We initially cut through the industrial wasteland at Asfordby Hill taking in some of the little trails and obstacles but we never stopped for a proper play. For some reason Parsley shot off on his own choice of trail down to the footbridge and missed out a good little descent?

We then headed out via Kirby Bellars to Ashby Folville. The bridleways had all obviously seen plenty of hooved action while they were wet and now they had dried solid they were as rough as they get. I had expected this though so was on the full susser as were everyone else.

Steve was down a bit on the pace so we kept re-grouping at gates but he was obviously struggling a bit. After an hour and a half or so we were at the top of Burrough Hill waiting for Steve with some stunning sunset red skies so I whipped the camera out while Parsley and Choc formed silouhettes on the skyline for me.

Steve hadn't been this far back all night so it was obvious something was wrong. He eventually emerged with a snapped chain which was also well and truly wedged behind his granny ring up against a pivot. The sun had now finished making the sky pretty and had disappeared so we fixed Steve's bike by artificial light using two SRAM power links. We used one to fix the initial break and the other to replace a bent link caused by the brute force required to unjam the chain from behind the chainring! We all rapidly cooled down as did the air temperature during the time this took.

After that it was a fairly easy ride back to town in the dark where I stopped and got some supper from the chippy while Choc acted as security guard for my bike. Cheers mate.