HISS Big Tread - the 'Official' Trip Report!

[WillS]

Nice pictures and write up Jonny, was great to meet you and all the others. Pleased you had an "uneventful" trip, and I mean no offs, drops and/or trips to hospitals!!
2c is getting cold, especially when it's wet!! The weather was really great 25/30C all week apart it went all wrong on Friday, wet and cold!!
Hope to meet up again, on one of the HISS'ers.
It's great fun on the little un's

[Simon_100]

So, after a mighty fine trip to Spain for my HISS 2017 trip, here is a bit of a ride report in no particular order !

Total trip days riding – 11, departing on a Friday 8th night down to Portsmouth for the 11pm ferry and returning into Portsmouth from Caen on a Monday 18th morning at 06:45 to ride home.

Thanks for that fantastic ride report Jonny! Your 350 miles sounds about right for the big trails you guys did - in just three days' riding! - and I know you have many more fab images to share ...

Regs

Simon

PS I take your point about the bar, but from the camping's accommodation it's a long, long climb up to where the tents are and I remember all too well the huffing and puffing at the Terriente site, which was a third of the climb ... and in any case the 'Honesty System' worked perfectly with 1 litre bottle of Amstel @ €2 a hit was not too bad!

Simon

[JonnyBravo]

So, after a mighty fine trip to Spain for my HISS 2017 trip, here is a bit of a ride report in no particular order !

Total trip days riding – 11, departing on a Friday 8th night down to Portsmouth for the 11pm ferry and returning into Portsmouth from Caen on a Monday 18th morning at 06:45 to ride home.

Thanks for that fantastic ride report Jonny! Your 350 miles sounds about right for the big trails you guys did - in just three days' riding! - and I know you have many more fab images to share ...

Regs

Simon

PS I take your point about the bar, but from the camping's accommodation it's a long, long climb up to where the tents are and I remember all too well the huffing and puffing at the Terriente site, which was a third of the climb ... and in any case the 'Honesty System' worked perfectly with 1 litre bottle of Amstel @ €2 a hit was not too bad!

Simon

Totally concur on the honesty bar - the beer was cracking value and also the wine !

Valid point about the uphill climb - had failed to consider that some of us are now over 60 years old you know

see you soon to do it all again for sure

many thanks

[WillS]

A video of the first full days riding these fantastic trails in the Aragon Region. All trails from the HISS.

[WillS]

Fantastic, it works first time. What an improvement on the old site !!!

[Simon_100]

A video of the first full days riding these fantastic trails in the Aragon Region. All trails from the HISS.

A phenomenal video of a great day Will - your meticulous planning always pays off with 174 kms almost entirely on trails. The CRF seemed to handle the 'babies' heads without too much trouble either!

Regs

Simon

[Gary no 6]

Great video trails look good and long I'm heading over to tremp first week in October and just read somewhere it's the start of hunting season is this a problem?

[Simon_100]

Great video trails look good and long I'm heading over to tremp first week in October and just read somewhere it's the start of hunting season is this a problem?

Not unless you don't like getting your head blown off!

Slightly more seriously ... the season for small game starts on the second Sunday of October, i.e. the 8th along with red deer. Hunting for fallow deer and wild boar began on the fist Sunday in September and by some miracle I'm still alive ...

Now more seriously still, you are far ire likely to be a victim of wild game, i.e. being knocked off you bike by something big or startled into riding into a ditch - see below - by small animals zooming out at you from the undergrowth.

At least here in Catalonia hunters are very good at wearing hi-viz jackets, etc. although according to research done by a leading Spanish ecologist, whom I have no reason to doubt, the death toll among them shooting either themselves or each other is still amazingly high:

"En España en los últimos 15 años (entre el 2000 y 2016) más de 5.000 personas han sido víctimas de las armas de fuego largas, ( y largas recortadas) de las cuales cerca de 1.500 resultaron muertas y más de 3.500 heridas de distinta consideración."

Or in plain English 5,000 victims, of which 1,500 were fatal in the last fifteen years! So the message is to watch out for signs of a hunt, i.e. lots of scruffy 4 x 4's - new ones will be even more lethal! - packs of hunting dogs and the bugles of there handlers, guys wearing hi-viz on lonely mountain tops, etc.

One thing special to Catalonia, forest warden patrols will be in groups of three if they are investigating hunting after a very nasty incident when two of them were brutally and deliberately shot to death by a hunter who's gun wasn't licensed earlier this year. But in general the Agents Rurals are on your side - as long as you don't flagrantly take the piss, pulling wheelies, etc.

Regs

Simon

[Simon_100]

Just a bit of a news update, especially for those of you who were at the HISS: I phoned Kevin yesterday expecting to find him safely ensconced at home, but he's still in the hospital in Teruel, as a 'prisoner' to use his words!

He says he's in limbo as his insurance company isn't coughing up the dough to pay his hospital bill and so the hospital won0t discharge him even though he says he's fine.

In fact he's in very good spirits and despite being told to stay in his room he 'escapes' each afternoon and sits in the nearby park taking in the local scene - and some sun!

It's rather typical of Spanish life that there's a big difference between the 'rule' and compliance to the same - as Kevin's doctor came walking by with his wife the other day and sat chatting with him for half an hour (he has excellent English apparently) despite telling him that same morning to stay put ...

Kevin says that he will be posting a vehement depiction of his opinion about his insurance company in due course ...

He also says thanks to everyone who sent him thier regards from the HISS

Regs

Simon

[Gary no 6]

Cheers Simon you make it sound like hunting season might just add to the fun at this stage I don't think wild horses could keep us away anyway so roll on Pyrenees trip and hopefully I'll have a few photos to post when we're there