Divine du Vin

Monday, 23 August 2010

For those of you who stayed away from the Tour du Vin last weekend to avoid the mud - you missed two divine days of MTBO!!  Beautiful balmy winter days with glorious sunshine and dry hard-packed trails. Of course, there were a few mud-holes where the 4WD's had wallowed - I passed one in the mud well past the axles during my ride at Killingworth - but there were almost always dry lines past the mud for us mountainbikers.

And sweet singletrack. Especially at Killingworth - the flowing winding singletrack was absolutely sensational ... even if I did cross one of those pallet bridges 5 times (yes, 5 times) on course 2.  Perhaps I was enjoying the singletrack too much, and made route choices just so I could ride the singletrack!

Denis Lyons set another one of his sublime courses at Wallaroo - subtle, deceptive, lulling you with its apparent simplicity - but then suddenly biting hard when you least expect it with a nasty twist to the route choices.

Simon Nott, on the other hand, created havoc with his dastardly courses 1 and 2 at Killingworth - back and forth from one end of the map to the other, up and down the escarpment ... twice!  All that climbing added nearly an hour to predicted winning times for courses 1 and 2; and saw some tired (but happy) riders at the finish.

Results, splits and RouteGadget links here.

My thanks go to everybody who helped out over the weekend, and before hand, including:

SS6 Wallaroo
Coursesetter / Starts:  Denis Lyons
SI:  Geoff Todkill
Control collection:  Denis Lyons, Mary Fien, Damien Welbourne, Peter Jones, Tim Hackney

SS7 Killingworth:
Coursesetter / Starts:  Simon Nott
SI:  Geoff Todkill
Control collection:  Denis Lyons, Mary Fien, Rob Prentice, Damien Welbourne, Tim Hackney, Simon Nott (all on bikes)