13.09.09 – Appin

We had been to this trail once before at the very beginning of our interest in off-road riding. As a mountain biking novice, the trail was quite daunting and challenging with technical sections that I mostly walked or took the bee-line through. It didn’t help that I hadn’t exercised prior to that in about 5 years but that was almost a year ago and I’d like to think that I have built up some fitness and a bit more skill (and gonads) since then. With this in mind, Appin has been a ride that we had set our sights on returning to (but with some knee and elbow pads). We finally got around to doing this on Sunday which turned out to be a pretty warm day.

We thought we’d be ok to navigate our own way around since Appin is known for being so well signposted but as you would have it, we’re not that observant and missed some turns along the way. Two unsuccessful attempts were made at riding the trail (one of which ending in someone kindly letting us cut through their family’s backyard to get back to the street) but don’t fret, we were lucky enough to bump into two friendly and ultra helpful riders who offered to take us through the loop. They even helped us set our bike suspension up properly! (Third time’s a charm!). Thanks Steve and Luke if you are somehow (but very unlikely) reading this! We were pretty worn down by then and had a hard time keeping up (that and we’re just crap and unfit riders, ha!) but it was still enjoyable. I skipped quite a few of the technical bits I had set out to overcome (that’s ok, I still don’t have knee and elbow pads and will use that as my excuse) but am sure I rode more of the trail than I did when I first visited it last year. I didn’t appreciate what an awesome ride it was back then but will definitely be going back for more since I have developed a taste for flowing single track!


Getting ready to roll at the entrance to the trail

Buggered after getting lost for the second time

Still smiling… this must have been taken on a rest stop on our first attempt at the loop, hah.
Note the riding gloves I am wearing…

… Because they are responsible for this hideous glove tan I have! :(


I was really excited about trying a nude polish for spring but was disappointed to find that it just blended in with my skin tone. I reassured myself that it would stand out once we started getting sunny skies because I would develop a tan for it to contrast against… Apparently not if I’m spending my days riding with gloves on! I’ll need to do some serious hand tanning to even this out if I ever want Samoan Sand to look good on me!