This is probably the longest gap ever between posts, making you* hopeful of entertaining, humorous and even possibly uplifting content. All killer and no filler as those youthful creators mostly lie about.

And indeed lots has been happening, none of which I intend to spend hardly any time wibbling about. Mostly because wibbling evo is available for your viewing pleasure on my “MoobTube” channel. Feel free to subscribe, you’ll be with at least two other friends victims.

Really though, it’s because I’m keen to return to a couple of old tropes; namely age and injury – often unhappy bedfellows and always unwelcome squatters in my increasingly optimistic landscape where one is just a number and the other can be easily managed.

Before that exciting update, here’s a long weekend of Spanish riding with a few good friends and one less brake than would be deemed the safe minimum. We’re already booked to return next March, and my strategic plan to avoid similar maintenance issues are mostly new bikes shaped. But more on that, somewhen.

Anyway after watching those, if your appetite for barely edited, randomly captioned and bang average riding has yet to be sated, then the Madeira edit is for you. If nothing else the scenery is stunning and the trails magnificent. It’s a hell of a place to ride a mountain bike**

 

I think that’s us all caught up. Other than some bastard sneaking in another birthday that has me pining for the angst of turning 50, and a couple of annoying injuries which leave me less than ideally configured for six days uplifted riding in and on the trails of Molini, starting in less than week.

Yeah that Molini. Third time in two years because it’s the first place I’d want to ride when given the choice. The choice this year was not as clear cut with it being the third time I’ve done my planet-ruining bit by jumping on a plane to go play in fantastic scenery. There’s only so many times leading with the ‘not sure how many of these I have left’ excuse ends with a race for cheap flights at local airports***

Before worrying about the bits of an arm genuinely useful for holding onto the right grip, I was gripped (ahem) by an existential bike quandary. I’ll spare you the details – others have suffered so you don’t have to – other than to conclude the Big Bruiser has been stood down for this one to be replaced by Mighty RipMo. Already done two trips with this bike, and Matt’s given it a good seeing too so any riding issues are going to be 100% rider related.

A rider who is in around 80% – age compensated – average condition. The other 20% represents a shoulder still a long way from right after it all went wrong back in late April and an Tendonitis inflicted elbow begat by….. painting 🙁

Shoulder first. Exiting a trail I’ve ridden only about a 100 times, another of those bastards cited earlier – in this case the inestimably obscure Forestry England**** – dug a great bloody trench between trail end and rock hard fireroad. A fireroad I impacted with all the force induced by being forcibly ejected from a previously speeding mountain bike.

Lost some skin, a bit of mobility most of which has come back. The strange clicks and graunches continue through gritted teeth stretching and what, from a distance and a mighty squint, passes for simple Yoga. Every time I stand in front of a perfectly formed YouTube human casually rotating a toned hip with 30% more articulation that these old bones can manage, I wonder if I came to this about 30 years too late.

The elbow tho. Not so peachy. Keeping the faith with that Holy Trinity of Ice, Ibuprofen and ultrasound. Apparently giving up alcohol would help, but there are limits to my commitment to rehab.  Spending two days painting freshly sawn boards with multiple coats of Ducksback left my elbow hot and swollen. Yes, I know this merely confirms my unfitness for any proper work, and the irony that I’ve injured myself protecting the contents of a shed currently unavailable for use is not lost on me.

This was a month ago. So in the best traditions of man-medicine, a therapeutic approach based around smashing that sore joint down dry and dusty trails interspersed with some extreme gardening seemed sensible. Until a ride last week was so painful, I had to accept Plan A was a dud, Plan B to ignore it and hope it’d go away didn’t play well with departure dates, so we skipped immediately to Plan C – invoke the help of a proper medical professional and diligently follow her advice.

Hence the frozen peas multiple times a day. A side benefit is this has definitely upped my vegetable consumption if only by osmosis.  Improvements are evidenced by right handed door opening now back on the elbow menu, whether this translates to hours and hours of fab but tricky trail riding is still a concern.

Still this has stopped me incessantly checking the weather, or worrying about other trivialities. I guess we’ll strap it up and send it off with the rest of the withered frame and see how we get on.  Last year was one of the best trips we’ve ever done so the bar is set high.

I do like a high bar. Any bar really. As long as it’s not a bar to riding late summer trails to the best of my limited ability. Right, where did I leave those peas?

*not regular readers, obviously.

**and visit. Lovely in Feb as Carol and I discovered taking a break from what felt like a very long and wet UK winter.

***There is little intersection in the Venn of Cheap, Local and Not the middle of the sodding night when attempting to travel by air. Hence Luton at about 3am next week.

****performing seemingly random and pointless destruction on innocent forests since 1919

Top Gun* is a trove of oft mined bastardized lines; for example “I feel the need, the need the cheese” being deployed on an almost weekly basis.  And whenever a car park is offering up exactly zero spaces, the negative ghostwriter reference is instinctively grumbled out**

Recently though the ShedofDreams(tm) has been similarly hash tagged. Short of digging down Bat-cave style, we’re pretty much at maximum capacity. At least some of this isn’t my fault, what with Carols’ and the offsprings bikes squatting on three prime spaces.

I suppose there’s room for an argument that the shed isn’t merely a repository for my increasingly unhinged bike buying strategy*** and five for me versus three for the entire quorum of other family members is not an unreasonable split. Slippery slope that, best quickly deflect by foregrounding the latest frame crowbarred through its revolving doors.

Firstly nothing has left. Hence the head scratching problem of additive bicycles. Secondly no desperate new niche is being funded here- no, what we’re looking at is a 2019 frame visually distanced from anything I own, but virtually similar travel and angles as the mighty RipMo. Yes, you know the bike triggering so much angst when selling it, I happily bought another one last year.

Before moving on, probably worth a quick recap of the current shed inventory. Cotic Hardtail brutally slopped through the endless winter, Nukeproof gravel bike that is both fab and mostly ignored, the aforementioned mighty RipMo proudly sporting dust from a long weekend Spanish Raid (we’ll defo be back to that) and the Big Dog Nukeproof Giga ready to save my wibbling arse from all sorts of undesirable outcomes come trips to scary places.

Oh and the electric Vibe. But that doesn’t really count. Not in my world anyway. Even so, I can see there is no canonical model where ramming a new bike into a non existent space makes any sense. Like that’s ever stopped me. The Yeti SB130 “Lunch Ride” is nothing more than a want, and nothing less than a perfect storm of selling a frame, idly browsing Pinkbike classifieds and a lowball offer I fully expected to be ghosted.

Fast forward a week or so, and an amicable pickup quickly turned into a stripdown and assessment of a maintenance sparse five year ownership. It’s had a life this frame, but still looks fine sporting its new invisiframe jacket if the viewer is – say – 10 feet away and squinting. More importantly the ‘watched the video concluded its elven magic‘ switch link was recently replaced. Knowing its propensity for self destruction, not quite sure why I’ve bought yet another bike entirely useless in the ‘wet clods of dust‘ conditions characterising nine months of our riding year.

Matt spannered in – replacing all the bearings some of which were on the just about okay side of fine, others crying for the sweet release of death, strapped on some new wheels and my entire box of new spares to complete the ‘budget build‘. The shock was quite ill as well but a swift swapage – see having all those bikes make good sense sometimes**** – saw me soon navigating well known Yat trails on an unknown bike.

Firstly, it’s not very RipMo whatever the geometry comparison sites tell you. It’s a little sharper, a bit more focussed, a bit more you need to be on your game. End of ride one had me summarising the experience as 3Ps – Planted, Plush and Pointy. I’ve ridden some brilliant climbing bikes, but that switch link is sorcery. The Yeti stays taught and high in its’ travel,  but is somehow super compliant, same over stutter bumps, downhill no idea but fun was being had with an alliterated F. Sure it’s a maintenance bomb waiting to financially explode, but what a thing.

It was dry enough to ride some of the harder trails and other than wanting a higher front end, the whole Yeti experience felt well worth paying the faff tax. It feels a bit special, a bit ‘oh hello been riding bikes for ever but there’s some special sauce here‘ However, in a departure to previous reviews, I’ve actually ridden it a whole lot more before declaring it ‘a keeper’.

Firstly we returned to Porlock for the first time in seven years which was, frankly, epic.  One photo and two vids don’t come close to doing it justice.

Came home and rode it in the slop. Got a bit irritated how hard it is to clean. Looked at it afterwards and decided that was absolutely fine.

I need to start riding my Giga as we’re off to Mediera in a few weeks and other than refitting the serviced shock and pedaling up the lane, it’s been a shed queen for the best part of a year since the RipMo took my riding eye.

Mmm bit of an elephant in the shed there. While the SB130 and the RipMo really do ride differently, they fight for supremacy in the overlapping ‘what bike shall I ride all day on fantastic trails when the sun is out’ segment, where a single set of legs dictates a choice.

I’ll keep both whatever. Jury’s out on which one will get the nod most often.  Tomorrow though, it’s Yeti time. Again.

At least I can’t fit anything else in the shed. Really, look straight, look up, look sideways, bikes everywhere.  All close together. I’m sure I can hear the RipMo whispering “You can be my wingman anytime” and being rebutted with “Bullshit.. you can be mine”

These are problems I’m not desperate to solve 🙂

*the original. I mean the new one is fine and all that, but the original went full cheese and I love it for that.

**Mostly followed by “Butts, I want some butts” which you really need to watch the film to understand the narrative adjacency.

*** charitable use of the word. Wish fulfillment and craven shiny new thing syndrome closer to what’s actually happening.

**** just not very often

This, dispatched lightly, from my good friend Matt, landed with more of a thud than expected.  Equally unexpected was the thud as first my shoulder, rapidly followed by the remainder of my tumbling torso, smashed into a fire-road baked hard by a capricious sun long driven from the sky by endless rain.

Ironic that* I pontificated mightily a second before, as what proxied for an out of body experience was – in fact – a precursor to a full body slam experience.  The rapidly shrinking distance from air to ground triggered some desperate dendrite-synapse action mostly focussed on a less than balletic twist to protect the drinking arm from the inevitable blunt force trauma,

How did we get here? Short answer, riding bikes in the sunshine in what felt like the first time for about ever**. Longer answer is our spring-lamb keenness to be released into the fields triggered an early start and a few extra trails before a gathering of those matriculated in the study of ‘bluebell day‘.  The forest looked mighty fine; swathes of flowering garlic and bluebells slashed by petrichor drying dirt.

“Dryer than last week” was my pointless assertion to those who I share almost every ride with. Nods affirmed Spring – while not in the ascendancy – was striding through the trees, extracting moisture from our favourite trails and repurposing it to trunk tributaries. So a mostly green canopy shielded us from above and grip pulled hard at clean tyres from below.

Oh God we’ve waited so long for this. Sure there’s a skill and a dopamine hit of pitching the bike in on sodden trail and managing the slide, but dry trails hit different. Slam the front end in, know the back is following in an exact arc, smash an off camber root stack knowing you’re going nowhere but fast.  It’s such a thrill and I’ve missed it. Even tho I didn’t feel I could fully trust it, as lying in wait were shaded puddles and sweating rock.

We were nearly late because fun beats promises 100% of the time. Finally fetching up with the rest of the crew, route faffage was at a minimum as we knew exactly where we were going. Bluebell day has many destinations but the first is the ‘main line’ when riding is secondary to experiencing.

Had to get there first. Up the notorious ‘middle climb‘ – a 150 metre pull from the river I’ve done 100s of times and it never gets easier. Making the ridge, we extended our out lap through a secret garlic trail presenting at its absolute best. Not massively exciting to ride, but what a thing to look at. But still not the main event.

To get there, we diverted just a bit to ride a couple of favourite trails at speeds not realistic even a couple of weeks ago. So enthused by the conditions, Matt and I abandoned the agreed route and pedalled hard back to the top for another full run. Great concept, terrible execution.

There’s that thing about ‘not dying in a ditch‘ over something. Never thought it had a literal quality, but as kinetic energy was converted to an airborne vector, that certainty took a bit of a hit. As did the bike falling into a recently dug trench someone inadvisably positioned at the end of a fast trail. The bike and I piled in. Only I came out. Mostly in a parody of a working human with flapping limbs akimbo.

“Impressive” was the comment from behind as I groaned my way through a full system reset.  There was some bleeding, later there would be some bruising, later still my shoulder still isn’t quite right but considering the smash bang thud denoting things had gone a bit wrong,  I’m taking that as a win.

Patched up***, we finally converged on the prime forest bluebells. Fifteen years of riding this trail when they’re at that absolute finest has in no way diminished the experience. It was as sensory-overload-y as ever and just remembering to do bike things is mashed into a tiny corner of your brain, while the rest attempts to catalogue those wide angled images for future retention.

No chance. it’s a confluence of people/place and time. It’s why we slog through winter. It’s why we lament the changing of the seasons. It’s why we watch the ground cover grumpily emerge from the slop. It’s why we celebrate the first flower. It’s just why we ride.

And then ride some more. Ended up with nearly 1400m of climbing on a 60k day. Those are big numbers even for us. Most I’ve done for a while. Life in the old bruised dog yet. That feels better than good.  Excuses are easy, doing it is hard but I love that feeling of being totally finished, washed out, done in.

So that extra climb, that little bit more, that little nod when asked ‘shall we just ride one more trail as it’s so bloody great today?“, that ‘shut up legs’, that first taste of a cold beer, that talking shit with fellow travellers, that next 24 hours when stairs are a problem, that  wishing it could happen again right now.

That.  More of that.

Tired is for tomorrow.

*90s hit Alanis Morissette ‘isn’t it ironic’ is lyrically distanced from irony in a way that’s really bloody annoying. Just me then? Right, as you were.

**last week, was Neil’s “10 feature” birthday ride – made about 9 of them stuck somewhere between committed and Newtonian inevitability. Dry it was not.

***My friend Em lent me a plaster to stem the bleeding from an elbow. She didn’t want it back 🙂

We knew where we were. Had absolute confidence on our destination. How to get there? Not a scooby’s. Welcome to part 2 of ‘when it all goes wrong, let’s call it an adventure’ where we abandon riding our bikes for carrying them awkwardly down a trail cosplaying a cliff.

Our arrival at this point wasn’t without incident. After faffery of the critical kind, we  saddled up in the pre-dawn gloom to discover a 100m hill hidden in shadow. Pretty sure we didn’t ride down that last night- whatever on arrival at what Si promised was the start of an awesome trail, he headed off in an entirely different direction*

Chris took that as a positive sign and was immediately rewarded with an over the bars dismount triggered by a hidden stump. Who knew it would be even darker under the trees? Not me suffering from fuck all sleep, terrible coffee and apparently 100% memory loss of how bicycles work.

Fetching Chris the right way up, adrenalin caffeine jolted me into riding mode and what skills I have were fully deployed on a trail throwing out shady challenges as the light crept up to manageable levels**. The air hadn’t got the memo tho and i was glad of full body clothing coverage as deep breaths condensed in the visible spectrum.

We needed to keep moving. If only to keep warm. More so in that we had a train to catch. 10:20 at Olette. Some 20 minute drive from where Si’s car was parked and quite a lot further from the Van still abandoned some 1000m above Vernet. The Yellow Train is a fantastic thing but what it isn’t is frequent. Miss our booked slot and we’re three lost hours and shit load of broken logistics from reaching Les Anges sometime before midnight.

Clearly what such a machine-tool honed plan needed was a navigational conference confidently sending us out over an unridable ridge. Which is we came in. We emerged some thirty minutes later, properly late and a bit worried with the sun  dialling in time we didn’t have.

We rendezvoused with Si and he sent us down ten minutes of awesome trail that made me forget our day was going to poo. A high speed blast through the forest punctuated by moments of ‘well I hope that corner doesn’t tighten up‘ and ‘if Trusty disappears over that rock step, it’s bigger than I planned for and things may go badly‘. Way too much fun over far too soon, hence we were buzzing and still just about on schedule rolling into town.

Matt headed back up the mountain courtesy of  Caty’s van, while we jumped into Si’s barely street legal race-car with plans to reconvene at the train station. Except Si’s car wouldn’t start. Steve and I applied ‘Top Gear rules‘ and headed into the main square for a proper coffee while Si ran a full diagnostic check on his engine***

Coffee fuelled we managed to bump start the cursed Clio and Si was off to retrieve his helmet, while we clock-watched for Matt to wind back down the mountain. Finally arriving with zero fuel adding more minutes we didn’t have. No surprise then to roll into Olette just in time to wave the train goodbye from the car park.

Fuck.  What now?  No good options until our examination of the timetable cracked out a glimmer of hope. We might be able to race the train up the valley and be waiting for it at the next station. Exciting times as Matt’s spirited driving fully tested the ‘chassis dynamics‘ of our parcel van, while the ‘unbelted three‘ deperately hung on to groaning trim and, sometimes, each other.

Arriving both shaken and stirred, bikes were unloaded with a haste suggesting we may be stealing them, before running across the tracks to a platform where the trains should be. Had we made it? Had we ever, we beat our train and the one that was due in 10 minutes before. Si never shut up about how this was somehow a win for him 😉

Bikes loaded, we took a victory lap of the open coach installing ourselves between some slightly shocked looking tourists. 30 mins up the track on this engineering masterpiece/money pit, we arrived most of the way up the mountain and declared ourselves ready for a second breakfast.

This was the perfect opportunity for Steve to abandon one of the GoPros. A discovery we made some two hours later having climbed another 500+m through first a forest and then an abandoned artillery range. With tanks! So you know we had to mug about there for a bit.  Proper boys toys stuff.

This proved a welcome distraction from the climb which I felt was going on a bit. Might have mentioned it. Finally topping out at just under 2500m, we donned knee and elbow pads. Well everyone except me who’d thoughtfully left his to protect the inside of the van.

No matter, we were off on a wild trail that had everything other than obvious lines or evidence of previous tyre tracks. Which didn’t stop us having a properly good time letting the bikes run on grippy compacted dirt. Dirt that was clearly haunted by a root graveyard with questing polished white bones popping up at the most inappropriate moments.

The odd rock appearing as well. This signalled the transition to a full on bolderfest which rocketed straight into one of ‘my favourite five trails ever’. It’s very apparent on the GoPro how the terrain changes as we break out of the forest and onto the edge of that endless ridge. What is less obvious is how bloody great this was to ride.

Absolutely full on, stalks for eyeballs, surfing the line – fast enough for rock rollover, slow enough to set up for the next challenge. Committed, steep, switch-backy, technical and bloody long. At one time we appeared to be riding in a rocky trench walled with sand. Proper ‘feel the force Luke‘ stuff and whatever I was feeling right then should be bottled and drunk on dark winter nights like right now.

Fist pumps and other inappropriate middle aged emoting marked the end of more than ten minutes of  the whole ‘this is why’ thing.  Amazing trails, jaw dropping landscapes, a train of your best friends synthesising joy from dust. Putting it all on the line, even the bad lines on bikes that are so much fun they surely can’t be entirely legal.

We weren’t done. Still a few hundred metres of elevation to cash in albeit on lesser gradients. Dialled in as we were, this soon became a no braking challenge folowed quickly by some emergency anchor hauling when bravado out paced skill. In our defence reining it in felt impossible – sun was out, bikes felt great, trails were mint and the bar was waiting.

Rolling back into Olette we ran the numbers. 650 metres climbed, 2620m descended. That’s a shuttle day right there with the train doing much of the heavy lifting. It was also one of the best days I’ve had on a bike, and I’ve had many brilliant trips over the years. But this just had everything.

Including me not riding like a dick, so you know there’s that. Pushing back on the whole getting too old for this shit schtick. Thumbed that the finger as I sank a well earned beer. Tomorrow we’re heading out to the ‘Devil’s toilet’ which has a fairly brutal hike-a-bike price of entry.

Another adventure then? Count me in.

*still sans helmet, not even Si is stupid enough to ride full on trails mostly in the dark without some form of brain protection.

**if you watch the GoPro you’ll see how bloody dark it was!

***Open bonnet. Look confused. Close bonnet.

Currently, nothing. Soon a bike-packing inventory ruthlessly configured for autumnal days in proper mountains. Thursday at stupid o’clock we’ll be driving past  at least two local airports to endure the depressing couplet that is ‘Ryanair‘ and ‘Stansted‘.

Once we’ve navigated check in queues, bike bag wrangling, the walk of pain to outside baggage while being sliced by each mini death from a thousand lowest-cost-bidder cuts, the Pyrenees await. And I’m beyond excited by an itinerary including a night high up in the mountains, a sweep of loops showcasing everything this southern half of a proper range can offer and – I expect – a fuck ton of banter, booze and bedazzlement. The latter from horizon bending views and awesome, dusty trails.

This is not our first rodeo. Since our good mate Si swapped Shoreditch for sunshine, we’ve sallied forth on ambitious adventures conceived on wine drenched maps and instantiated through 4 hour hike-a-bikes and 1000 metre descents down the WRONG MOUNTAIN. Love Si as I do, he’s a flakey as a late stage leper when it comes to any kind of rigorous route planning.

Recognising his limitations*, Si has handed much of the route planning to those more skilled at surviving big mountain adventures. Including his daughter who hopefully takes her mothers side. Assisted by local french dudes who appear to close the competence gap. The six days of fun has the whiff of a military plan**, accommodation has been booked, vehicle logistics located by waypoint, even a train uplift shuttling us up a 1000m from sea level.***

Reassuring as this sounds, it’s left me with a nagging worry that unexploded logistical ordinance labelled ‘clusterfuck‘ awaits. As my favourite project manager used to explain ‘the law of unintended consequences rarely arrives lubed’.  Meaning we’ll be sleeping under the stars, risking frostbite while making difficult decisions who to eat first*****

Reminds me of those B Movies when the hero opines ‘it’s too quiet‘ triggering a latex alien face eating incident.  Whatever, we’re committed now or at least probably should be. It feels like the right time – had a pretty shitty summer, hardly left the valley, bored of local trails, desperate to insert ‘mountain‘ back into mountain bikes.

Before then though, boring stuff needs to happen. Packing for 27 degrees at blue sky sea level and ‘fuck me it’s cold up here‘ some 2000m higher in the clouds. Existential angst on which bike to take. Paddle steamer kit selection, diving deep into the drawer of plenty selecting almost everything. Then realising Ryanair charge a million pounds a kilo and reluctantly placing the ‘4 season rain jacket’ on the optional pile.

Of the three packs, the Evoc has a back protector which is a boon when 99% of the trails we ride over there are spine splitting rocky. The Osprey is basically a Tardis. I could pack the house and kids in there with space for an emergency helicopter. The Camelbak tho has a special place in the pantheon pack having been campaigned on the 2010 route when just about everything went wrong.

It was such a memorable trip tho. The exhaustion, the navigational disasters, the ‘full Ghandi‘ barefoot experience in a posh French town, the Gin bar where Si befriended the owner and we watched 1950s movies on a cave wall while getting properly limb loss drunk. A lift over the mountain from Rob which pretty much saved our life the following day.

Great memories. I’m very much invested in making some more of those. Based on the increasingly diverse whatsapp group, we’re definitely in synapse firing territory. The night at the refuge has a nearly double figures riding crew rocking up. Which is fantastic for all sorts of reasons including riders who can actually speak French. Last time out I expanded my vocab more in four hours than four years sitting in a classroom. If hand waving counts.

The – slightly fuzzy headed – morning after saw the rising sun clawing at a palisade of rocks stretching long shadows above the refuge. It was an amazing experience watching orbital mechanics burning through morning mist. I’ve seen the Northern Lights and they’re a long distanced second from a high mountain wake up call.

Stepping back a bit, this is my third riding trip in 2023. The first was shared with Carol and we cheated on eBikes. Didn’t stop it being brilliant. Then a week in Molini which is officially my bestplaceintheworldtorideabike(tm).  And now back to a landscape I know a bit, but nowhere near enough.

The passing of time is definitely a thing. A thing I’m trying to ignore. We’ve a week living in the moment smashing up against my inability to do so when faced with non riding priorities. Pack the bike, pack a bag, set the alarm, sleep barely a wink before it trills.

As stated, I am beyond excited. Filling the bags needs to be done. Filling the memory banks awaits.

*and not wanting to be thrown off a cliff. Arriving back at our start point having climbed that 1000m in 30 degree heat, his life was in the balance. Had I not been so completely knackered, I’d have dispatched him there and then 🙂

**Which brings to mind “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”

***Which still leaves about 1200m to go. But you know, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

****Not that difficult. Si Steaks all round 🙂