Myself, Tom, Kevin, Marc, Billy and Lisa made plans to go mountain biking on Sunday in the Blue Mountains. This was before the torrential rain that’s been dousing Sydney for the last week had arrived, so there was a little apprehension as to whether the day would go ahead or not. A decision was made on Saturday night that we were going regardless, though after a night of the worst rain I’ve yet encountered in Sydney, Billy & Lisa decided to pull out.

The rest of us packed all our warm clothes and hit the road for the two hour drive to Blackheath. After some coffee and choc-chip cookies to prepare, we drove to the start of the trail and set about getting the bikes ready. It was still raining lightly, so there was no doubt we were going to get absolutely soaked, however, as Marc had never been MTBing before, and his relatively new bike still looked very nice and shiny, this was a good thing. It would be a proper introduction to dirt!

We’d deliberately chosen a relatively easy ride which led to Hanging Rock, a picturesque lookout over the Blue Mountains featuring a huge rock which looks like it could fall off at any minute. The ride out there was good fun, with lots of water bars to launch ourselves off, though doing so got me a puncture, so there was a brief outage while I got that fixed. Marc was enjoying himself, and his regular bike commute to work meant he had no problems on the fitness front. Indeed, he was fitter than the rest of us since we’d only recently started riding again.

Once out at the lookout, myself and Kev elected to make the jump across to the rock itself. Tom was the photogrpaher, and Marc decided that he would skip the jump since he’s the only one of us with the responsibilites of fatherhood. The jump itself is only about a metre wide and you could easily cross it with a single large stride, but while facing the gap you can see a drop of a few hundred metres into the valley on either side. It’s this drop, coupled with the fact that the point you’re aiming for isn’t flat, which tends to concentrate the mind and make the task a good deal harder than it really is.

Once across, you can walk out to the tip of the rock for a photo opportunity, but here’s the thing: the rock itself is roughly triangular in shape, so as you move towards the tip, you get closer and closer to the massive drop on either side. The result of this is that you reach a point (well I did anyway) where your legs refuse to go any further – they literally start buckling to force you to stop moving – without any concious decision on your part. Clearly my subsconcious mind had mutinied. It’s quite a funny experience!

Back on solid land we retraced our steps back to the car, arriving cold and wet. We’d another short ride planned, so we quickly packed up, stopped in Blackheath for a brief, warming lunch, then continued on to Linden. The ride to Hanging Rock was entirely on fire trail, but the Linden ride had quite a bit of singletrack which was the reason for its inclusion – to give Marc a taste of the real thing.

Torrential rain on the way to Linden almost had myself and Tom pulling the plug, but it had passed by the time we got there. Once back out on the bikes we warmed up again and, after some short fire trail, were soon enjoying ourselves on overgrown singletrack. The other three missed the benefits of my long tights as their legs got whipped by the undergrowth, but that wasn’t going to curtail the fun. We rode for about 40 minutes before deciding that we’d better turn back so we’d make it home to Sydney at a reasonble hour. Once back at the car we deemed Marc’s bike to be an official mountain bike, and took a photo of it covered in mud to prove the point. All in all, a bloody good day despite the crap weather ;-)

Photos