Me old mate James from Pearce Cycles was due to come out and ride the 24heures VTT at Bonnac. It’s only 5 weeks away. But I got an email, he told me…

“I fell off on Sunday and proper battered myself! I’ve broken 2 ribs, fractured my wrist, torn my ac joint on right shoulder, banged my head hard and removed a large amount of skin from my back and side! I can’t remember anything from about 3mins before, till roughly 20mins later and i was only knocked out for a couple of secs apparently!”

Turns out that he was riding his bike down the last part of the Downhill course at Bringewood, over-jumped the table top and nose dived onto the fire road! Ouch! That’s one almighty big jump. Now, the thing is, that normally, James don’t jump that far. He told me that. So what sort of speed he was doing on the take off is hard to imagine. He’s examined his bike, and found that the front brake has failed, and the rear shock is blown. But whether the front brake failed as a result of the crash, or whether it was part of the reason for the massive jump we’ll never know.

“Someone said I overjumped the tabletop and landed straight onto the fireroad, but I couldn’t jump that far on my DH bike, so something must have gone wrong. It’s annoying not knowing, it doesn’t make sense!”

One minute you’re there happily riding your bike, next minute you ain’t.Bonne récupération James!
Take care out there the rest of yous! 🙂

Carla, my wife, lover, friend, life-partner, significant other, training partner, co-driver, manager, consultant, massuese, fabulous cook celebrates her birthday today.

We’ve just got back from a Birthday ride. It’s a beautiful day here in France. Carla set a cracking pace all the way around our 35km loop.

We’ve got a bottle of champers, and some super nosh for later.

Happy Birthday Carla xxx
SB 🙂

Merry Christmas to you all!!!
Off out on the bike now. L8trs yeah? 🙂

A Friday night deep in the heart of the Haute Vienne. More than 200 cyclists and friends are gathered for the prize ceremony for the 2008 season. There’s roadies, and mountain bikers, national champions, regional champions, young stars of the future, and old veterans who are still kicking ass! At the end of the ceremony all the winners are called up on stage for a group photo. Right there in amongst them, standing proud, there is an Englisman. Yep, an old veteran mountain biker with a dodgy shoulder. He’s won the VTT Challenge Competition. 🙂

11 November 2008 will be the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day…. the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning — the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”.

Take a ride through any French town or village, and there’ll be a monument, or memorial to those lost in the First World War. Stop and read the names, and you’ll see that a lot of families lost more than one. Yet the French equivalent of the poppy, the paper cornflower whose blue colour recalls the French sky-blue uniforms, is rarely seen in the buttonholes of television presenters or politicians, and it is almost impossible to find one on sale.

Every year, a dwindling number of first world war veterans attend the Arc de Triomphe wreath-laying ceremony but this year none of the surviving 15 Frenchmen – aged between 105 and 109 – are well enough to take part.

Well, I’ll be doing my tiny bit tomorrow…. sporting a flower and a ribbon. Lest we forget.