Category: Mountain Bike Riding

The sheer unadultrued pleasure of a mud enema and frozen testicles in a sport than burns money at a similar rate to a small African country.

Return of the Turbot*

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff10 Comments
Crouching Badger, Hidden Terror

The fact this photo exists at all is no small miracle. Firstly because it’s taken by my good friend Martin who cannot count, amongst his many talents, any photographic ability whatsoever. This is his first recorded image where both wheels have been in the same shot. And the riders head is a lucky bonus. Secondly that setting sun had been well hidden behind a curtain of rain driven sideways by gale force winds for most of the day.

A small window of riding opportunity opened up between getting wet and going dark, so we jumped right through it. The rain may have stopped but the wind was still brisk enough to have us seek shelter under the muscley shoulders of the Malvern Hills. The first descent through the storm blown treeline was an exercise in amused terror. Terror because of the rain-slicked service offering grip levels between variable and none, amusement because Martin as designated ‘grip tester’ was lamenting his decision to stick with a balding rear tyre.

Stick isn’t the right word really. Because it wasn’t sticky at all – more sashaying in a parabolic arc in an attempt to inform the desperate rider that all was not well out back. Except for the bloke a bit further out back displacing his own traction issues by simple dint of laughing at Martin’s predicament. Ten minutes earlier, I really hadn’t been keen to ride at all. Too cold, a bit hungover, concerned the mech bodge was merely repressed exploding metal, and a bored of the slop and the grime.

Ten minutes after that, with views opening up over the Black Mountains on one side and the Cotswolds on the other, there was nothing which could have bettered it. Riding back on some of my favourite trails and reacquainting myself with the joys of the sorted hardtail, the climbs passed quickly enough and the descents were desperately funny tip-toeing between every corner feeling for grip and ready to catch the inevitable slide. It was the opposite of fast, clean fun and all the better for it. The essence of why we ride mountain bikes can be distilled from the feeling of riding crazily slippy dirt on engineering masterpieces with your friends.

Which isn’t something so easily attained when natural trails are replaced by those made especially for us. For a while, I’ve been a bit snooty and dismissive of trail centres – some of which is because there is so much brilliant riding to be had not graded and signposted. But it’s a bit more than that.

As the sun fell behind the mountains to the west, my dislike of trail centres found something more rationale than ‘well it’s not proper mountain biking is it?‘. That’s a lazy curmudgeon view of MTB ghetto’s which offer weather independent fun and year round ridability. The first trail centres – before the Forresty Commission got wind of their financial prospects – felt like the best natural singletrack but cleverly engineered against erosion and decay. The final descent on the Wall, Sidewinder and Dead Sheep Gully at Afan, the original beast at Coed Y Brenin, Heartbreak Ridge at Kirroughtree and many more were absolutely worth the drive and price of entry.

The new stuff tho – all rollers, massive berms and so industrially created leave me cold. They seem carved unsympathetically out of the hillside and don’t feel natural at all. Maybe trail centres have moved on and I’m stuck in the past, maybe I just don’t ride them fast enough, maybe this new stuff is what the majority of trail centre riders want. Whatever, it isn’t for me, and sitting on my bike atop the Worcester Beacon ready to chase the sun home, a second conclusion was belatedly reached.

Virtually ever minute I spend on a bike is a good one. But the absolute best ones have always been in the middle of bloody nowhere, not quite sure what might be coming next, no idea when we’re getting home and only a vague one of which way it might be. More of that please – 2014 shall be the year of ‘Adventuring by Bicycle’.

Probably need a new bike for that I would have thought?

* not the mythical missing Star Wars episode, more a bike handling approach when slithering through tyre deep mud.

There’s a word that rhymes with farce

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography8 Comments
That’s a custom option… not.

And that is, of course, arse. Up there is the result of the ‘sacrificial‘ mech hanger letting go on yesterdays’ ride. This lump of engineering genius is carefully designed to shear under extreme load, thereby saving the more expensive things it bridges between. Those things being the rear mech and the frame, so a sensible solution to the real world problem of rotational torque being transferred in potentially damaging directions. Splendid idea. Well done.

The OED tells us that sacrificial can best be defined as ‘an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy‘. In this case a£500 frame and a£60 mech. Definitely more worthy and important than a fivers worth of pressed aluminium. However brilliant the idea, functionally the mech hanger has some shortfalls, namely 1) the mech was twisted beyond use and 2) it attempted to eat the frame during the snapping process.

I discovered this only today after removing around a metric tonne of Forest Mud from the bike. At the time, my mighty-thighs(tm) were attempting to generate sufficient momentum to propel rider and bike through yet another sticky mess on the trail*. There was the briefest noise of tortured metal giving up followed by a lose of drive and a feeling of flappage out back.

I can only assume the volume of mud and grit in the mech had created some kind of sideways load best thought of as catastrophic. The sheared hanger split took the easiest path the freedom which was sadly through the back of the dropout. However, my initial concern was the exact whereabouts of the spare. That was closely followed by the realisation that I have never purchased a spare in the first place.

Helpful suggestions from my riding buddies included creating a bastard single speed of the remaining working parts. This feels similar to suggesting a man with a sprained ankle could best manage the pain by hacking his entire leg off. Before I was able to articulate my hatred of all things one geared, Haydn magnificently brought forth his own perfectly fitting spare. Sometimes it’s good to ride the same bike as your mates. Especially if they’ve got some concept of what useful spares might actually be worth carrying.

A quick swap and we were on our way with most of the gears sort of engaging in a non indexing manner. After a fabulous downhill run to Coffee and Cake, an emergency fettle, involving the lost art of mech bending, restored shifting harmony. That lost art by the way involves chanting the mantra ‘please, please don’t break the mech‘ while shutting your eyes and leaning heavily on the innocent component. All good, another 30k of mud and fun before a quick beer nearly benighted us.

Until this morning. Much grumpiness. Mech is beyond help and has been thrown into the overflowing ‘drawer of expensive broken metal things that might one day magically fix themselves‘, frame has been photographed, prodded and poked and is waiting for Cy from Cotic to come back off hols to give his professional opinion. Less professional opinions suggest ‘it’ll be fine‘, ‘hit it with a hammer‘ and ‘hand it over to a man with a welding torch’. All of these these things may come to pass, but for the moment I’ve bolted on a new mech and left well alone.

In the last ten days since my miraculous recovery from plague**, I’ve rediscovered a few things. My Cross Bike is fab, there is much singletrack to find and link up within the radius of this confused bicycle, I really don’t like trail centres much and riding in the slop can be good fun. If only as an appetiser to Spring.

Tomorrow will probably be the last ride of the year. Just short of 4000 kilometres on the mountain bike. Just short of 150km on the road bike 😉 That feels about right.

* not THAT kind of sticky mess. I always find the best way to get through that is to store it on my shoe.

** Self diagnosed. Pretty sure I was close to death on occasion. Not a widely shared opinion in the Leigh household.

The rain in Spain…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

… had better bloody not fall on the plain. It can fall on the plane that’s transporting four of us may hundreds of mile south. To a location somewhere closer to Africa than Northern Europe, and nestled happily between the Mediterranean and the Mountains.

Mountains that are 2500 kilometres away from those close to my doorstep and significantly more defined by sunshine and dust. About this time last year, we made a similar migration to Tenerife where the weather was more than clement and the trails mostly accessed via mini-van shuttle. This time we’ll have to work a little harder with the valley floor being our base and the mountains our destination.

I’m okay with that. More than okay – possibly crossing the line marked ‘gloaters only this way‘. It does mean getting on an aeroplane which nowadays mostly has me downing pre-breakfast tranquillisers with those who believe holidaying in some way triggers a ‘it’s okay to knock back a quick five pints at five am‘ clause. For me it’s self medication and an alternative to the embarrassing sight of a crazy man rugby tackling a stewardess pleading to be ‘let off right now‘ when the engines start.

Much as I don’t like flying*, I do like riding and the chance to do so with good friends on new trails under sunny skies has sufficient box ticking potential I’d best go sharpen the pencil. Cramming in three and a half days of MTB action in foreign climbs has more than a hint of logistical angst however. There’s the start so early you might as well consider setting off the night before. There’s the mental cryptography of decoding airline regulations to understand exactly how much you’ll be fleeced for presenting anything weightier than a man bag**, and the anxiety of selecting exactly how much crap you need to take with you.

Less than you think obviously. But more than you need for a days riding. There will be some combination of a 3/8th gripley and some form of broken plumbing attachment that have absolutely no value right up to the point when something breaks, and the entire local mechanical collateral is represented by a fire axe. It also allows endless double entendres when texting friends requesting assistance on ‘determining the size and breadth of my massive tool collection’.

Got to get your laughs where you can. I’ve packed a standard but complete Landrover maintenance kit – five hammer of differing sizes and a roll of gaffer tape – and a few randomly looking useful items while assuming my more organised friends will take up the slack. Frankly the less tools I have, the more chance there is of the bike actually continuing to function. There’s a fine line between ‘maintenance‘ and ‘broken‘ when the world is a nail and you are essentially a mallet.

First tho get the bike in the bag. On the trauma. 29inch wheels do not fit into 26inch wheel bags. As much as you’d like them too. And a 20kg limit is easily breached if your packing ‘technique‘ is throw the bike in first and everything else after it. With help from a responsible adult, we made busy with a mile of pipe lagging and straps in a way that would suggest to the neighbours we have a fetish best not discussed in polite society.

Finally after much swearing, sweating, squeezing the bag and desperate acts with zips and clasps – I refer you to my previous point – the bugger was in although the zip tension was at about 4000 PSI. I fully expect the fabric to let go and disgorge my riding smalls all over the tarmac as some careful baggage handler drops it twenty feet out of the cargo bay.

Still it’s done now. Just need to get through one more day of work, ignore other peoples deadlines with an insouciant shrug and head for the bigger hills come Monday at Stupid O’Clock. Then a few weeks to Christmas, then it’s less than three months to Spring.

Not quite half way out of the dark yet, but we’re heading in the right direction. Due South 🙂

* although on closer mental examination, flying I’m actually fine with. It’s the falling from the horizon in a burning metal tube that gives me pause as I cross over the air bridge.

** Even outside of London, there’s a worrying proliferation of these items. I feel we shall look back in twenty years with similar mirth that is currently targeted at shoulder pads, puffball skirts, rolled up suit sleeves and braces. At least I hope so as I am well ahead of the game here.

There is no spoon

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography5 Comments
That’ll buff out

Although the difference from Keanu’s experience is there was at least once a spoon. The remains of that saddle once sat proudly displayed in a bike shop gleaming all new and shiny under the brand name ‘Charge Spoon‘. After Martin finished with it, what we have here is something rather less spoon like. I accept it didn’t look much like a traditional spoon in the first place. But now the closest cookery-based cipher we came up with was ‘the cruet’

Industrial Design is a complicated and difficult thing requiring much in the way of creative individuals, mood rooms, coloured plastics and crayons. I know this to be true because many designers have told me so. It’s not just web plagiarising, a quick email exchange with a Chinese factory followed by a decent lunch while the junior designer knocks out some stoner graphics.

For balance though, that’s how every non designer has described the process. Nobody has every tried to convince me that the simple way to repurpose one thing to another is by throwing it at the Malvern Hills through the power of crashing. And yet the camera doesn’t lie – this is exactly how Martin took a solid if unspectacular product and imbued it with something of his own. Possibly a bit of thigh.

If you weren’t there it probably doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t make much sense to me either and I was there. For the bit where Martin was sheepishly mudsting* himself down in front of a few random MTBr’s who were clearly pissing themselves laughing. While Martin was unharmed other than further blows to his dignity, the saddle was not so fortunate. The entire weight of Martin’s Orange 5 – which for mathematical calculations can be considered similar to that of a small moon – had piledriven the poor perch directly into unforgiving ground. From a quite spectacular height as well.

Martin had missed a ditch you see. Only not really, he’d hit it quite hard having found it inconveniently positioned below a hidden drop. His attempt to ride it out soon became an attempt to escape the accident completely by rolling off the side and then gently down the hill. The 5 – now unencumbered by any pilot input ** – reared up before plunging into the hillside saddle side down.

I’m surprised we didn’t have to dig it out with a JCB.

It was one of those ‘take it easy rides’ because we’re off to Spain in a week, so the entire hills are a ‘no mong zone’. I’d missed that memo demonstrated by falling off on a flat bit of trail for reasons best thought of as ‘there is no talent’. I’d then ridden a nasty rock step I’ve been avoiding for about three yearsand desperately hung onto the back of a Orange-Powered Martin on most of the descents.

Both of us were quite relieved to return to the cars without any further incident. I blame Martin’s bike. It’s like bloody Carrie. And now it’s coming to Spain next week. I’m not leaving it in the same shed as my lovely PYGA. There would be nothing left but Swarf and some slightly fatter tubes.

* the well known MTB process of scraping slick mud from clothing, shoes and ears.

** which on a five is generally to point it downhill and wait for a) the end of the trail or b) the arrival of the ambulance.

The startled turbot

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments
That’s not the muddy bit. But it was the cold bit. And some.

Racers. You know the type. Defined by an engorged competitive gland fused with unbreachable self belief. Scarily focused and endlessly driven. Success boxed by results and targets. Sure, you know the type. I’m not that type at all as my blotted copybook of event based ineptitude confirms.

Which doesn’t stop a Wolverine like snap of pointy elbows under entirely appropriate contextual circumstances. To whit the temerity of a good mate believing there’s a line his pace and skill can lace between me and that tree. Oh there’s a line alright and he just crossed it. Catching is one thing, passing quite something else.

We’re not talking rock hard race courses here, buttressed by striped tape and peopled by those who’ve confused pain with pleasure. Nor seasonally race-boarded chubby weekend warriors gurning out mid pack mediocracy. No this is something entirely different and rather more configured for fun. It’s a cheeky singletrack nestling below the much travelled ridges of the Malvern hills. It was first an animal track and latterly exactly a minute of tree carving joy in the summer months.

Which have been and gone leaving us with sheep trampled mud, a moistness of dirt running infinitely deep and grip occasionally found but mostly lost. Martin built most of this trail and claims first-down blagging rights in conditions from dusty to disastrous. Except tonight when the tyres were slicked with a mud pack, and direction was 5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} rider input and 95{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} the current direction of travel.

I slipped by as he slipped off and gently pointed my slithering steed in the direction of any local geography not entirely filled with hurty trees. Luckily – and I use this word with some charity – the sheer volume of mud ensured velocity was restrained almost sufficiently for brakes not to be required. Careful use of the word ‘almost‘ there as a brief caress of the rear* slowed me only as a direct consequence of the tyre breaking away and attempting to overtake the front.

Probably best not to try that again. Instead hip steer the sliding bike onto a perpendicular bearing to a phalanx of glassy roots, take a deep breadth, unweight the now rather portly mud-transporter and breathe again as success is briefly declared when considering the alternative. I’ve always been a big advocate of the maxim that if ‘at first you don’t succeed, redefine exactly WHAT you mean by success’

All this dithering and procrastination has Martin line astern on my weaving tyre. In commentators parlance he’s ‘all over me like a rash’ and looking ‘fast and racy’. In my language he’s clearly cheating and that’s my speciality. All that separates us from trails end and bragging rights are two ninety degree bends that reward bravery and balance back in those halcyon summer days.

Try that now and earn a free mud pack with added twigs, stumps and surprised rabbits. I’m not really prepared to let Martin by, nor am I keen to splatter various important but squiggly body parts against a tree. So rather than make a decision, I curl my toes, worry a bit, run out of time and push oh-so-gently on the bar. Somehow we’re though the first and setting up for the second but Martin is now ‘all over me like a cheap suit’

Grr. Testosterone. Stupidity. Chuck it’ll in, it’ll be fine. Of course it will. Of course it wasn’t. Rear wheel slides are fun, front wheel slides are scary, both wheel slides are essentiality a finite period of time before brave face hits the dirt. This was a proper two wheel slide enacted at the exact time Martin made his dive for the inside line. Good luck with that.

I’d stopped worrying about being overtaken because any such thoughts were overtaken by hanging onto a bike that was rebounding between one axis and the next. The front and rear clearly had a proper strop with a refusal to agree on a common direction. Corner of one wide eye saw a bar to my left but by this time I was a passenger somewhere between ‘riding it out through awesome bike handling’ and ‘bracing for impact‘.

After a few more fishtails we regained control of the bucking bronco and stuffed it happily into the stile** declaring to almost nobody who was interested ‘that my friends is an entirely new race move. Forget that nonsense around tactics, strategy and pointy elbows. No, what we have here is a Nigel-Mansell-esque approach to trail ownership. You’ve just been privileged to witness is ‘the startled Turbot’

It only works if you’re riding with like minded individuals who really should be doing something rather more productive with their Friday nights, a trail at least tyre deep in tractionless mud, a configuration of perfect corners and a view that racing is really rather less serious than some will insist it is.

Lucky for us then that’s exactly what riding with your mates in November brings forth on every night ride. Don’t get me wrong, I’m already pining for Spring but until then I shall be ‘doing the Turbot’. It’s al whole load of fun and I’m fairly sure it’s legal 😉

* the brake in case you’ve lost the thread. And certainly not the front because that’s the hydraulic equivalent of penning a suicide note.

** Honestly, you’d never get a horse over there. I shall be writing to the footpaths officer 😉

Kneed to know.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsense10 Comments
Thank Christ for low res phone cams in 2006

All of us believe there’s certain light conditions*, camera angles, heroic stances, etc which firmly represent our ‘best side’. That’s my knee in July 2006 after an impromptu slice and dice involving Chiltern Flint, over-confidence and stupidity. It’s not the my best side, it’s not even my best knee. Some seven years later a neat scar scribes a line between something that aches in damp conditions and a few mm from leaving hospital in a wheelchair.

Sobering stuff. But not terribly statistically significant. Since 2002, a conservative calculation suggests more than a thousand rides in all sorts of dangerous places have been completed without major injury**. Crashes aplenty, occasional hospitalisation and many, many morning afters where the the memory of the crash is vivid except for the bit where you’ve clearly been hit by an articulated lorry. Because falling off your bike can’t possibly hurt that much.

Transitory for the most part although a body inventory counterweight suggests lasting damage has been done. A shoulder that creaks, clicks but fails to properly articulate after a hand out/hard stop in Swinley forest many years ago. And an ankle that’s a funny if not amusing shape having been reforged on a spiky anvil of rock. A wobbly nose remodelled on a not-so-handy tree stump, a thumb tattooed by a bar end and full of broken bits, and a little finger that fails the tea drinking Debretts test on the grounds of extreme crookedness.

All of which tediously triggers the ‘price of entry‘ defence. A means tested ends justification argument that is espoused by wheelchair bound protagonists and the rest of us siding with Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light. And behind that lies a dirty secret; it isn’t that the price we pay for throwing ourselves in pointy geography is more than compensated by the ‘if you have to ask, you’ll never understand’ reward. Because that’s just pub talk hiding the rather less heroic mindset that it’ll never happen to me.

I am too skilled/too careful/to calculated/too clever to make that kind of catastrophic mistake. The line between endorphins and endings is well known to be. The difference between a little bit brave and quite a lot stupid needs no explanation. I’ve paid my dues and earned my stripes. I’ll back off a long time before I fall off. Crashing fits with my risk envelope but serious injury doesn’t.

Which is a paragraph of delusion, Embracing and accepting risk is the difference between living and being alive. Mountain biking is a sport of many variables of which we are in control of very few. You can hurt yourself by trying too hard or not trying hard enough. By committing or not committing. By being brave or considering cowardice. By peer pressure or testing yourself. There’s no ‘risk management’ strategy here: a situation where braking may send you over the bars is perfectly balanced by riding an obstacle at full speed which may end better, worse or the same.

We make our choices but we barely influence the outcomes. I smashed my knee up on a familiar trail in perfect conditions at middling speeds. 99 times out of a 100, it’d been nothing more than a few grazes and some piss taking. The next three days were spent with a ‘stupid stupid stupid’ mantra racing around my head while my body was static in a hospital bed. But with the benefit of hindsight that entirely misses the point; 99 times out of 100 I had somehow got away with it already.

Looking at that picture socially network’d to my inbox earlier today, it’s flooded memory banks with long forgotten anxieties. Physically it took a while to recover, mentally it probably never will. At least I can turn left now, which wasn’t the case for the next two years when I nearly tossed the whole thing in as being too damn hard and nowhere near as much fun as before the accident.

Seven years later tho, I’m still riding mountain bikes two or three times a week. I worry less about losing a summer through a nasty crash and more about how many summers are left. I strap my knee pads on and make cowardly choices when faced with danger. Occasionally tho I’ll surprise myself with an act of bravery conquering some obstacle that even in, what’s laughably known as, my prime would have given me pause for thought.

Now that thought is something pretentious like ‘if not now when?‘. And that’s probably the only question that has any relevance in this extended navel gazing. An inch either way and my mountain biking future would have been limited to observing as a limping voyeur. And that feels pretty terminal for a man whose life is far too defined by wondering when he can next ride a bike.

Thanks Andy. You reminded me of the futility of trying to work this stuff out. Tomorrow I’ll pedal my bike, take some inappropriate risks and lie to myself about the possible consequences. That feels like a pretty sound way of running your life 😉

* although in many cases, this is of course ‘pitch black‘

** Unless my liver is included in the ‘book of damage’. In which case, I’d suggest the knee got off lightly.

The wrong way round

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

A phrase conjuring many amusing anecdotes from mechanical engineering to spousal navigation passing through confused copulation, frustrating flat-pack building and – if my experience has any statistical significance – the configuration of any electrical magical devices*

I am lucky – nay blessed – to have parked our life smack bang in the middle of some bloody fantastic riding. To your left a muscly ridge built on porous glaciation and to my right a 100 kilometres of forest. Both packed full of legal and cheeky trails most likely to make any MTB rider whoop and holler. And occasionally whimper. But while these trails – on first sight – feel too numerous to count and too extensive to map, a certain groove is carved first by most fun trail selection, then by habit and finally by apathy.

When you can roll out a mental map between where you are right now and the pub some three hour distant, it’s time to kick back, break out of that groove, ride the trails less travelled and go exploring. Get in touch with your inner eleven year old who is desperate to know ‘what’s down there?’. Last week we rode for bloody ages looking for a trail that just about rewarded the effort to find it, but the absolute best bit was getting a bit lost on the way there.

Today the spirit of the navigational optimist was imbued by my good friend Martin who decided we’d ignore the tracks of our years, and instead head off in an entirely new direction. Being the Malverns this still involved climbing to a windy ridge before dropping behind on a much ignored doubletrack which proved itself rather fast and feisty – hanging off as it was the side of a bloody big drop.

Then descending something climbed a hundred times. Again vertiginously configured in a way to ensure you were fully involved in a plummet/brakes/hairpin/plummet again dance with loose rocks, tight single-track and occasional lumpy sections which are a bind as a climb but bloody brilliant bouncing down them the other way.

Then we got a bit lost which was entirely expected. Finding some new routes just above Malvern, one had a rather tempting wall drop Martin felt I should be sent down first. His reasoning was that my clown wheels were more likely to stay any possible disaster, which is fine rationale until one considers the skills-free idiot plonked on top. I menaced it with sufficient briskness for the drop to be absolutely no problem although the runout very nearly was. More run off than run out. Or run into a tree. Anyway, flight pass stamped, I happily goaded Martin into having a go explaining exactly how slick and loose it all was.

He rode it fine. Which was, frankly, a bit disappointing. Never mind we continued to ride around the problem of familiarity with all sorts of ‘oh that bit comes out there does it/we’re here, right I thought we were over there‘** Under the hills, autumn colours shone slickly in weak sunlight making skidding through thick piles almost compulsory. The buff and dry trails may have gone, but we’re not quite into winter yet ably demonstrated by the orange and gold trailscape carpeting our route and whispering breathlessly under fast tyres.

We manoeuvred ourselves onto a track ridden only once before. It was jauntily off camber, barely hanging onto a steep hillside with the a whole load of bugger all to the left. A lovely view into the valley encumbered not at all by any other geography which might break your fall. Speeds may be down, but fun, fulfilment and the occasional adrenaline shot of terror are all still fully present. It’s not muddy enough to be a slog yet, but the grip is at best variable and occasionally non existent.

So we slid about for a couple of hours before finding ourselves 200 feet above the cars under threatening but awesome looking skies. This weather keeps 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the walkers off the Malverns and we’d had some slalom free runs all afternoon. Inevitably a family photograph was held up by the camera holder adjusting the focal length by stepping onto a trail we were bombing down. Her blissful ignorance may have been shattered by my squeaking brakes, but no letters to the Malvern gazette were triggered by our back to front production.

Back at the cars, we congratulated ourselves on a lost well found. So the wrong way around would appear to be the right way round after all. There’s probably an important message there.

* still one of my all-time favourite phrases was uttered by a proper engineer ‘if it doesn’t work, hit it with a hammer. If that doesn’t work, bind it up with duct tape. If it’s still being an awkward bastard, what you have there is an electrical problem. Call the sparky. He’ll probably be in hospital having set himself on fire. Useless arseholes‘ 🙂

** Mostly from me. Who we’ve established has a fully working internal compass. Unfortunately it’s permanently pointing to ‘lost‘

Back to the future

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

 

 

 

If the Welsh Tourist Board had a brief flirt with accuracy, the slogan’d pretty much write itself: “Come to Wales, bring a waterproof. And a mountain bike“. While accepting this may reduce the size of western charging cohort, it perfectly fits my view of this rather brilliant if incessantly moist country.

Key attributes of any ride in Wales; a) you will get wet b) you will carry your bike c) your tyres/shoes/eyeballs will be full of sheep shit d) you will get amusingly lost and e) outside of the poo creators, you’ll see no other mammals for the entire day. Obviously these rules apply only to proper riding, not that FC ghetto Scalextric nonsense harvesting a bumper crop of sheepy sign-post followers.

Unexpected early October sunshine had three of us piling into Matt’s rather natty demo van* and heading into the wilds of mid Wales where the hills are steep, the views inspiring and the people few. Such was our keenness, even the traction beam of an early morning pig ‘n’ chicken butty was mightily resisted as we assembled three bikes representing all the current wheel sizes currently being hawked by evil MTB marketeers.

Assuming you’ve taken my previous advice not to read the bottom half of the Internet, here’s a summary of where such idiocy takes us; the tallest of us rides at 26 inch bike, the shortest a 650b and the middling one a 29er. We all use to ride 26s, and Matt (tall) was the fastest downhill, Dave (shortest) was second with me bringing up the rear. After spending *ahem* a few pounds on lovely new builds, our slavish adherence to our own ‘best‘ standard has changed absolutely nothing in the pecking order. Other than opening up entire new motherlodes to be mined by rich piss-taking.

So having efficiently arrived at our start location in the lovely town of Rhayader, our attempt on a classic old school XC loop was put on pause while some similarly classic dithering over if a certain individual needed a wee took a while to resolve. Prostrates satisfied, off we span on leaf splattered trails in sight of the River Elan. Synaptic resonance reminded me of the last time we’d tackled this route in a snowstorm. And the time before than in a thunderstorm. I couldn’t help but glance warily at blue sky and wonder what precipitation lay in wait for us this time? Maybe a falling satellite?

3 kilometres in and we were lost. Not exactly lost, as the three of us could confidently identify our current location. Which was at river level when the route called for some proper climbing into brooding hills mocking us from our lowly position. Double back and double up on a steep climb surfaced by first a worn out road and latterly by a rocky track which provided a Welsh warm up of gaining a couple of hundred metres in not much distance.

The already dog eared guide notes** suggested the next section might be a carry. Optimism in print there as we shouldered bikes and discovered exactly why this stunning pocket of densely packed hills was picked to provide clean water for the brummies. Even after a dry summer, it was still boggy underfoot with little used trails packed full of stingy vegetation. We’d picked a route from a guide book some fifteen years hence which enthusiastically catalogued a ride of endless awesomeness with two of the best descents Wales could offer.

And fifteen years ago, you could imagine mesh helmeted riders clad in purple spandex poking themselves with bar ends and bouncing uncontrollably down rocky descents by the hundred. Not so now with all sorts of magpie shinyness attracting the contemporary mountain biker to the path of least resistance. We shouldered bikes and un-glooped ankles from un-gentrified bog, while they bought macchiatos and compared carbon composites. Their loss.

We topped out close to the stunning view at the start of this post. Opening up a a gully of rocky steepness requiring 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} focus entirely lacking due to an eyeball dragging juxtaposition blending man made reservoirs with lines of endless hills. I had to stop and take pictures giving me ample time to arrive at the crux already cleaned by Matt. He shouted that my line was all wrong – no change there – before hiking back up to show me the way. I decided ‘the way‘ was way above my pay grade and walked down mocked by those ghostly hardcases of old who’d made up for their lack of bike by a dollop of skills.

No matter, fun all the same which wasn’t quite the case on the climb out of the valley mostly completed with a nose on the stem, arse giving you the full ‘D-wing in the showers, reaching for the soap‘ experience. Lungs on fire, legs weakening by the pedal stroke, massive vistas putting the boot in your self-worth, this feels like proper mountain biking. Hard, uncompromising, potentially unrewarding but God what a privilege to have this to ourselves on a perfect day.

Back on top at 500m above sea level, we abandoned the route guide and headed for a half-remembered plunge down the ridge on a trail nothing like singletrack but everything like giggly fun. Fast, open and apparently without danger right up until the point a deep bog nearly ended it for me. Lost now, we pushed quietly through a dilapidated farm yard clearly modelled on Deliverance, and dropped onto the old train track built to take hard men into the mountains to build the stupendous engineering masterpieces of the Elan dams.

Dave – much broken from a horrible road crash last year – lobbied for the flat way home around the mountain. We talked him out of it promising only one more climb and a fantastic descent to finish. Selling job complete, we skirted the reservoir and pitched upwards onto a climb I remembered as being fairly lumpy but reasonably short. I was half right with the soft grass under-tyre adding pain to an overdose of lactic acid. Ten minutes later it was done leaving me on a bleak summit surrounded by 360 views and bugger all else.

I dumped the bike and stood there for a while. As close to being at peace as I ever get with none of the daily compromises foisted by life in general and work in particular. For a second or so, as a chill wind whistled through what’s left of my hair, I was tempted to use the word ‘spiritual’ at which point a tanker rumbled into view on an unseen road putting paid to that pretentious nonsense. Dave and Matt then put up with my insistence to ride through ‘that bog again‘ for the digital soul stealer before a final road climb topped us out on a double track full of puddles and anticipation.

The first kilometre was flat but fun dropping wheels into ‘how bloody deep is that going to be’ small lakes before gradient triggered dropped seat posts and grin inducing velocity. Nothing on this track was scary but it was fast and steppy so perfectly suited to popping off drops and drilling rock gardens. Modern mountain bikes may flatter the lightly skilled but by Christ they are stupidly good fun on tracks like this. And it was a track that went on for approximately ever. Time was marked by Dave’s freewheel right up my chuff and the chain slapping the swing arm as lumps turned to jumps.

Done if not dusty, we rolled back into town and straight into the pub. Where we talked about bikes, things we’d done and things we were going to do. We didn’t talk about wheel sizes or shock configurations or tyre pressures. We didn’t talk about how our lined complexions suggested a raging against the dying of the light. We didn’t talk about what happens when this all stops.

And that’s not just displacement blindness. It’s a recognition that while we can drag our ageing bodies into high places, the reward will be a million times greater than the effort required to do so.

Go to Wales, you get to see this kind of stuff

* which – if I was tended to the selfish – he’d best buy for our trip to the alps next year. Short of adding a drinks cabinet, it’s damn close to chauffeured mountain biking.

** Navigation via my GPS was discounted on the not unreasonable grounds that – despite it’s obvious efficacy in all things finding places – it was in gloved hands of an idiot.

Be the ball

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment
Jessie’s new Turner Burner

Recently there’s been much in my life around the ball, specifically being it. Mostly while external events fetch ever bigger bats and punt me to ever more ridiculous locations; some physical but mostly mental. A year ago similar things were happening which has me considering if a better life tactic would be to retreat under a blanket at the end of August, and refuse to be roused until – let’s say – the following May.

The sporting analogy is of course exhorting you to become at one with the incoming spheric in order for the impact be it with bat/foot or something more American*. In mountain biking terms, lately I’ve been more the ‘trail‘ which sounds great until we unpick it a little to understand my connection with the trail was indeed a merger between man and land. Because of course it was man stuffed face down in the land.

None of these have been particularly painful unless one considers ‘dignity‘ a body hosted organ. Except for the last one which strongly suggested I was exactly one second from a proper ‘oooh that’s nasty, call an ambulance, I’ll fetch the spatula‘ when attempting a tricky and steep obstacle for the first time on my hardtail. ‘Be the Ball’ I thought, turn off the targetting computer, use the bloody force, whatever just don’t fuck it up”. Just downstram of fucking up is essentially a headlong plunge towards terminal velocity broken only by concrete fireroad.

I wasn’t the ball. I was instead the idiot missing the grooved line completely so travelling rather too briskly into a rocky steep that had the bike behaving in a manner suggesting it’d be far happier if I exited at any time of my choosing. I chose instead to close my eyes, hang on, somehow ride out a crossed wheel highside through the power of sheer terror to arrive at the bottom more than mildly perturbed.

“wooah that was a big one Al, we thought you were off there’ was the sweary-edited summary from my aghast riding pals. ‘Really, did you think so, completely had it under control, you should try that line, it’s gnarlllly…duuuuude’ / ‘Really they asked?’ / ‘No of course not fucking really. I’m never doing that again, not because I’m scared or anything – just don’t want you to have the trauma of you collecting my teeth and maybe a few stray but unidentifiable body parts while we wait for the blood wagon‘

My non ball like status has extended into vocational life with a far more appropriate similie being ‘be the inbox’ or ‘be the volunteered’. Somehow I’ve mostly managed to ‘be the eyeball‘ after Herefordshire county hospital finally dispatched me homeward without insisting on my company for a few weeks. The eyeball in question is mostly healthy and occasionally useful for seeing things, so on balance a better result than a few sleepless nights suggested.

In all of this, I felt being a parent might be a good thing. Jessie has outgrown that very bike we bought exactly a year ago. There’s definitely some beanstalk behaviour going on seeding the inevitable search for something a bit bigger. No sooner had the sad decision been made that the ‘Franken-Turner’ had to go, another one turned up on that vast Internet thing.

2004 Turner Burner. God I so wanted one of these. Just as I was about to buy one they stopped making them. But we have one now, after a ride on the rather splendid Yer Diz trail in Bristol where we met previous owner and all round nice fella Dave. The plan was only to buy if Jessie liked it, and if she really wanted to carry on riding and if it wasn’t an old nag, and, and, and… And since she threw it roughly to the ground about 300 yards in, this because a discussion full of moot.

It was pretty much perfect other than the scars foisted upon its innocent frame by my second-born. Money was exchanged and hands were shaken. The only issue – as defined by someone who is 12 and therefore pretty much unimpeachable in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge – was the rather dull frame colour and obvious lack of pink.

Fixed that today with the help of my friend Matt who did all the hard work while I attempted to find stuff in his garage. To say it’s messy does absolutely no justice to the word where one would walk into – say – a child’s bedroom and declare ‘pick up your clothes, put that stuff away, pass than sandwich to whatever branch of medical science deals with fungus, etc’. No what Matt has created is basically walled landfill. If you move anything, anything at all, there’s a better than evens chance the entire south of Herefordshire would be flattened in the ensuing rubbish tsunami.

Apparently Matt once threw something away. For this there is absolutely no corroborating evidence. You could get bloody Time Team in there. Well no actually you couldn’t unless a) they were all very small and b) didn’t mind hanging like bats off the ceiling.

Anyway regardless of his layered view of the world, this is a man who knows how to wield a powertool in a way I can only dream about – ‘right then we’ll just drill out these cable guides, should be fine‘. And it was. If I’d attempted that, it’d have been akin to aluminium mining. I did get to play with the impact driver tho which makes met think actually I’d quite like to ‘be the drill’.

So bike built. Daughter overjoyed. Considers it ‘just about pink enough’. We’ll go ride it when she wants to do that. But not before. She has many things going on in her life when compared to her rather mountain bike obsessed dad. And that’s absolutely fine. As long as she stops growing soon. Otherwise we’ll have to get the lintels raised.

Be the ball? Maybe not. Be the fall? Really try not to be. I’m good with getting through the day and having a giggle. Be the fool? Yeah, that works 😉

* I am happy with baseball. I really am. It goes on a bit but that isn’t my real problem with it. All would be good if they’d just ‘fess up and call it rounders.

Myth of the Mynd

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography4 Comments
This isn’t Minton Batch. It was still a bloody good trail!

Crowd a flange of mountain bikers around a lumpy OS Landranger, and between squeeks of excitement and the telling of tall stories there’ll be some significant stabbing of digits at tightly-spaced contour lines. ‘There, it starts there‘ shall be confidently declared ,suffixed by fast spoken local geography augmented by topological features. There may even be reenactments of bold moves over crux points with full on handlebar method acting.

And every other experienced rider will be torn between excitement and cynicism. One mans epic is another blokes pointless trudge. Awesomeness will be distilled by crap weather, navigational failure and just having a crap day on the bike. The trail will be good*, but it won’t be great. It’ll certainly fall short of the mythical status the singletrack shaman is enthusiastically pedalling.

Minton Batch falls squarely into this category. Some of which was entirely down to me failing to find it on two previous attempts. Firstly attempted into a cheeky 50 MPH headwind which turned the map both ariel and scuttling off towards Wales. A second map proved about as useful the following year during precipitation best described as localised flooding. All we found that day was mud, but to be fair we did find an awful lot of it.

After which I sort of gave up. Until this weekend where a combination of actually checking the forecast and abrogating map reading responsibilities** to a proper adult suggested third time lucky. And the 30k ridden before we finally cracked the navigational code were quite fantastic all on their own. Big climbs, fun descents, not too many people, amazing views in a semi-wild environment and my continued tortured route finding which generally led us in entirely the wrong direction.

But confidently in the wrong direction. Which I’m banking as a major improvement. Including refusing to accept that ‘the middle of three’ trails being absolutely the descent into Carding Mill was in fact more to the left of centre. Or ignoring the urgent beepings of the GPS entirely and ‘switching to manual‘ which at least proved my organic satellite navigation is exactly on par of that provided by the expensive electronic version.

So despite my best efforts, we’re the highest things on the Mynd other than the full sized gliders thermalling above us. We’re faced with an inauspicious grassy redoubt dropping into what my friends call ‘tight singletrack‘ and I call ‘wheel sucking ruts‘. But from a low key beginning this trails fires you high into three kilometres of hill hugging heaven. It’s neither insanely technical nor perilously steep so initially fooling you into a speed in your friend approach.

Only if your friend enjoys pushing you out of ten story windows. This trail clings desperately to the hillside. Put a tyre wrong here and you’re going down. For quite a while. So it’s that perfect trail which encourages speed and precision but punishes mistakes and sloppiness. The ruts give way to shaley rock surprisingly obstacled by hidden rock steps and sudden tight bends. But the views just keep on coming, firstly across the heather-strewn tops then dropping your eyes into alluvial vistas long torn by volcanic violence. But those views are sirens for those eyes and you have to tear yourself back onto the 3-d problem in front of you.

And when you do, the perfect ribbon of singletrack flows on rewarding commitment and technique with endless perfect sweeping bends. Even when the gradient is almost exhausted, the trails pushes you on – pedal, carve, pedal, push, weight-shift, pedal, drop a shoulder, rail a turn, flash past a rambler and repeat until the giggling starts. It doesn’t stop when the trail ends. It doesn’t stop when drinking sunshine-drenched beer. It declines a little to an idiotic grin on the way home. it raises a smile on a shitty day when people confuse personal with important. It’s back when you fire up the photos.

It only fades wondering when you might get to do that again. That’s a mythical trail alright – not because it doesn’t exist but precisely because it does. You cannot call yourself a mountain biker and not fall deeply in love with that descent. It’s pretty much what mountain bikes were built for. I have been lucky enough to ride some brilliant trails this last month – both here and away – but this is something a little bit special.

At no time did I wonder if I was riding the right bike, with the right wheel size, with on-trend bar widths or complicated suspension. All I cared about was the next fifty yards of trail and chasing the plumes*** of rocky dust from the rider I was chasing. Distill that feeling and you have the elixir of mountain biking right there. Bottle it and you’re going to make a fortune.

I’ll be back for another hit sometime very soon. What’s everyone doing next weekend?

* except for Nan Bield. Which whatever popular opinion may say is a whole load of carrying opening up a world of extreme peril.

** Although I did download the route onto my notoriously useless GPS. Which filled my riding pals with so much confidence they brought two maps. Each.