Adventureshield advanced

First of April i took a day off at work so i could without any hurry ride up north.
The week before the weather was real nice but April has it’s own will and started off with snow.
It was at least not as bad as forecasted but it was quite chill.
I made a nice route but ended up with cutting some corners here and there.
On my way up i went by at #JJSuspension so they could check if i did a decent job at installing and setting up the suspension.
I was the first they sold the #Touratech WTE kit to without installing it and it turned out i did a pretty good job.
There is something more in it but that is already on the level i have to find out by using and trying the little tweaks because that is more personal preference.

I spend i bit more time than expected and that also was a reason to skip some parts of the route i planned and it was still a 350km ride in 0 to 5 degree C weather.
Glad i took the heated gear back out of summer storage.

The next day was much better, still quite fresh but the wind laid down and there was some sun.
I left the heated gear in the hotel because i knew Albert from #Adventureshield.nl would gave me enough challenge to get warm without it.
There even where some moments i wished i took the summer gloves with me.
Still we had some snow, hail, wind and a few raindrops between the sunny periods. All seasons in one day.

After a little warm-up we stopped for i quick picture on the way to the first practice location, you might remember the picture form a previous blog.

Most of the training is on public roads but also in privately owned forests with permission from the owner(s).
A lot of roads and tracks getting closed for motorised vehicles but there are still places where we can have some fun, please slow down when you pass pedestrians or cyclists to prevent more closures.
That also goes for sound, how much i like a nice growl it’s most definitely not because i’m getting old that i say it just is not done any more.
We live in weak wining society and being stubborn by keeping the loud pipe only bites you in the ass when you end up at the next sign telling you are not allowed to enter a nice piece of dirt.

But enough lecture, back to the fun. Nice old bridge foundations.

And after the walk through and a few laps of that exercise i just had to take one with the bike as well.

I could spend a lot of time writing about the day but this is one of the things that is better in a video.
It turned out i was the only student, apparently no one dared to take on this level and it turned out when we got back that i was the first who completed all 3 levels. Fun fact, i also did it with 3 different bikes. The Basic with Ragnarok, my big ass Crossrourer, the intermediate with Ecstasy the XT660Z and now the advanced with Sporherre the T7 who performed just perfect and i will take on the ScanBaltic trip with full confidence.

I hope you will enjoy the video.
There are 2 parts where i edited a fast forward and those ended up a bit strange, like they took a few frames from where it already is back to normal.
It ended up being 27 minutes but leaving more out would not do justice to the great day it was.
If you want to do an offroad training i really recommend https://www.adventureshield.nl/ and if you didn’t do any training before do start with the basic training.
This is challenging enough to start with and the intermediate is probably too much to start with. When i did that level there where others that did some basic training in Belgium but that was way too basic to enter the intermediate which is perfectly doable when they had the basic at Adventureshield.