Met up with Udders, and GB this morning for a ride around some of the Thetford Forest trails and had a great time.
After a splash and dash at the filling station Udders guided us onto some of his favourite trails in and around the forest. Boy was I surprised at the vast expanse of land available for to play on, it went on for miles all with varying degrees of technical riding.
The trails are mostly sand based so quite loose under wheel, with well travelled ruts to tram line you, which can prove interesting especially when try to break out of the sides on some of the deeper ones.
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The one striking thing about the whole day was just how silent it was when we cut our engines, the trees and hedgerows really make a good job of acting as noise batters, you'd never think that major roads were within a mile or two away.
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Enough of that and onwards down the trail, after a brief stop at the cross trails pictured below, everything was going well with all runners and riders still mounted, the going was reasonably firm all be it loose, when the front end of the GS suddenly washed out, after trying to control it, the front wheel buried it's self in deep sand; I decided that it was a lost cause and down we went.
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All the you tube, and on line advise kicked in ;and with bars closest to me to the rear I turned my back to her, grabbed said bar and grab rail and started to heave the old girl onto her feet, with that Udders appeared and helped me right her, but I was amazed at how easy the whole thing was, as it was something I'd been dreading.
When she was upright Udders said that that was the same spot in which his mate had come to grief, it transpired that he had told GB where the sand trap was, but I was somehow not privvy to the info as I was on knobblies, and they wanted to know how good they were....
Not well when you dodn't know it's there!
It's been a good few years since I've ridden any sort of sand, (Frencham Ponds about 10 years ago) and then it was on a 250 , so all in all I thought I'd done quite well considering that I'm old and frail.
The surprise of the day was GB, it was his first foray off road... ever! and on a 1200 GS good for him, he did everything we did and I fancy the bond between man and machine was glued a little bit firmer, as he found out just how capable the heavy machines were off road, HOT WORK INNIT?
We ended up on arguably the best trails of the day with Woops! 'sorry GB' for the most part, and it was terrific.
At the end I felt fulfilled, satisfied and happy, the GS is a great bit of kit, which cossets you on road and surprises you off road, will we be back for more of the same? Yes please!
Finally a huge thank you to Udders for giving his time and sharing his routes, very much appreciated mate.
The last couple of pix are just random ones of the day and the very last is yours truly being a little frivolous.
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Cracking day out 
