Two mile cycle, two mile walk.

This Saturday I went out with Steve to ride the Quantock hills near Taunton. I was going to take him around a beginner’s route that I had in my mountain biking guide book. We were only planning on doing a days cycling.

Here are the bikes as we're just about to set off on the route.

Unfortunately after a couple of miles of riding Steve came off his bike on a small muddy dip in the bridle path. He didn't quite go over his handlebars but did do a face plant into the ground!

I was riding ahead of him and I heard a crash an "ouch!" behind me. I shouted behind me to see if Steve was ok and he said no. I stopped immediately and ran back to see him. There was quite a bit of blood streaming down his mouth to the ground.

Some of the great views just before Steve's accident.

I immediately got to work and pulled out my restocked first aid kit (thanks Susan for the new supplies!). Steve sat down and I checked out his face. In the end there was a nasty cut on his upper mouth/cheek and it also looked like his front side tooth had been chipped as well.

After a few minutes and mopping up to stop the flow of blood we started to walk back to the car. We eventually managed to make it to A&E in Taunton and after an hour the doctors and nurses saw him.

It turns out that his tooth was fine, it normally looks like that! :-) They literally superglued, his cut together and sent him on his way.

Steve did say that he was quite angry that he went over as it wasn't a very difficult obstacle to ride over. He was quite unlucky though, as there was a tree branch 'hidden' under the mud in the dip, which he hit with his front wheel. He was also quite unlucky to land exactly onto his mouth. There wasn't any other damage to his arms or legs.

This is the muddy dip that caused Steve's accident.

Oh, well two rides in a week and two trips to A&E. I think I'm going to start to run out of friends to ride with soon!

Does anyone want to go mountain biking with me then?