Hi Delphine

Glad you had a good time. Probably best to come out on a "social" ride first just to gauge your fitness etc before tackling a longer ride like Quantocks, Minehead etc. For a information on your potential next bike come and see me down at Garlands on a Saturday where i can chat to you and explain some things to look out before you part with your hard earned cash. You can contact Jane through this forum or email me: damongouldsonAThotmail.com where i can give you her mobile number.
See you Saturday otherwise see you on the next social ride.
Cheers
Damon

Nice to hear from you Damon. I'll do my best to pop down Saturday as I've the day off. As I mentioned to Andy, I'm already considering spending a little more than the £200 I had orignally planned, but we'll chat about that when I see you next. Bye for now, oh and nice site - I particularly like this forum!


Delphine

damn it WRONG ICON on the last mail!

Word of advice Damon will try and persuade you to buy a Specialized, he is a great advocate of them...

Best bikes in the World :-)

Delphine,

They look so vulgar in red or yellow don't you think? Black is best!

If you are riding ten miles a day and going up the hills rather than around, then you are probably doing more training than most of us!

We do try to organise fairly regular "beginners" rides and we get a lot of new faces turn up to those. They all keep up and have a good time. Truth is, these rides are not much shorter or slower than our average weekend away rides, but they're branded for beginners to get people along who otherwise might never leave the local trails.

My advice would be to do a few rides at Ashton Court on your shiny new Garlands purchase to get used to it, then come along on one of the rides to the Mendips, Cwmcarn or Forest of Dean to try one of the shorter away rides.

Black shows up the scratches far to easyly ;-)

mountain bikes are supposed to be scratched

I like what I've started here! Though I've gotta say I'm not one to care about the colour of something if it performs well! Anyhow I'd agree that scratches are surely a sign of good times and risks taken so I hope any bike I do buy will be covered in them in no time. See you Saturday Damon and the rest of you on Sunday providing I can get off work in the morning.
Bye for now

Delphine