Adventurous Spirit

Sorry it's been quiet on the tandem blogging front......It's purely because of my laziness rather than the tandem being sitting neglected in the corner of the bedroom. On the contrary the tandem has been quite busy on it's travels!!

So what can I report??? Our mountain biking adventures have continued with some lovely rides out in the Pentlands, a trip up to Laggan wolftrax and a great race at Lenachan!!! The poor bicycle has also been dragged around the Hebrides in the wind and rain and made to carry more than the wheels thought were ever possible!!

Since the weather has been getting a little friendlier up here, I have to admit the pleasure of going out in the hills with the bicycle has become a little more obvious. I think that dare I say it, we may also be developing some skills as I do seem to be falling off a lot less! That is excluding the Pentlands ride with Richard on the front where I did fall off an awful lot, but had good fun doing it! We did also almost manage to burn off Gavin Shirley, which I say must be pretty good!!
The scariest thing we have done most definitely is the red at Wolftrax, as we started off on the downhill section I was pretty confident I was going to die, and and then when we got to the boardwalk section I knew I was going to die!! Luckily, I think Geoff had the same thoughts at that stage, as you could just imagine the back wheel and me dropping off the edge- so I did get to walk!!!

The race at Lenachan was pretty hard work, but I must admit I loved it!! We decided to set the challenge of beating all the women in the race so we had something to aim for, although my secret competitive nature meant I was quite keen to beat some of the guys too!!! Going up the first hill was a proper slog but getting to the top, we must have been top 5 maybe, which made it feel worth it! The downhills seemed pretty tricky and we had a bit of a technical problem as we bent one of the chain rings, which set us back, but all in all we came 10th overall and managed to beat all the girls (just!!).

Following the race, the knobbly tyres were replaced by skinny sleek ones, to tackle the mountains of Scotland on the road, but I'll write about that another day!!