Mountian Biking in New Forest

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July 27th 2007

Published: May 30th 2008

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Hanz

Cycling in the New Forest

The group with our trusty steeds

We had all been hanging out for a holiday that didn’t involve walking through the concrete jungle of another European city, so we all jumped at the chance of going mountain biking in the New Forest, on England’s South Coast.

However, our first mission was getting there... I don’t think even one car load managed to get there without getting lost… and then we had to pitch our tents in the dark.
To be honest, I kinda enjoyed it. I hadn’t been camping in ages, so revelled in the night time challenge.

However, the next morning we were a lot more serious and organised, (thanks to a mean cooked breakfast from Team A), while Team B went off to hire the mountain bikes for the day’s adventure. And us, Team E - well, we sat and soaked up the sunshine - awesome work Team E 😊

We had a superb day of cycling around the local villages and freely through the trees and ferns in the New Forest. Through streams, struggled up hills and held on for dear life descending down the other side. I was a bit worried at first, since I had not ridden a bike

Okay Donkey, that'll do

Andy & Hannah pet one of the local wild donkeys

in years... but strange enough, its just like… well, riding a bike!

However, all this fun had to end at some point, and as it was starting to rain, we figured this would be a good time to head back and have lunch at the local pub with another slightly sinister name: The Queen’s Head.

We had a lovely afternoon in the sun at the campsite, playing a rather strange game called ‘Pop It’ until the rain came own, and then played ‘how-many-people can-you-fit-into-the-back-of-a-station-wagon-with-a-keg’. The answer? 9, including Grant who is so tall he almost counts for two people! :p

Although we had the party-car going on, Craig decided we needed more entertainment on Saturday night by sacking Josh’s tent. End result: all of Josh’s stuff, including his sleeping bag, tent (after being ripped out of the ground) and cellphone, got dragged through the mud and stamped on in the muddy puddles - a very thorough sacking indeed.

The next day we had set ourselves one mission: go to Christchurch - how could we go past a place like that? Not surprisingly, it was nothing like NZ. Nevertheless, we all got ice-creams for our journey back