… 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.
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.
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 😉
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.
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‘
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
Which is perfectly okay if someone is handing over used notes or offering chances of survival from a fatal disease, but when we’re counting years and working out how many are left, it’s clearly the wrong way round. Even subtracting ten years would likely trigger middle aged angst and a strong desire to purchase a bright red sports car.
We’ve established that there is happy chasm between being being old and growing up. Some of this is an attitude firmly baselined in the delusional, a bit more is refusing to allow beige into your life, there’s much about striving to act significantly less mature than your own children, and – inevitably – there’s something about riding mountain bikes.
Sometimes life in general and this blog in particular suggests that everything that isn’t riding bikes is merely filler until I can. Plugging the financial, parental, vocational gaps when clipping into familiar pedals isn’t possible, And there is something in that – smugness at refusing to join the sofa-bound reality TV crowd is tempered by guilt at pissing away countless hours reading bike forums. Doing great stuff with the family skewed by boring them with mountain bike trivia*. Sat at my desk doing stuff other people can’t do, but terribly distracted by the sun blue lighting the distant hills.
Forget being forty-six and the haggard looking face in the shaving mirror that confirms chronologically you’re pretty well screwed – instead take a shorter view, live in the moment for a week and let’s see how that feels. It feels like this – Saturday morning we hit the M5 in search of fun and dusty trails and were rewarded by a Quantocks ride which reaffirmed a basic truth learned from doing this stuff for a long time; half of the awesomeness of riding bikes is where you are, the other half is absolutely who you are with. Even when the buggers are clearly more skilled/more brave and basically just faster downhill.
I’m done with worrying about such things. Not sure I can get any braver but I can certainly get fitter. Even with fading physique, the PYGA loves a bit of oxygen debt and my bloody-mindendness gland shows no sign of withering so we do okay. On a sunny, summer day hitting panoramic highs with your riding pals who absolutely get it is something between a privilege and a blessing. Even as a card carrying atheist, I completely understand why churches are built on higher ground – it’s at the same time uplifting and placing you somewhere in the ‘what’s important‘ hierarchy somewhere close to insignificant.
Then Sunday I announced that my continued dereliction of family duty would be balanced by a shared activity we could all enjoy. Obviously that meant taking everyone going riding. Or possibly whinging by bicycle: “Dad this is really steep” / “it really isn’t, it’s a bloody railway track” / “when do we get an ice cream?” / “when you’ve put a bit more bloody effort in“. This is the kind of motivational approach/group bonding that holds our little family together 😉
I’m not a complete bastard tho. There was ice cream. And then there was cake. And then there was much praise for good things having been done. And then there was Internet shopping for Carol who’d been ruined by an inappropriate saddle. And then there was the promise of another motorhome holiday next year, because I mostly believed ‘we really want to go on holiday with you again’.
Wednesday – the day before the most important workday of my year when 600,000 18 year olds pretty much rely on us to tell them if they’re going to university** – started with a depressing charging of lights and a mad dash to the ride start point. It didn’t take long for mental salvation through the power of perfect dirt to rearrange my definition of important. I’m riding stuff now that earlier in the year had me stalling and excusing. This isn’t some magic fix for all that properly sucks with my riding, but as I slide into ever deeper antiquity I’ll take any kind of progress whether it be real or delusional.
Then tonight after a couple of very long and mind-bending days, we hit the trails again in the Malvern Hills after I’d already hit the bar for Birthday drinks and hit the cake equally as hard. At my age this is what I consider a balanced diet. I wasn’t riding very well but the sun was shining, my friends were riding with me ,and we planned a perfect route which predictably finished in the pub.
You see I read that self indulgent crap and I don’t feel old. I look around at what I have and can’t quite work out how a shit-kicker from Yorkshire ended up with a loving family of whom I’m immensely proud, a career clearly directed by endless lucky breaks, and a boxload of friends who ride bikes with adequate briskness while putting up with my verbal drivel.
Forty-Six is still closer to fifty tho. You can’t buy time but you absolutely can use it. I’m not getting my hair back and I never had any good looks to lose. So this doesn’t feel like the right time for naval-gazing introspection. I don’t need to find myself – I’m right here and if there’s one thing I have learned in all those years it is this; you absolutely have to live in the moment because when it’s gone, it’s gone for ever.
Yeah you can’t buy time, so let’s make sure we don’t waste it.
* See that over there? That lovely view? Yes, see that sparkling river in the valley? Yes? I’ve fallen in there.
** which – I have to say – we did a bloody fantastic job telling them. Which made me very happy indeed. Some of which was due to knowing EXACTLY how close to the wire it was 😉
Way before the advent of trail centres and their associated gradings, the colour of the Black Mountains was all about the vast quantity of coal extracted, rather than a nod to perceived difficulty. I’m ambivalent over creating a riding class system based on colour, but since we’re stuck with it then this 50k loop in the heart of the South Wales valleys can be thought of as ‘none more black‘.
Not because it’s technically edgy – other than there are a few technical sections most of which seem to be only vaguely glued to the edge of the mountain – or it’s festooned with man made ideas of what an obstacle might look like; no it’s a splendid collage of tough climbs, long descents, pushes and carries, windswept summits, people-less views and endless rain which greeted us when we hit the border, made us welcome all day long and waved us goodbye with a mighty thunderstorm.
Proper mountain biking then. For proper mountain bikers. That’s us in case you were wondering, and we’ve been here before with my vaguely pretentious attempt to define the joy of natural riding and a rather more scary episode where Hyperthermia was hidden under deep snow cover. How would such a proper mountain biker be defined? That’s a whole post all on its own, but it’s hard to see any agreement for the inclusion of ‘inability to map read‘ and ‘inability to use a GPS with special consideration for misunderstanding grid references‘. I’ve never thought of myself as that type of proper mountain biker.
Still I should receive a little credit for nudging a few like minded souls into a damp car park at quite early o’ clock. The forecast suggested intermittent light showers with heavy drizzle later. Or – as anyone who has ever read such a forecast will wearily explain – pissing rain from dawn to dusk. Lots of different types; light, heavy, sideways – the kind of rain that’s on a mission to seep into every bodily crevice before partying on with all its friends. By rides’ end, my feet were a watersports park for lemmings*, everything marketed as waterproof had been outed as the emperors damp clothes, and we’d all been in unhappy receipt of grit based facial scrubs that still has me chewing sharp sand even now.
The bikes didn’t look too pretty either. There’s a noise a chainset makes when stripped of every last molecule of lube. And that noise is ‘expensive‘. Somehow none of this mattered, nor did my inability to find the excellent 500 yards of singletrack I’d insisted we start on, so adding about 9k of road trudgery to the route. Eventually the kind and supportive group stopped laughing long enough to point us up a big sodding hill that went on for a very long time. Eventually – and already thoroughly soaked – we passed the point where the less navigationally challenged would normally park; some 1 kilometre from the proper off road.
I think they were fine about it. We weren’t talking much anyway 😉 Familiarity with the route saw us set off up the first hill at speeds unlikely to trouble a sprightly tortoise. It’s a lovely climb this, alternately grassy and rocky with little challenges in and out of stream crossings on the first half and then a pull on a good but steepening track leading deep into the mountains. Amazing views here I remembered while adding another layer and shivering slightly. Up here the temperature dropped into single figures with a strengthening wind whipping away the warmth of the climb, but refusing to split the stubborn cloud cover.
Four times I’ve parked a bike at the top of this climb and taken a picture of it. Four different bikes obviously. Not today tho – regrouped we head to the summit and after a never-to-be-repeated navigational triumph headed straight to the Rhiw Trumau descent. Classic in every sense – clinging to the side of the valley, traversing gently downwards at first in wheel swallowing ruts before plunging down the spine in a deep gulley stuffed with loose rocks. The crux of which is a committed step that really has only one line and a fast one at that with speed needed to clear the rock field on the exit. Never properly cleaned that before. Have now 🙂
The rocks were properly wet, glistening even under a stone-grey sky, yet the grip was phenomenal. I’d like to put down solely to my awesome bike handling skills, but really it was the combination of 23psi in the tyres and a fantastically sorted bike crouched atop them, with my contribution merely picking a spot on the dirty horizon and bellowing out a Clarkson-esque ‘Pooowwwweeeeerrrr‘. I’ll be 46 next week and see no reason why acting as if I were in fact 11 is in any way a problem. Riding mountain bikes feeds the inner child in us all. Some, admittedly, more than others.
Three full-suspension bikes made it down at a decent pace followed by Hardtail Haydn who had the look of a man recently pardoned from a capital sentence. Vague memories of riding that descent in the dry on my Ti Hardtail engendered a very brief spike of sympathy before blasting off again on more rocks carelessly interspersed with slick mud. Which may explain why Matt decided to attack an innocent tree with his head although he maintains he was ‘fully in control‘ at the time. As we removed a good sized stump that had breached his helmet’s defence, I couldn’t help thinking ‘head wound, probably delusional‘.
After a little bleed, we started to get properly lost after deciding one GPS and three maps was an inferior route finding approach to vague memories of fire roads that all looked the same. Fortified by soggy sandwiches we somehow co-located ourselves with the official route beeped out by my Garmin, only to go off piste about five minutes later having ridden through water deep enough for it to be considered tidal. I was still loving my bike at this point feeling it was a perfect compromise between climbing and descending. Although if I’d had a choice of most appropriate vehicle for the day, I’d have plumped for a Navy Frigate.
Admitting we were lost – that’ll be the big mountain-y thing we can no longer see then – upgraded our navigational stupidity to a ‘short cut‘ comprising mainly of a 15 minute calf-screaming push into a bastard rainy headwind. Y Das is always a push as you snake round the summit. It’s steep and nasty but I’ll never bitch about it again having now made what must be the first bike-ascent of Y-DAS direct. Except we didn’t quite make the summit being pushed around the side where my GPS and map reading came to the fore again. Visibility was now about zero and the wind screamed wet expletives at our ineptitude, but good humour was mostly maintained as we tracked on a increasingly defined path in the direction of safety.
Found the summit. Went the wrong way again. Mainly because by this time I couldn’t see the GPS for mud and I’d assumed the ‘off course‘ whining beep was it committing computer suicide** Eventually we realised our mistake and splashed down the always brilliant descent past Grwyne Fawr dam. Oh it was properly wet today and rockier than I remembered. This muse accompanied me on atop my lovely full suspension bike while wondering if Haydn was enjoying himself as much. He was apparently, but it was clearly hard work and by days end, he was mostly ruined.
Fast splashy blast to second sandwich stop under dank trees, munching away happily while Matt replaced a set of ‘backing plate‘ brake pads. One last climb through Myndd Du Forest and then home for tea and medals. Matt’s route up there appeared to involve pushing up impossibly steep drainage channels. I knew another way but felt any navigational suggestions would not be taken very seriously, so I sucked up some mountain air and got on with it. Rode the last climb on tiring legs only to find a view of sun lit lowlands mostly hidden by cloud clamped on this hill.
We had our only fall on the way down with Martin failing to make a steep, slick corner on the final brilliant descent that was a rut hopping rush at the top and a fall-line plunge from half way down. Having survived that I nearly lunched myself on the final set of steps, narrowly missing a trail marker by depositing myself in a damp bush. Which isn’t anywhere near as exciting as it may sound.
Rode home on the road home up a couple of unexpected climbs, which had me pointing out since I’d abandoned any navigation many hours ago this could in no way be deemed my fault. Surprisingly such a well considered argument may not have won the day. Beer did tho, consumed in a lovely pub apparently unconcerned by damp mountain bikers clothed in anything not suffering local flooding.
Cold and wet don’t make me happy. Not at all. It always feels like a test I don’t want to take. But mostly warm and wet – well that’s a damn fine way to spend a day compared to – say – not being in the mountains with your friends. Evidently riding bikes is what I like to do, but what I REALLY love is adventuring by bicycle. More of that please.
* beginners mistake. Stuck the waterproof socks on which were BRILLIANT for almost minutes before becoming a perfect sock-pool for cooling water. A feeling of chilly moistness than lasted only about five hours. On removing the sock, a number of fish made a break for it.
** which it did when I got home. Bag of rice and all was well. Although only because I explained if it didn’t start working, I was serving it up Garmin A l’Orange.
