Sunday as a day of rest never really made sense to me, I always saw it as a day for ourselves, so rest if you want to rest, ride if you want to ride and eat if you want to eat. I wanted to ride! Having missed out on every other opportunity to ride the well talked about Inners XC loop 7stanes website I finally managed to get there!
Still lacking on the fitness side of things from the infamous collar bone incident which I will post about at a later date, I had to walk shamefully up the very first ascent! I was a little bit concerned for the rest of the group as I was so far behind…but as per usual they were full of nice things to say when I got to the top and it kept me going. After the first few climbs, my legs started getting warmed up and it started to get easier, and even though the climbs just seem to go on forever, I made it to the top first and not as knackered as I thought I would be. The final ascent is a bit harder and rockier but other than that it is a really well kept trail and I was extremely impressed (a rare thing to be heard about the up hills!).
Anyway, beautiful descents, which make you forget about the gruelling ups, all the way down, with a few tiny climbs, but with some amazing sweeping berms, nicely built table tops, a few doubles which can be launched or absorbed and some really nice rock gardens planted regularly down the trail.
Karolis had a close encounter with some rocks, from the photo you will see it was maybe a bit too close!

I tried one jump, only to feel my rear wheel fall out mid jump and lock up, bending the disc…grrr…check your quick releases kids! We hiked up the make or break middle, but my pathetic little legs were starting to show their lack of use and the real struggle hit me, then the final descent to the car park where I could not sit down any more due to a sore bum.
All in all, I really liked it and I look forward to going back with my summer trained legs to really unleash on the downhills. Welldone to the people involved in building/maintaining the trail.
The ride times and location details are here from my HTC Tattoo [GPS Tracked Route]