Sunday saw us travelling over to Holmbury Hill for some fun on the dusty dry trails that have suddenly appeared everywhere.

The plan was to make the most of Dave and Jem’s new Orange Fives and have a morning of Mountain Biking fun in the Surrey Hills singletrack.

Unfortunately, that fun lasted approximately 30 minutes as we barrelled down the first proper descent of the morning on Park Life (aka Yoghurt Pots to some). With Dave leading the way on his brand new Orange Five there’s a tricky section where the trail turns sharply but briefly uphill. A calamitous combination of downward gear changing and vigorous pedalling forced the Shimano mech to cry “enough already!” as the chain caught, wrenching the mech round and brutally twisting the mech hanger.

And that was that for Dave. It transpired that the hanger was too damaged to put back into service so Dave had a solo gravity-assisted trip back to the car. Not a good start to the morning and he had our sympathy. I’m sure he’ll expand on his feelings and his thoughts on how we can avoid a similar outcome again in due course.

After that, we headed off to try and find the Reservoir and Barry Knows Best (again, aka Reservoir Dogs to some). After a bit of noodling on some promising trails we managed to find it but not before Jem had performed a comedy off by storming into an unseen tree stump that was sitting right in the middle of the trail.

Barry Knows Best was terrific as usual and I was having a lot of fun on my On-one which has finally been pressed into service now I have officially retired my Marin Rift Zone. I’m still getting used to the hardtail kick from the back end and this resulted in my launching myself over the bars in a high speed miscalculation on some of the sharp dips on the final trail back to the car park. Fortunately I was rewarded with only a few bruises, jarring and grazes.

So, a great morning with the weather turning properly hot for a change and hopefully normal service will resume with Dave’s bike soon.

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About the author

Matt is one of the founding Molefathers of the Muddymoles, and is the designer and main administrator of the website.

Having ridden a 2007 Orange Five for many years then a 2016 YT Industries Jeffsy 29er, he now rocks a Bird Aether 9 and a Pace RC-627.

An early On-One Inbred still lurks in the back of the stable as a reminder of how things have moved on. You can even find him on road bikes - currently a 2019 Cannondale Topstone 105 SE, a much-used 2011 Specialized Secteur and very niche belt drive Trek District 1.

If you've ever wondered how we got into mountain biking and how the MuddyMoles started, well wonder no more.