore. However, at the eleventh hour Mick (a local) stepped in and offered to show us noobies around and what a fine job he did. Thanx to Rob and Les for a slightly later than planned start some of us managed to scoff down an early bacon and egg sarny B)

Mick started us off on the FtD trail and then turned us north over to a huge sandpit for a few minutes fun speeding down the drops and some of us xc boys even managed to get some air, albeit unplanned ! We then meandered north towards the cafe in Moulton for a breather and some top nosh, before cranking our way back to finish of the last few sections of FtD. With Mick's help we managed to continue the fun outside the waymarked areas and link in some lovely new sections (to us) of singletrack to the north which definitely help to make this a much more interesting venue. The roaming deer we occassionally glimpsed helped entertain the more eagle eyed amongst us. Even the weather didn't manage to dampen our sprits although towards the end some of the posse were feeling the climbs more than others. All in all, a top ride with some top banter - cheers fella's. Pics here.

Posse: Brumster, DangerousDave, Darren, Dozer, Farqui, Les, Mick, Rob

Weather: started off sunny and not too cold considering the sprinkling of snow on the ground. However, at the cafe stop the heavens opened and doused us all. We manged to miss most of the first down downpour tucking into fry ups and lemon pies but we got pelted with hail stones on the last leg back to the Birches car park.

Mechanicals: Farqui's new Mono M4 pads wailed almost continually for the first half of the ride but the rain and grit helped to wear down the pads to provide some much needed peace and quiet, sorry guys :blush Les manged to perfectly time his 1st puncture to the cafe stop but we thought he'd gotten lost on the very last section when he'd actually managed to acquire another.