the fourth round of the Mountain Bike World Cup was held in Casa de Campo at the weekend so we went along on Sunday to watch the races. We went last year too and I'd forgotten just how exciting it is. We met a couple of friends from the club and rode around the park stopping at various points to watch the action and take (loads of) photos (look over there on the right to see if I've managed to link to flickr or something). They are terrifyingly good. Not even the huge thunderstorm on Friday night which made the course muddy and slippy could stop them getting up La Subida Infernal. The crowd were awesome too - there were hundreds of them cheering the riders up the hill, several wouldn't have made it without the support.

One of the guys from the club also brought along his trailer for me to try on the back of the bike. As we're wanting to do the Camino de Santiago next year we need a way of carting our stuff around. We originally thought we would get panniers but after speaking to Agustin, he recommended a trailer instead and offered to let us try out his. So when we met on Sunday morning I hitched the trailer to the bike (it has its own QR which you put in the rear wheel instead of your usual one). It was GREAT! You obviously notice a bit more weight when carrying the girls' rucksacks up a hill but other than that you hardly know it's there - we did climbs and descents and rocky bits and it handled them all without a grumble. We handed it back at the end of the day but it's definitely the way forward for next year.