What a wicked weekend. After dinner and drinks with our new portuguese friends we had a rather later start to our weekend trip to Sintra than we'd originally anticipated but hey we're on holiday :) We got down to Sintra and went and had another feed of Bitoque by the beach and watched some pretty sick waves roll on in. Then it was down to business, we hadn't come all this way to vege out at the beach so we jumped in the bob sled and headed off up the hill. unfortunately i drew the short straw and ended up driving the first run but oh well, the guys had a blast and were all amping by the pickup point. So we hit up the next track and after ripping down a fast wet rocky single track with crazy concrete round shed things in the middle of the track we made it safely to the bottom. Nothing spectacular about that track just good honest fun. After that we decided to hit up the Beach Track. Well now this track was a different story, starting out with some flat out rocky fire road it then turned onto a very fast very slippery rocky single track with some big ass tomb stones to ruin your day. I stopped half way down the track to check up on Kurt and then headed off, what I had missed while stopping to talk was that there was a dirty little step down gap about 60m from where we were and as I just cruised off I was going too slow to make it and ended up skidding down the landing on my head, fun times.
Sunday morning rolled around far too fast and by 9am Rodrigo and I were on our way to meet up with the dudes from Freeride Portugal. We got to the pick up point and were immediately bombarded by around 35 guys in santa suits. This just happened to be the day of their annual santa ride. While out riding and sitting in the van talking with a couple of the english speaking guys and straining my limited but rapidly growing portuguese vocabulary I was suddenly reminded why I got into dh riding in the first place and why I still love it. The people. Something as simple as a bicycle bringing together people that otherwise would probably never meet. It was cool to see the older guys in this crew looking out for the younger guys and the reality that it is just the same here as it is back home ran right through to the handful of hardy guys who go out after work to build these trails. Big ups to volounteer track builders everywhere, your hard work is greatly appreciated.
We rode some pretty cool tacks and even though I ended up once again on my head I had an absolute blast. One of the highlights would have to be the urban dh run through this gorgeous city, ancient stairs and alleyways leading down from the palace right into the town centre.
I'd have to highly recommend this great little town as a top spot to visit with so much history and great riding you could easily lose yourself for weeks just being nosy.
Well it looks like the grubs up so heres a couple of videos to keep you interested while I stuff my face.
Adeus Amigos
No comments:
Post a Comment