Start/finish point
MTB Riders: Shukri, Bob, Ronald, Frans, Marcel, Tom, Hassan, Biagio & Gail.
We had 9 riders (listed above) for last Thursdays MTB Ride starting at Jiffnain, we set off a little late as you know who was late getting there as always! Frans said the temperature was 44ºC as we set off at a nice slow pace to conserve our energy, we expected and got many changes to the route, firstly by the trails being blocked by trucks & rubble, Frans took the correct route while the rest of us went astray and rejoined him a couple of K’s further on, we then went in through the village with the track half blocked by a new house, then the trail was completely blocked a bit further on by a new house foundation, we found our way around the obstacles and picked up the trail once again.
We rode through the plantation onto what is now a wide graded road, down to the pipeline tracks where there is now a large construction camp and loads of trucks, they are cutting down the Jebels, we think for Magnesium mining.
We rode on through the bushes and had a rest after the short hill climb, we carried on through the bushy section crossing the black top and onto the small mosque where Hassan said we could top up our water but the mosque has been abandoned (or the water machine is broken).
On up the hill and down the other side for the ‘Alf a Nana’ stop under the bridge, Bob stopped at the other end to give room for the others to stop but Frans was anti social and stopped at the other end with most of the riders. On we went encountering several changes en-route, we hit the old quarry graded road where Ronald decided he would return to the cars as an old war wound in his foot was playing up, (hope you are feeling better Ronald).
We rode on through scrap/tyre valley where they continue to dump all the rubbish and onto yet another very wide graded road that used to be a nice narrow trail. As we neared the quarries we came across some weird signposts, then we saw at least 30 or more trucks lined up ready to take away the crushed material to wherever they take it.
We managed to pick up on our small trails again where Biagio had a mishap trying to avoid a thorny tree and went A over T, picking up a couple of bits of dust rash, a bit further on he had a flat, Frans noticed earlier that Tom & Marcel were missing but we saw their tracks as they had taken a short cut, they back tracked to join us and we all rode to the cars together, the weather was much cooler by then and we had covered 25kms, thanks for coming along.
