22/9 No Slime Is A Crime!

Steve And Dave Climbing Up To Ditchling Beacon

With a great weather forecast we were determine to make the most of the great outdoors. We were riding a new off road route published by Nick Cotton in his book , 'south east mountain biking'.

Stanmer Tea Stop

Derek On His New Carbon Bike

We started at Kingston near Lewes, Dave HH didn't look too well and admitted that he was nursing a hangover from over indulgence the night before.Derek was looking forward to giving the Carbon mtb he built up himself its first proper workout. We set off towards Lewes but after 5 minutes realised that Dave and Paul were no where to be seen, they had missed the turning on the road. Thanks to the wonders of mobile technology we were soon back together and climbing up past Lewes prison towards Ditchling Beacon. I have been down, but never up this rocky track many times and found the climb much easier than I expected. At the Ditchling beacon car park Paul discovered he had a rear tyre puncture. Once fixed ,we headed south down a track none of us had ever been on before which led to the 'hidden valley' described in the book. We didn't quite have the valley all to ourselves as there were a couple there that we said hello to before setting off again. They were rather surprised when 10 minutes later we bumped into them again having got a bit lost and gone round in a circle! From here there were excellent tracks leading down to the new partially tarmacked track parallel to the A27. The others didn't like this section much but as a lover of any non technical riding on an mtb, I rather enjoyed it. An excellent tea stop in the Stanmer tea rooms awaited us before the long climb up towards the Beacon, only to lose most of the height gained in a long descent  in a 'dogs leg' pattern before enjoying a wonderful steady ascent all the way up to the top of the downs again. On the way up we did notice the hedges had been cut but didn't think anything more of it. All that was left was the long bumpy drop back down to Lewes prison. This is where we found out that some of us had taken some mementos of the cut  hedges with us, as Paul and Derek had three more punctures between them while Malcolm noticed little patches of slime on his tyres where thorns had punctured through. We must have wasted a good 40 minutes overall fixing punctures and have all agreed that we will all use some form of puncture reduction method next year to reduce the time for everyone wasted fixing punctures, popular suggestions were ; slime tubes, kevlar liners or tubeless tyres!
Despite the punctures this was a good 7/10 ride that will find its place amongst our ride catalogue.