Swinley Forest

Swinley Forest near Bracknell was our venue for today. The forest is packed with fire tracks, single tracks and technical sections. It is big enough to get lost in, but small enough to find you way back to the car park.

We set off as one group exploring the tracks and twisty paths within the woods but soon found that Garry and Gareth had taken a diversion and could not be seen. The rest of us continued whilst G & G did their own route.

At one particular section we saw some others performing spectacular jumps. John Griffin wanting give it a go headed down the run. Unfortunately he misjudged a couple of jumps close together and hit the ground rather hard. He had banged his head that wasn’t protected by a helmet. Apparently he blacked out for a couple of seconds. To cut a long story short, he was checked out at Slough hospital and was released to be taken home this afternoon.

The rest of us found good section of twisty single track before we headed back to the car park to meet the others.

There is a message to us all here, John by his own admission, would have suffered less if he had been wearing his helmet.

Richard Sterry

John Griffin writes...

A big thanks to everyone who helped me out on Sat - partcularly Richard and Gareth who saw me safley to A&E and waited around to make sure I was OK. I suffered from mild concussion and a badly bruised shoulder but I count myself as very, very lucky. I had set off down the jump section with no intention of jumping anything as I just wanted to ride the humps. Unfortunatley I had picked up a bit too much speed after the first one and found myself in the air over the second double hump and inevitably a split second later I was forward of the bars with the ground rushing up. I don't remember the actual impact but just woke up on the floor. So my advice/lesson from this to anyone is - If you are going to get some air make sure you can land it, if you have no intention of getting air it's no excuse for not wearing a lid because you never know when you might find yourself flying through it and you may not be as lucky as I was to do a 'Zinedine' on soft sandy soil when you come down. Wear a Lid at all times !