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.

Surrey Hills

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding4 Comments

I’ve a bit of a problem with that title. First up: Surrey “ twinned with Audi, BMW and Cockage. A problematic combination of manicured county seats, and the fat arsed driving 4x4s who own them. Then: Hills “ there aren’t any. Not proper ones anyway. Put them up against a Herefordshire Alp, and they’d be left crying onto its’ brutal shoulders.

I tried “ oh God I really did “ to balance my chippy shoulder with an evidential pursuit of the actual, rather than cheap shots at the stereotypes. But dodging only shots of trail side expresso and terribly expensive non moving Mountain Bikes, this proved on the can’t-be-arsed side of difficult.

The centre of Surrey’s self reverence appears to be Peaslake. A chocolate box village serving high teas to the mostly porky, and uncouth mugs of tea at£2 a go. Lots of non riding seemed to be the new all-mountain, with 5k bikes sprawled artfully in what passed as an outdoor photo shoot for Leisure Activities for IT executives

So tick that pre-conception and let’s move onto the riding. Which I remembered as being woody fun slowed by the buy-first-ride-second tribe. Not hard, not terribly demanding, kind of trail centre-y with more expensive cakes. A nice day out, but not really proper riding is it?

It is. Oh and then some. 40k later, my legs were dribbly blomonge, my throat coated with dust, my arms wibbly wobbly appendages barely able to clasp a hero’s beer, and everything brainside frazzled to the point of exhaustion.

We rode three hills, first up was a quick hour up and over Peaslake which 5 minutes in had the kind of steep roll in easily obstacle enough to end your day there and then. 5 minutes later, I was abrading my left elbow having failed to conquer a set of steep, loose switchbacks.

Ten minutes after that, my bike separation anxiety continued with a head-first punt over a log. No excuses other than over-exuberance, chasing local and all round hardtail-fast-man Nig, and the ever widening gap between confidence and ability.

Of the forested-four, only I was fully suspended with the familiarity of the ST4 over-riding any reason to pull the Cove from hibernation. 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the time this was the right decision with trails shot through by roots and dips, the other 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} I wished for a shorter wheelbase and tighter geometry “ a base for carving turns and instant line changes.

Still run what you’ve brung, and even with the squish out back and the slack head angle up front, much fun was to be had blatting lush singletrack, pumping vaguely remembered trails, wheels pawing for grip and “ in seemingly many places “ the ground as the terrain dipped and swerved between endless trees.

Cake stop “ HOW MUCH? “ spot of bleeding, not much sympathy, epic planned under sunny skies. Two further hills to summit; Leith and Holmbury “ neither of which would seem to offer the mountainous terrain most of the still parked bikes were configured for, but challenging nevertheless.

Much as I can already hear the knashing of teeth Gloucester way, the steepness and length of some trails are greater than those in “our” Forest. Or certainly the trails I’ve ridden on. From the top of the tower at Leith hill down to the road is 20 minutes of grinning lunacy. It’s pedally in the middle and at the bottom, narrow (narrower than my 710mm bull bars a few times) and tight in places, but opening out to become sweepy and fast. Summer Lightening is an awesome trail especially covered in nothing but dust and “ latterly “ sweat.

As we headed back, Nig had that hollowed out look I’ve oft been associated with. He saved a bit of energy tho for a final giggle-fest of Barries showing us all a clean set of wheels. The trail fairies have breathed on this already fine track, and it’s now a mass of berms, jumps and flat out jedi-speeder waggling between the trees.

It was warm enough to sit outside the pub, but far too hard to sit back on the bikes pedaling to the car park. I was happily knackered and somewhat humbled by just what a fantastic area for riding this is. Amusingly we didn’t really see many riders away from the car parks, other than a flange of ten or so sat waiting at the entrance to the final trail.

So yes I’ll admit there’s a raft of decent riding down in Surrey, especially if you have dry conditions and a knowledgable guide. I was pondering this as a tosser in an blacked out X5 cut me up for the express purpose of cementing his total cock status.

It seems I was only half wrong.

You’re going home in a Gloucester ambulance.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding4 Comments

This ride was many things. First time at night in the Forest this year, anniversary of the muddy induction ride when I fell in with this mucky crew, a potential redeemer for the new not really light emitting diodes and the chance to make merriment and new swear words with old friends.

It was all of that, and a little more. The route was mostly new, sometimes muddy, often heroically slippy, occasionally hard and fast and marked frequently with prostrate mountain bikers. So one of those rides which gradually whittled down the men from the boys, starting with double figures but falling to six and then just falling off.

Even by my ever lowering standards, I was entirely rubbish. Mostly because I’d forgotten how to dodge trees while travelling sideways on a sea of something that might once have been dirt. Not now though, it was a heady chemical amalgam of viscous and slop dishing out the odd soupçon of grip to keep you interested, before dispensing brown justice in the form of a handy tree.

Many of the regular Forresters were sporting mud tyres and smug expressions. My all conditions rubber were instantly converted to slicks at which point I fell off. This seemed to go on for quite a long time. Until it became a bit boring – especially for the poor sods behind who were stalled by my repeated sweaty apologies – although having stayed upright for about three minutes on one descent, I’d have paid good money to be lying again in that nice comforting mud.

That was proper scary. I have now experienced personal continental drift. From the tyres upwards, stopping briefly at the bowels and carrying on into a head wondering what happened to my “Chiltern reactions“. One crash did give rise to the concept of the “testicle fairy” where one could demand payment for a love spud, separated from its’ bag-mate through the simple un-anaesthetised application of a saddle rail.

I’ll never dare put my arm under the pillow again. And I’m also mentally drawn to exactly what the Testicle Fairy might look like. It’s not going to be Tinkerbell is it?

Entertaining as this was, as a displacement tactic it fell flat when the trail didn’t, with the not terribly magnificent six winching skywards into plummeting temperatures to access a trail I’d ridden bits of, but never in the dark. This climb seemed to go on for a while, longer for me I noticed as the mud-shod regulars wobbled upwards bathing most of the forest in a million lumens. UFO sighting must have gone up a million percent since MTB lighting went nova.

To access this fantastic trail, we first had some bone dry singletrack to climb which was both tiring and rewarding. The top of which opened out to a bank – with a entry only out-dodgied by the exit – for us to play on. A few of us played nicely with appropriate respect shown to lobbing oneself off into a dark abyss. A few others didn’t – Steve especially was having it medium, occasionally large.

We left him to it, shivering on the road side. What came out of the dark wasn’t a grinning Stevo, no what came out was that horrible sound of rider hitting ground, bike hitting ground, bike hitting rider, rider making groaning noises. It goes something like “ARGGH-BUMP-BANG-ARGGHH“.

Siren call that it is, we all rushed over to find Steve adopting a position somewhere between foetal and hibernating tortoise. He wasn’t moving much. Which considering he’d unclipped at the apex of the parabola before ragdolling down the slope and then being seriously inconvenienced by spiky bicycle wasn’t much of a surprise.

After a while – and to our shame some merciless ribbing – he declared other than an extremely sore arse, he was good to go. As long as the going was slow and easy. Then he asked where we were. A minute later he asked again. At that point he felt it probably was a good time to explain he couldn’t remember anything about the last two hours. Arse on the floor, head in the moon, concussion kicking in, time for some proper decisions.

Matt’s much maligned “capacious bag of doom” had already saved me with emergency sustenance, and now birthed a virgin space blanket we ripped open to wrap an every more confused Steve into. Ian has proper first-aid experience and Nic has much experience of just monging himself, so we left those two with the patient. The rest of us turned away from the dirt and lost our height on the fastest tarmac route to the cars.

The plan was to fetch Steve and his bike, place one safely in a garage and the other safely in Ross Hospital. Matt was designated “responsible adult unlikely to mix the two“, but before he could carry out Plan A, Plan B was triggered by a now entirely spaced Steve wondering what his name was. A quick 999 call brought flashing lights and a dash to Gloucester to get his head examined. Riding at night with this lot makes me wonder if I should too 😉

Happy endings all round tho. Steve was fetched by his partner late that night and, other than being “bloody sore“, is recovering fast. We didn’t forget his bike, and I made it to the chip shop before closing time. Well a man’s got to eat!

Closing thoughts; night riding is just the silliest thing in the world, and I never want to stop doing it. Hurting yourself is part of the game, an entry fee if you will, rewards are never earned without risk. You can mitigate it, back off a tad, ride to the conditions, cap your bravado and squash your competitive spirit. But if you ride long enough and hard enough, you are going to end up in Hospital.

Oh and people that take the piss mercilessly are also your best mates when shit happens. I’d be happy to have any of those buggers get me off a hill when I inevitably lunch myself into a tree again.

If nothing else it’d give us something to talk about instead of the testicle fairy. It’d almost be worth it for that.

Marginal Madness. Added dog.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

This appears to be a man riding extremely fast on the absolute cusp of painful stackery, all while wearing a suit. Probably just the sort of thing most of us would have a crack on during an otherwise boring lunchtime.

He’s got a mate as well who is slightly less sketchy, but still has to somehow not fall down a 100 steps at a million miles an hour, with two thirds of bugger all clearance on both sides.

Then, he too is attacked by a dog that is either deaf or rabid. Probably both.

This was very similar to my ride last night. Except for the terrain, sun, warmth, absence of darkness and skills on display. The “nearly crashing” part was all there. As was the ice and freezing cold winds. If this is some kind of cosmic weather joke, I’d just like to say IT’S NOT FUNNY ANY MORE.

Right back to work. Too much of it currently.

Lights out

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

There is a time for quiet contemplation, trading sanguinary* for calm reflection and playing the long game. Apparently. So I’ve been told. Comes with age and wisdom allegedly. Still time then even for humans of such antiquity as me. But not today. Let me take a deep virtual breath and scream:

“I AM BORED OF WINTER NOW. SICK OF MUD, DARK AND COLD. I WANT DUST AND SUNSHINE. I’VE BLOODY WELL EARNED IT”

Last night I’d have happily settled for just a bit of light. My recent expensive purchase delivered fantastic illumination for ten road pounding minutes, before switching off, shutting down and engaging in a permanent state of electronic sulk. This happens to me far too often during working hours, so my initial diagnosis was the now cooling appliance could only be running a form of Windows software.

Sustained hopeful prodding and poking about** for five more minutes achieved only frustration amidst continued benightment. As is the way of such disasters, my helmet light was uncharged and the repaired Hope Vision was resting some fifteen miles away. Luckily a spare was harvested from Jezz’s toolbox, leaving us with the repeat joy of a soggy road climb we’d only recently dispatched.

Good thing about the road tho was its’ wetness merely irritated rather than injured – a flipped condition come a switch to dirt. Tyres properly aslither, bloke on top wobbling about and bracing for bark impact, and any braking was just crashing by another name.

So we were late, partially lighted, muddy and – in the case of my riding buddy – extremely knackered from the bastard work week from hell. Obviously being a good mate, I took full advantage by suggesting ridiculous epics deep into the hills none of which I had any intention of actually riding. This is entirely opposite to what normally happens, except we end up actually doing them.

My Yang to his Ying was feeling pretty damn good probably as we weren’t going far nor ‘lung-out-of-the-arse‘ fast. This was an entirely unexpected state of affairs as, less than two days before, I’d not so much fallen off the alcohol-free week wagon as set fire to it – before toasting it with multiple double brandies,.

And it was still a proper laugh fighting tank slappers, transferring mud from trail to face via sliding tyre, then sloshing about in dank puddles. But really, we’ve suffered enough and it is starting to take a toll.

My ST4 has a set of rumbly hub bearings that’ll not survive another month. Already the winter has eaten through a shock bushing, broken that shock, destroyed four pairs of brake pads and turned my not-long-since shiny bike into something rather less showroom.

It’s not done that much for me either. Sure I’ve managed to get/stay reasonably fit. I’ve maintained motivation through the hardest month, and plans are afoot to cash in on the coming Spring. But it doesn’t feel we’re there yet.

Dark commutes stretch out a further six weeks, gawd only knows where I’ll dare venture back into the Forest, even the road bike almost seems like a good idea. I’m not sure I can hang on for much longer!

One thing I do know tho, is if we’d turned back, given up, called it a day as sense/tiredness/mechanical catastrophe strongly suggested we should, it’d have been a quick win but a long disappointment. Riding is always better than not riding. It’s also a shit load better when the outside environment plays nice.

Got to Keep The Faith for a few more weeks.

* My “word of the week“. Beats f*ck I suppose.

** Pretty much describes most boys sexual awakening.

Let there be dark.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Lumi XPG 3

My trusty night-riding light has countered three winters of abuse with an attempt to exact painful retribution. Not so much “Hope Vision 4” more “Hope I still have all my own teeth“.

The maker is Hope Technology – a UK firm based on the wrong side of Yorkshire* – housed in an industrial unit full of proper machinery. Their ability to CNC, Mill and Bevel metal results in an extensive range of MTB products. Some of them are very good, some of them are a bit special, and occasionally one of them is a dud.

Their showpiece 4-LED light that pushes the night away for 9 months of my riding year is somewhere between “special” and “terrifyingly unreliable“. Bit like kids, when they are good they are very good indeed**, but when they are bad “bloody awful” isn’t the half of it.

Wednesday night put Dr Jekyll in charge of illumination. Or not, when the light flicked to black as the bike was dropping smoothly over a rock-step. That smoothness absented itself with the light, and only the backup torch lashed to my helmet prevented a high speed gravelly facial.

This isn’t the first time unscheduled benightment has been visited on my innocent person. Nor the second. Or even the third. I now have a fairly matey relationship with the Warranty fellas up at Hope as the feckless light boomerangs between us. They’ve been fantastic at repairing way outside of any warranty period, and I’ve rewarded such customer service by campaigning the thing through years of rain, snow, frozen temperatures and occasional unscheduled trail percussion.

And while they are happy to give it another electrical brush up and polish, there really are only so many times that a fearful man can be plunged into darkness before demanding a replacement not marketed with a skull and crossbones. Laziness lulled me into accepted the “wisdom of the crowd” presented by Internet warriors who at least talked a good game. A quick scan of the ever escalating arms race between manufacturers’ added nothing but acronym confusion, so it was back to my night-riding roots with Lumicycle.

Whereas Hope are all grown up and serious nowadays, there’s still a whiff of shedness with Lumicycle. My first set of lights, bought nearly ten years ago, had clearly been designed and manufactured in a small wooden outbuilding. Yellow halogens powered by cut down car batteries dimly lit the trail for almost minutes, before fading to candle power. But this still proved to be a huge step up from catastrophic experiments with head torches and crappy clip on lights.

A decade later, development has been driven by technology, the 24 hour race scene and – somewhat predictably – huge steps in LED power from the Far East. The results are frankly staggering. Even compared to my Hope, the small form factor and huge light beam are really something else. It’s not quite the night-sun which appears to be gaining ground especially in homebrew solutions, but that’s not what night riding is about.

What it is very much about is sufficient light to go fast, go for a decent length ride, and go for a beer afterwards without having to rebuild complex electronics on the trail. The Lumi’s are definitely an upgrade on all fronts, but cheap they were not. But since six months of my weekly riding is undertaken entirely in darkness, and another three start that way it’s an investment worth making. That’s what I’ve told Carol anyway 😉

No excuse not to get out next week then. Well apart from the mud, rain, cold and a dose of pre-spring apathy. But that’s not stopped me yet, and we’re well past being half way out of the dark.

* Or Lancashire as the locals call it.

** We call this state “at someone else’s house”

The hardest month

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography, Road Riding6 Comments

Wet Wibble

Or, February – it’s a proper bastard. Aside from a few over-medicated nutjobs, there is a collective and plaintive whinge from the cycling community come November. Too cold, too dark, too bloody miserable to ride, too much effort for too little gain. Too much kit, too much washing, hit the hibernate button and wake me in Spring.

I am one of the over-medicated nutters. Although individual rides may trigger mad delusions that my life had ended only to be reincarnated as a dolphin, the collective revolution of a million* moist pedal strokes leaves Al’s world sunny side up.

Not that much of that sun is going on outside. Which brings me back to why February can only be conquered through gritted teeth, and the vague promise of something better soon.

November is fine, really. Some ace riding on still dry trails, bits of the commute lack benightment, still time for a trip away or two. December can go either way, but dicking about in the snow is the only Christmas present that makes you feel ten years old again.

And while the road bike is tending to the grim, it’s worth it for the looks on the be-suited faces of people not quite like you. Short month as well, before the excesses of a holiday period where getting out is the pefect release valve for being stuck inside with relatives who are not obsessed by cycling. Honestly, what’s wrong with these people?

January is brutal. Always cold, not much light, the misery on the faces of those swapping pasties for lentils. A spike in the number of off road riders spotted spluttering up the hills early Sunday morning. It is always like this – when the year turns – and it never lasts.

February tho, you feel cheated. Daffodils break through the winter crust, white ice is replaced by snowdrops of the same colour, occasional bright and warm days are snatched away by freezing easterlies and bands of spiteful rain. And you know it might snow again, which gets old so damn quickly and sends you back indoors in a grump.

Having missed a couple of rides already, my last commute was powered from a position of weather forecast denial. 6am in the wind and the wet confirmed the tea-leaf readers actually had it about right. After drying out at the office, the train home provided a further opportunity to view the hard rain slashing at the windows.

Wet weather gear is fantastic, but the problem is that it does not wateproof your brain. It’s a struggle sometimes to install the “it’ll all be alright in a few minutes” template as everyone else is rushing for their cars.

No choice but to get on with it. Displacement strategies include marvelling at how damn fab this is going to be in the light and warmth, calculating savings over the easy-drive option and wondering if hitting something is the right approach, as road bike brakes have a “work to rule” clause in the pissing rain.

Arriving home, you signal to the family that – contrary to all appearances – you are not an avenging swamp monster in control of an epic storm. Accept you’ve lost a bike and acquired a wheeled shed, peel off layers of dampness and hurry into the light.

Then do the same again on the Mountain bike the next night. The mud is up, the grip is down, the brakes are so much better but tyres – slicked by slushy crap – offers them nothing to work with. A dirty brown protest marks your rucksack, crack and back, but two hours of this beats an inside job with the TV.

So it’s time for a change. No more low-rent, truculent light mocking your motivation. Spring has to crank the season-ratchet and turn up the sun. What do we want? “Double digit temperatures, more light that dark, sunshine and no snow“, When do we want it? “RIGHT NOW”.

Maybe I’ll get some posters made up.

* well possibly not that many. But close enough if my not insignificant investment in bottom brackets is anything to go by.

Quite small but lots of fun

On By AlexIn Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment

Jessie on her new Islabike from Alex Leigh on Vimeo.

A phrase that could be equally applied to nearly 10 year old Random, or her new Islabike. Two more crashes, much hamming it up for the camera, occasional dog.

Recording the video was quite easy, especially with a more than willing lens junkie. Riding with Random is always a pleasure – even when I was feeling pretty uggity and grim – but splicing it together using Microsoft’s finest software was not.

Firstly, as with all Windoze products, the support for anything not written in Redmond is fairly poor. But clever with it. For example, it didn’t crash catastrophically until I’d spent an hour editing various bits of the footage. Had I saved it? No, of course not as it takes bloody ages. Did the application fail gracefully? No, it died with an apologetic error message before chowing down on my best work.

Being an idiot, I tried again. Being Microsoft, it trashed my work again. So I switched from AVI to WMA through shareware developed by the admirable Hamstersoft, and went for third time lucky. On this doomed attempt, the application generously allowed me to save my magnum opus in all its’ edited finery, before letting me down somewhat with the resultant video being more occasional jerkiness and static shots than actual 30FPS HD as promised.

I wish my trials and tribulations ended there, but of course they did not. Finally after some video success, I still had to trawl the murky backwaters of the Internet for accompanying free music. That voyage of discovery did bring me into contact with some really decent tunes, so not quite the entirely pointless endeavour I had anticipated.

And now being a keyboard expert on the underground Seattle Indie-Rock scene, I’m 99{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} certain this makes me significantly more windswept and interesting. Possibly not a universally held view.

To summarise, bike good, rider happy, ancient parent proud, Microsoft rubbish, opensource marvellous, free-music lovely, Holland on Thursday. It was all going so well until that last work based directive was slipped in. It’ll probably give me something to write about, I wonder if it’ll give me some more free time to do so?

Good Times.

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

Scotland 2008 MTB (24 of 99)

Having depressed myself through the simple act of reading the consultation document/done deal sapped out by the FC for the ensuing forest sell off*, I felt some cheering up was in order. And with the fruity grape being back on the weekend agenda, the simple solution would see me muzzily nose down in a fine Merlot. Occasionally rising above sofa level to extract chocolates from the Kids’ secret store.

However, the serial killer attempts on a liver that’s already suffered quite enough over past weekends has put me right off that idea. Weekends are precious enough without a bastard hangover chaser. So instead I harvested a couple of my favourite photos from a roadtrip back in 2008.

Looking backwards tends to focus the minds eye on a hinterland missing much of the grimness experienced in the then. Rain, lots of that. One of the guys seriously, and understandably, out of sorts, a couple of others missing, and the feeling that this was the end of something.

And yet how can any trip including these great moments be anything but a happy memory. First we see a hamming of up by a lying of down for road sign lampooning. At the end of a long climb where Dave and I invented the idea of vertical geography sliding off to “Hills Conventions” under cover of night and vying for the “biggest bastard” award – “Well say what you like about Scarfell, he might be a bit craggy and sold out to the tourists, but check out those shoulders, he’s a freaking monster”**

Scotland 2008 MTB (49 of 99)

Second up was changing a tube high up above the Lakes wondering if there could be any better time for a sit down and look around. I remember the complete sense of peace we felt up there. There is a certain singularity to road trips- you faff, you bullshit, you drink too much beer but when you ride there are no boundaries, no being home for six, no work shit polluting your mind, nothing to deflect a focus form the sheer joy of being free in the mountains.

Scotland 2008 MTB (41 of 99)

Finally is my good friend Andy – a fusion of great antiquity and shortness of form that clearly marked him out as the “Proto Gnome” – launching over a meaty rock step on his£100 hardtail. He then cast around for a loaner full-suss from us normal sized riders to try again only, this time, with a bit more aggression. Much shuffling of feet and desperate excuses grumped him up until I carefully pointed out that “I would lend you the Pace, but really I need it to work afterwards”

I write this and in my head is “we can be heroes if just for one day“. Three images, one ride, many more to come, so many more have passed. I guess the point is that we should celebrate – not lament – the good times, and only look forward to the next much anticipated event.

The slightly more pretentious angle is that going out and doing stuff creates memories that will sustain you in dark times. Because the worst regret of all must be not doing it in the first place.

* An entreaty so brazenly craven to Government policy, it smacked of Turkeys’ voting for Christmas.

** You probably had to be there.

I have written to my MP.

On By AlexIn Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff2 Comments

There’s something that I never believed would happen. Along with actually caring what profile a window frame was, and becoming an expert on problem solving in Club-Penguin land. It is very much akin to seeing your reflection and thinking “wow that old bloke is what I’ll look like in 20 years“.

But even a man so incurious to the working of politics, and apathetic to the power of lazy can only take so much. The government’s selling off of the publically owned forests is, at best rushed and ill thought out and – at worst – spiteful and stupid.

Sure, the specific issue for Mountain Bikers is the lack of legislation to retain access to the trails, but there is a much wider point here. If something is held in trust for the public, then there is significantly less pressure for it to turn a fast buck. Throw open ownership to private-for-profit companies, and any pre-sale weaseling promising altruism and philanthropy are lost in the quest for maximum shareholder value.

And you can absolutely see their point. They want no part in possible litigation if accidents happen on their land. A rider (be that on a bike or a horse) adds zero value to their bottom line, so why would they extend access rights to these groups? The CROW legislation of 2000 enshrines the rights of the much more powerful rambling bodies to roam over the land, but the rest of us were no-so-politely ignored when asking for similar protection.

Forests are fun places. Not just for me and the jealous protection of much loved trails. But for everyone; special places are found under the trees, there is a sense of peace and oneness with nature. They are full of light, texture and things to prod, poke and explore. The value of providing this kind of environment for the public has inestimable value that you cannot put a price on.

But the Government has.£100 million apparently. It’s a big number but against a deficit of billions, it’s not even a stone in the water. It’s enough to make you angry and it absolutely should although I doubt my MP will lose any sleep over losing my vote, with his 15,000 majority and Tory view of the world*

I’ll not let that stop me at least having a voice in the debate. Already many have signed up to the 38 degrees petition and, more locally, to HOOF supporting the Forest of Dean. I know I have. In response, there are the expected charges of hysteria and misunderstanding spouted by the mouthpieces of government. But a precent was set only a few months ago when an FC wood was sold off a few miles from here.

Previously it had FC sanctioned trails and was a fun place to ride. The first action of the new owners was to erect massive “No CYCLING” signs and randomly police it with angry men carrying shotguns. It’s hard to see how there can be any winners in the forest sell, other than those whose quest for profit will be in direct conflict with public access.

And if that isn’t worth a bit of community action, I don’t know what is.

* There’s a fantastic old story where Lord Chesterfield was showing some Etonion Chum around his new estate. The high point was a visit to a huge tower with panoramic views in every direction. Apparently the stuffed shirt was so impressed he declared “Good Lord Chesterfield, you can almost see Poverty from here“.

Consulting the inner cat

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

There are times when riding – as with life generally – that make you think ‘woooah that was a close one‘. Events that invoke the thought that one just dodged a bullet, sailed a little close to the wind, felt the icy shiver of impending dread, that kind of thing. Generally followed up by a commitment not to do it again, or at least not for a while until the balance of karma is restored.

To paraphrase: “got lucky once, probably won’t next time” deep breath, nod to deity/pagan god of choice, move on. Today I had a ride just like that except for the moving on bit. If I were a cat, I’d be desperately scanning the small print for options to buy extra lives.

Riding with Martin always goes like this. Afternoons out are short on miles, long on smiles and celebrated for going heavy on “shiiiiiit, eek, arrrghh, phew, never-in-doubt” moments. And because of riding lots, I’ve lately been overcome with a high dose of smug.

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride. Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

Enough in the legs to climb anything – albeit still quite slowly – and enough pedalled in muscle memory to let the bike go fast and be fantastic while I hang on up top. Not asleep at the bars tho, because this kind of riding guarantees serial hits on the adrenal gland.

First a top to bottom trail starting wide and windy, dropping into narrowing singletrack that throws out wheel stopping rocks and increased gradients before you can say “I wonder if I should have braked back there?”. A cheeky left throws up more steepness, a set of “qualifying” steps punching you straight into a second set easily identified by being sodding narrow, buttressed by shoulder high rock and long enough for major internal organs to switch locations.

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride. Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

Wet as well today as were all the trails. Best to look vaguely in the direction of proposed travel, loosen your muscles and your mind and go with the flow. I did, Martin didn’t leading to a bit of light ribbing especially as he’d brought his big bike to the rock party.

Multiple goes on a lovely steppy drop proved insufficient for Martin to understand how my camera worked. Never mind, big climb to height, fall off the side of another hill where I arrested a monster back-brake slide with a flick of the hips before my smugness was replaced by confusion as Martin snaked down the trail at a speed and smoothness entirely missing from the bloke behind.

No matter, one big climb to gurn, one favourite descent to dispatch. Lately I’ve been having a splendid time down here thinking that maybe – of all the riding crew – now I am the quickest. Chagrin served up with a double can of whupass for me then, as Martin careered off at a truly remarkable speed. Somewhere on the way down – between remembering to breathe and trying so hard not to crash – it became apparent that the only way of catching him would be to fly past at head height having been spat off at high speed.

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride. Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

Consulting my inner cat, I found a large flashing zero in the “remaining lives” column, and a terrified kitten hiding behind it. Did my best tho, still got whupped. But it’s not just bravado, or the not unreasonable joy of arriving alive at the bottom that makes us do this.

I cannot tell you how much fun riding fast, jumping off steps, bouncing off rocks or holding a two wheeled slide can be. I just know I want to go back and do it all again.