{"id":199,"date":"2008-12-08T12:32:50","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T11:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=199"},"modified":"2008-12-08T12:32:50","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T11:32:50","slug":"chilling-out-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=199","title":{"rendered":"Chilling out &#8211; literally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With no competitions this weekend, a house full of visitors, and a cold which started on Wednesday night I admitted defeat and chilled out for a few days this week. The upshot, however, was I ended up having three fantastic recreational mountain bike rides on Cannock Chase with various combinations of friends, bimbly walks with kids and, finally, a trip to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolfmountain.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wolf Mountain.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cannock Chase was gorgeous on Saturday with hardly anybody about (off Christmas shopping no doubt), with lots of frosty vistas and long reaching views under clear blue skies. I lead John and Nicky on separate rides (they have a\u00a04 month old)\u00a0&amp; tried\u00a0to take them to little used parts of the Chase where the local trail fairies have been busy. We had a great time crunching along the icy tracks.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday brought more of the same. Following an early morning walk with the kids around Oldacre with chilly misty views out towards the Wrekin, Nicky &amp; I had another ride, but this time with Fraser in tow on his trusty <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cotic.co.uk\/product\/soul\" target=\"_blank\">Cotic Soul<\/a>. There were lots more people about so we avoided\u00a0the busy areas\u00a0by nipping over to Abrahams Valley and did some old singletracks I&#8217;ve not been on for ages.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday late afternoon was spent at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wolfmountain.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wolf Mountain Indoor Climbing wall <\/a>in Wolverhampton. This superb facility encourages all ages and the kids had a great time scaling the walls and bouldering on the side of a continuous overhanging slide nick named &#8216;Spider Pig&#8217;. My old\u00a0~1988 climbing\u00a0boots brought a few smirks from the better climbers but they still seem to work OK!<\/p>\n<p>I think the few days relative rest has done me good and I should be back on the drive steaming away in cold evening air on my turbo trainer on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1141.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Stodge at Wolf Mountain (Retro Shoes)\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1141.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1118.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Holly at Wolf Mountain\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1118.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1116.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Start them young !\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1116.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1075.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Frosty and Cute\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1075.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1083.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Frosty Cannock Chase\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1083.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1077.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Frosty Cannock Chase\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1077.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"154\" height=\"107\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1107.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"The Climbing Exbidition\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1107.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"154\" height=\"107\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1069.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Frosty view over Oldacre\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1069.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/images\/dsc_1056.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Milford, early on Sunday morning\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/pics\/2008\/thumbnails\/dsc_1056.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"107\" height=\"154\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With no competitions this weekend, a house full of visitors, and a cold which started on Wednesday night I admitted defeat and chilled out for a few days this week. The upshot, however, was I ended up having three fantastic recreational mountain bike rides on Cannock Chase with various combinations of friends, bimbly walks with &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/?p=199\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Chilling out &#8211; literally&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannockchase","category-mountain-biking-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stodgell.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}