I thought id give you a newbie report on a trip to Bedgebury! myself and a friend known as boots decided that we would try our hand at something harder than thetford this weekend as we had some time off so into the car we got and went off to bedgebury!
let me set the scene! its 6.30 on sunday morning and im walking the dog in a torrential downpour of rain! thinking i dont know if im gonna carry on cycling if the weather stays like this! (id only been out twice before both times to thetford) but i slogged on dried the dog and got the car loaded up with 2 bikes an army of tool/food and clothes!
off we went for an hours drive (hour and 10 minutes after we got lost due to some stupid jubilee parade closing a local village we needed to drive through)
arriving at bedgebury forest i thought hey this looks pretty good doesnt seem to be too many hills! so we ready up buy a map and set off on the single track red route there! my god i almost died after the first 10 minutes it was about 400 meters of pure uphill work and my fittness levels are shite so to speak!
so after a few stops up the hill we make it woohoo! down the decent we go! reaching the bottom and finding the start of the single track! wow we head into the first section and are absolutely blown away it was amazing were riding through loads of fast rolling twists and turns, tiny little jumps and just all road awesomeness for us newbies!
then it hits us again! uphill slogs we start trying to get up one and fail miserably i fall off of my bike half way up it and remember its raining i slide ass first down a clay hill covering my self in wet clay which just clogged in everywhere! i think it even got up my shorts!
after getting up letting 3 people past us who have caught up by now and laughing for the next 10 minutes we man up walk up the hill and carry on riding! we then end up finding loads and loads of loose substrate that we have to ride through almost losing it and then we find some mighty big down hill sections (which are probably tiny to all of you guys) at this point im bricking myself thinking shiiiit! im so blatantly gonna crash out on this and break something!
well i go for it and its the most exhilarating thing i have ever done! i got like 2 foot of air off of one of the jumps and was amazing that i stayed up! boots however went ass over tit and ended up with his nuts wedged against the handle bar stem! (YES MY TURN TO LAUGH)
so it goes on and on uphill followed by a downhill and we were loving it but hating it at the same time! the final killer for me was a section which was aptly named cardiac! (aptly named due to the fact that i myself have a heart condition) turns out to be the biggest uphill section of the day! we didnt even attempt it and felt very very tiny when we had to get out of the way for a family with 2 kids no older than 10 making it past up and not even breaking a sweat going up it! #
eventually we make it to the end of the single track and to be honest felt so relieved that it was over! we had some mighty highs but we also had some hellish lows!
we got dry and packed away sat in the car and felt amazed we had got through it! we both decided we would never go back untill our fitness levels were way up! but we do plan on returning!
we head home and im thinking the whole way! my god i bet thats probably easy compared to where some people must go!
so all in all we had a awesome day and its made us want to ride even more but were defiantly going to be sticking to the easier routes for a while before we try our hand at something a bit harder!
we had some video cameras with us and tried to get some footage so once ive checked it and seen if it worked ill post some up if it looks any good!
thanks for reading
tom
sorry if its a shit story but i felt it was worth sharing! oh and we now need to rebuild boot's hubs because they couldnt take the pounding they got 
