Sneaky day off work to go ride Steyning DH

Me n Rick woke up and saw it was sunny, and both thought one thing, 'Steyning will be dry!'

So we made our excuses, loaded our cars and prepared for probably the worst push-up in the UK.

It was proper hot today, and you have to push up the first field to get to the bottom of the runs, then you need to push up to get to the bowl. Once at the bowl, you need to then get to the top of the runs, so yep, more pushing up, and its real steep too.

Now we are sweating, we stop for a can of Coke Zero before deciding which line to take.

First up, is this Double to Gap set on the far right of the hill.

Steyning DH is made up of chalk and dirt, but mainly chalk and stone, which means its slippery as fuck in the wet, but also slippy in the dry. Its not really a place you want to fall off, which is why we are geared up with protection.

I'm on my Scott Gambler 720 and Rick is on his vintage Demo 9

First hit for me, so was being conservative.

Rick just goes straight into Beast mode.

Next up we found a drop off on a line that appeared to start out as a Purple run, but then surprised attacked us as it turned out to be a Black run haha.

Its like this everywhere at Steyning, it has been neglected, so there are runs merging and crossing over, and its hard to work out which is the right way to go. All the signs make no sense, we think someone has moved them about on purpose.

I managed to crash on a Double on this run. The crash was in slow motion in my brain, I knew I'd fucked up and was looking around for a way out without getting hurt, so I grabbed a tree with my left arm to slow myself down and attempt to jump off the bike but the bike stayed with me and followed me down onto a pile of stones and landed on top of me.

I thought I was badly injured as I couldn't move. But it was because my bike had wrapped around my feet somehow and trapped me.

I was wearing my camelbak at the time as I thought it was a cheeky purple run, and it turned out to save my ass a bit from the stones.

Here is my hurty:

I decided I was going to live another day.

As always, the GoPro was not on for the crash.

We then looked at this monster drop off, which again turned out to be neglected and actually broken (thank fuck for that).

We sessioned the step up for a bit, which wasn't that exciting, and then hit the red run and finished off with the 2 blues.

Average ride, I wasn't on form today, I can only blame the gym yesterday...excuse excuse etc.

Did anyone else get a ride in on this Thirsty Thursday?

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