Today’s offering very much reheated yesterday’s leftovers. Not posting much and yet posting pretty much the same thing. It’s probably a disappointment but unlikely a surprise.  So here’s Al dropping off a very little thing, and yet still making a meal of it. Sod YouTube and TikTok, THIS is the kind of content the Internet was waiting for.

Let’s pretend it’s something else. A celebration of sixteen years of riding in and around the Forest of Dean. Early on, my riding was split between these trails and the rather more pointy versions nestled in the Malvern hills. Those hills are grafted from sponge like geology mostly presenting a few mud free routes all year round**

The Forest isn’t like that. My first ever night ride on a filthy March evening penned a shopping list urgently presented the next day with ‘tyres and lights‘ up front and heavily underlined, closely followed by a litany of ruined transmission components pushed way beyond reasonable use. **

Over 1500 rides split the time between then and now. Rarely do I head north to the Malverns’ nowadays- too many people, but not so many to ride with, most of whom have eBikes, and while the views are pretty epic on the right summit in the right weather, I miss the trees even when they are bare and leafless.

So back to the Forest- specifically the east side poking up both sides of the river at Symonds Yat.  I know almost all of the trails here, but not with the kind of familiarity which breeds contempt. If there is any kind of sense of being home then this is it. Ridden these ribbons of singletrack in all conditions, from frozen solid to baked hard with everything in between- that mostly being the gripless slop we like to think of as ‘skills enhancing’ or ‘greasy snot death‘ when not reaching for a positive spin.

Even in winter it looks magnificent. Trails barely discernible indents hidden under a leaf rug. Long trammelled memory and – failing that – divination skills help a bit, but it’s not unusual for a train of riders to start together and exit separately. Sometimes having fallen for the siren call of drying trails before deep leaf litter reintroduces them to the teflon properties of dead vegetation.

And what a bike to be riding them on. Since the Yeti was introduced on the Hedgehog, the ‘spares and repairs‘ build has seen upgrades worthy of a skunkworks project. The latest trinket worshipping at the altar of “the shiny” are a set of forks EXACTLY the same as the ones I bought it with. They are newer tho, and a lot shinier, so you know better. On a scale of 1 to better, let’s give them a solid 8. No, I will not be sharing my working at this time.

In conditions not primarily categorised by winter crapness, this bike is just brilliant. Reminds me of my first ever Ibis- the equally fantastic and as flawed Mojo3. They share that same ‘make me want to go out and ride’ vibe and ‘bike’s got your back, it’s going to be fine. Probably’***’

And because of that, I nearly took it to Molini. Instead I packed the trusty RipMo which cannot be held in any way accountable for some very cautious elbow-worried riding, but there’s a lingering doubt that maybe the Yeti would have been – well – a bit more fun.

Not better, but different. There’s something going on with that bike which bypasses a chunk of my riding neurosis’s. Take this little drop for example which Steve is confidently bossing with narry a worry.

I bottled it for ages. Habitually swerve drops requiring any kind of well-timed front end hoof. I either panic and go early, so perfectly executing a manoeuvre predicated to slam the front wheel directly into ground at a less than ideal angle. Or too late, which has similar consequences yet somehow looks even more stupid.

Room for improvement then. First go, put Newton in the pilots console and just ride off the bugger as fast as I dare. Momentum beats gravity in a rock, roll and crash contest. Thanks Physics, done me a solid there.  Second up, slow up, spot the gap between rock and ground, do the chuck the bike away thing there, land safely, call it done so next time it’ll not be a ‘thing’.

I’d risk the speed is your friend thing on most of my bikes, but doing it properly needs something a bit special. Something I can place exactly where I want with absolute trust that if I’m 50% good, it’s 50% better to close the skills gap.  The Yeti is that bike but I have no idea why that is. And this is not the time to find out.

We’re not halfway out of the dark yet tho. So at least three more months of conditions 100% not suited for a bike flush with eye watering expensive parts, beautifully engineered, to munch on gritty detritus flung from the rear tyre. But on every dry-ish day, I know which bike is going out clean and bringing me home big smiled and filthy.

Makes me wonder if I need all the others. A topic for another time. Sure I’ve been there before but at least it’ll stop me posting videos like these 🙂

*”mostly” is doing some heavy lifting here. The steepness and slickness of some of these trails had me throwing shapes, mostly off the bike on many sloppy winter days.

**I expect any warranty claim including “drivetrain” and “Forest of Dean” was autofiled into the “denied” folder.

***No bike is every going to be able to mitigate all my hang ups 🙂