Bolsover & District Cycling Club

I slept fitfully the night before ,listening to the howling wind trying to outdo my double glazing and the hammer of driving rain outside.

At 8am my thumb hovered over the send button on a group SMS intended to kill the ride, but then the weather seemed to ease a little...the "get out and ride" devil victorious in a battle over the "daytime TV" devil on my shoulder

As the wife was working, kids were ejected at my mothers and i drove over to the Pines , to park up alongside dozens of other mountain bikers all seemingly with new bikes for Christmas. No sign of and B&DCC riders though !

In due course i was joined by Conor McGuigan, Simon Gaddes and Pete Steed, so the ride was on !

Pete took ownership of the first section, peeling us off the early part of the red route and taking us exploring out into the wider world on an enjoyable route around (consults google maps) the rear of Edwinstowe , looping around Ollerton, on some really enjoyable trails. The ruts did their best to have us off, but other than a few minor slips we all survived

We rejoined the red route at the point nearest the fireroad behind Centre Parcs, just ahead of us was a group of Notts Clarion kids , many of whom i recognised from the Cross racing circuit. They pulled over and allowed us to pass, which gave the perfect opportunity for simon to demonstrate his falling down skills as he went down hard after slipping on a transverse route.In no way did he deliberatley do this in front of a bunch of kids...luckily he wasnt wearing club colours at the time !

Myself and Pete were slightly ahead it this point, hearing only Conors cries of "man down" we paused and looked back , Simon was recovering and appeared to be back on the bike ok so the two of us. continued ahead, pausing at the next marker point.

The Clarion kids passed us by with only a few polite comments about Simons fall, kids these days !....Conor and Simon came back to us a few minutes later.

It appeared that Simon had gone down harder than me and Pete appreciated..hitting his head hard on the floor. It was fortunate then, that Pete had pointed out earlier that Simon was about to leave the car park without his helmet, as it could have been nasty.

Instead Simon seemed ok , but as we progressed he complained of headaches, vision issues and pressure behind his left eye.

From this point onwards we kept a very close eye on Simon.......

........The way we did this was to ride ahead of him on each section as fast as we could, then wait patiently at each marker post for him to catch up, wondering if we would have to ride back the last section to scrape him up off the floor.

Take note that if ever you are out riding with someone potentially suffering concussion that this is the most effective method of being sure that their condition does not deteriorate, none of this modern thinking that you should get them to hospital as quick as possible....

We completed the red route, signing off another enjoyable ride in adverse conditions... Pete bid us farewell as the rain returned to ride home on a softening front tyre. I remebered after he left that i had my track pump in the car (sorry pete)

Conor insisited on buying tea and cakes in the cafe , where we had to fight for chairs , capping off another good ride nearly cancelled by poor weather. Im sure someone said once something along the lines of "there is no such thing as porr weather only poor choice of clothing" and if you are going to ride anywhere on a shitty day, the pines is a good bet as you are well sheltered.

I did keep tabs on Simons condition with a couple of phone calls/texts throughout the afternoon so im pretty sure he survived !....best text him again now