In front of me, I have a map. Now I’ve always been fascinated by cartography in the same way that grot mags would capture my attention when I was a teenager*. The symmetry holds; I would peer at the pictures, get quite excited without really knowing why, and have absolutely no clue about what the hell would happen next.

Cracking it open shows vertical delights, hidden clefts, unconquerable summits and sun warmed valleys. I’m back to the map, what the hell are you lot thinking? The area 40ks north of Perpignan is known as Le Ganigou which sounds both medical and painful – it was nearly both. 12 routes radiate out from Vernet-les-baines – a rural town where ‘Allo ‘Allo must have been staged – increasing in severity from greens to clean, blues to cruise, reds to roost** and blacks to crack.

As ever, we chose the hardest route intending to dispatch 6000 feet of climbing over 40ks wth nothing more than a pack of sandwiches and an Olympic class hangover. And, again in the long tradition of giving up, a mile later – all of which was pitched nearly to the vertical – we ran away scared.

“Red route then lads eh? Best get ourselves warmed up first eh? We’ll crack that bastard tomorrow? Right?” Yeah, right. The next four hours were spent mostly getting lost, getting sun burned, getting backdraft hangovers***, getting laughed at by the French and pushing. The downhill sections swung between steep, loose and wide and steep, narrow and rocky. At no point did steep ever leave this holy trinity of going downhill fast. And a bit frightened.

Uphill was – as I may have mentioned – pushing, sweating, grunting and lying supine on the saddle waiting for double digit heart rates and single digit vision. Still, the final singletrack back to Vernet was the dusty jewel in this twisted crown. An initial run in was a steep hairpin immediately switching to baby-head rocks which needed speed and balls to surf like a wheeled jetboat.

Just when you were getting all cocky with rocky, the next challenge were alternating, blind and steep, root-strewn hairpins. Bleeding speed in the manner of “don’t make me lock up and bleed“, I faultlessly dispatched them in a new school manner of “spanners: bag of”. The reward for staying upright was a kilometre of insane trail which took hold of your adrenal gland and squeezed it unmercifully for the next three minutes.

Dave has better lines that me, because he is a shitload younger, a sight braver and *curses* noticeably more skilled. He’s also currently dependentless****, so his dust became my track. Hardtails rule here, so fast to change lines, so easy to manual over portentous rocks, so laugh out load carvey in corners. Drop your elbows, swap stiff muscles for leggy suspension, don’t even flick the brakes and have summer riding hammered into your brain by every bump in the trail.

It doesn’t happen often enough but when it does, riding like this is better than almost anything else. There are no limits, there is no fear, nothing is difficult, fast is easy, everything is possible, timeshare skills come on line for 60 seconds and now you can manual, bunnyhop and – even for the briefest moment – hip jump in SPD’s.

We rode it twice more over the next days and never made the black. But we’ll be back, no wiser, probably no more sober but with better excuses. I have so many long memories from this shortest of trips; nailing the steepest trails, drinking beer in out of season rural villages, Simon coming back from the dead on the first day, falling off, pointing and laughing at others doing the same, taking the piss, laughing till it hurt, long days, big nights, great friends.

Our friends Si and Sarah, who have swapped a somewhat hedonistic London lifestyle for rural bliss in a place perfectly sandwiched between the sea and the mountains, are very lucky people indeed.

More so, because we’ve left 😉

* For my younger readers, this was the like the Internet in paper form. Sticky paper, if I remember rightly.

** Forgive me the freeride lingocrap(tm) on the grounds of exceptional alliteration

*** The best way I can think of describing “the second chewing” of food and water.

**** Probably. We’ll leave it there should we Dave?

A brace of mid leg articulators are essential working body parts for a long weekend of dusty riding in the Southest of France. Useful also for getting around once walking becomes stumbling becomes resting, face down, on the sun warmed ground. Alcohol may have been involved, it generally is.

You see there is an grooved narrative causality governing trips away with bicycles and good friends. Firstly a key component of my MTB will explode somewhere betwixt careful packing and despondent rebuilding. Following closely on is a twist in the story that ends up in a glass and then a full on monstering of the liver. And while the two may be only loosely related, I am powerless to resist the grip of the tale.

On the way to a hangover, which rates somewhere high in my top ten “never another drop, not ever, don’t even mention the word” thumping morning afters, we discovered from our recently domiciled host that “France is run by middle age women” and “there is no point trying to charm them, they get that 24/7 from the indigenous population” and “Driving while drunk in rural France is as simple as sticking your head out of the window and feeling the hedge“.

All you need to know in three simple sentences spread over an evening of ever increasing wine fueled stupidity. Which ended in us incautiously cracking open a further bottle back at Si and Sarah’s house before grabbing a bike each for a spot of “Derbying in the Dark“. Less Bruce Springsteen, more loose springs ream as a collection of expensive bicycles were thrown roughly to the floor, occasionally striking a drunken bystander.

Once Si unleashed his BMX (if not his BMX skills), four men who should really know better spent much time giggling, searching for lost bikes in the darkness and attaining verticallity for the single purpose of securing another drink. Did it end well? Two guesses and you’ll not be needing the second one.

The next morning started slowly because the previous evening had finished not too much earlier. Head clutching shades stalked darkened corridors, moving slowly but easily identified by their cries and moans. Stairs were difficult, cutlery a mystery too far and the prospect of attempting to control a motor vehicle nothing more than legally sanctioned murder.

We did eventually go riding which went about as well as you could expect from a quartet of men sweating red wine and chewing back last night’s dinner. Still hell of a night, not such a fantastic morning.

I’ll get round to cataloging our mastery of both bikes and stomachs when I get a minute not earmarked for some serious study of the inside of my eyelids. But I’m fairly sure the world oil crisis may be over considering the volume of the stuff leaking from my (air!) fork over the weekend. I’m in touch with BP regarding some exploratory drilling of this apparently bottomless reserve.

Something is broken. Thankfully not me although Saturday morning, I’d have paid good money for a mercy killing 😉

On the nicest day of the year, I decided to abandon the family’s plea for some outdoor action, instead closeting myself in the barn to build this Titanium lovely. Ti is a frame material which has received much mullage from the experts-in-their-own head found on Internet forums. Apparently it is the silver bullet, the cookie-cutter, the pinnacle of the periodic table. That’s bollox obviously but didn’t stop me lusting after one for many years.

And years ago, I did have one but discarded it as a smelly kipper once it became apparent that exotic frame materials do not beget awesome trail skills. I know better of course now because this one was far more expensive – even second hand – so must be pretty damn begetting in dishing out those elusive inflamed wedding veg.

My friend Mike – who understands such things – tells me frame materials are largely irrelevant to how a bike rides. There is no inherent springiness of steel, stiffness of Alu or mythic ride quality associated with Titanium. And, of course he’s right but the PA and Wanga have gone, while this has taken their place. It’s already way better than the Voodoo because it has lots of gears. Which after some angst and shouting, I was able to wrest from their recalcitrant starting positions.

Mike also tells me this bike will last me for ever. Which – based on my bike rental approach – is interesting, if not entirely relevant. But tomorrow, on the anniversary of shoulder-gate, it’ll get clothed in the Emperor ‘s new mud. Of more interest to Carol is my direct return to the house without a diversion to Accident and Emergency.

Worshiping at the altar of Mong would have Consequences what with two weeks of camper van driving a mere week away. But I’m not sure I can ride any more slowly. Anyway a quick cheeky footpath test showed the bike to be both stiff and frisky.

So I’m thinking of calling it the “Penis“. Like rider, like bike eh?

Quantocks Jan 08 (25 of 45), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

That’ll be the Quantocks then. From a purely geological standpoint, it’s arguable the Peak District or North Wales may better qualify. But walk for a minute in my shoes* and try rhyming anything with district. Lift Fits? Whit Gifts? Wrist Pick? Lacking both rhythmic cadence and rhyming couplets.

So, as usual, form triumphs over function on the hedgehog. But it’s not a total fib as these were rocks garnished by marketing. One minute you’d be pinballing off square edged geography idly disputing the brochure’s claim of “dry, sun dappled singletrack nestled in the beautiful hills of Somerset“, and – just before you called a lawyer or the A&E department – suddenly it would appear right in front of you**

Legend has it that proper mountain bikers would never spend less time out in the hills than it took to travel there.. I’ve always assumed such heroes had very fast cars. But when fantastic weather and great trails intersect, even the slack can manage to ride through five snatched hours of winter daylight.

Although we did spend approximately a third of that time in the pub. And because they serve beer, it seemed rude not to embark on some light quaffing. And because the Quantocks are a sugar loaf of steep sided valleys, the subsequent climb very nearly resulted in some projectile de-quaffing.

During the occasional brief riding hiatus’s between drinking, talking and eating, the singletrack sparkled cheekily and sparked all sorts of post descent nonsense around riding proficiency rarely seen outside professional competition. For myself, I’d like to think that “I flowed through those corners like I was on snails” treads a line somewhere between natural modesty and harsh reality.

There was much talk of floating serenely over bumps and braking only when certain death was the alternative. Better still sometimes deeds even followed words with a death-grippy “ohshitgoingtofasttobrakebuggeryarrrggh” approach to the Weacoombe descent brought with it a weeks worth of adrenalin. Had it gone wrong though, the next ten seconds would have been packed full of hurty incident.

Still out of the aggressively nibbling*** wind, the weak winter sun warmed our backs, and the happy noises of right side up mountain bikers could be heard all around. Riding in winter is so often wet, cold and butt shotblastingly muddy but – on days like this – you remember just how great the next three seasons are going to be.

Back at home some time later I did the numbers. Traveling hours: 5. Traveling miles: 276. Riding miles: Not many. Riding smiles: think of a big number and multiply it by close to infinity.

Forget the rigidity of seasonal accuracy. The daffodils are out, the birds are singing in the dawn, the hedgerows are sleepily awake with new buds. Spring is coming. And so is late summer for those of us heading off to the other side of the word next month.

I may have mentioned that already.

* Probably should have warned you about the smell. They are a funky set of kipper slippers.

** Insert preferred ending
– like Hally Berry wiggling provocatively out of the sea
– like a handsome man with a beguiling – yet playful – smile
– like the Shopkeeper in Mr. Ben
– all of the above.

*** somewhere between flat calm and biting

..considerably slower than Andy. By the time I had arrived at the scene, the narrative of the crash had already moved on from slip-oh shit-wheel-rock-abandon ship-roll-check body parts-examine bike-buggeration. Having groaned up the Whytes Level climb on a mission for a long winters ride, Andy whooped off into the twisties, found the exact lack of traction provided by forest mud and rammed his front wheel sideways into a pointy rock. And himself down the trail, his sky-ground-sky journey punctuated by stumps and groans.

It seems impossible that we could beat our awesome effort of last year. And yet, here we were a nats nadger from 2008 – having driven 170 dark and windy miles – and five minutes into the first descent, we’re a man down. And down he went as well, carrying what I came to quickly think of as “the remains” thousands of vertical feet that deliver significantly more fun by wheel. Obviously given the choice between supporting our slightly battered friend in a band of brothers we’re all in this together style, or dismissing him with a sketchy wave and a “see ya later“, we gave him all the rush that a bum would offer an annoying, overstaying in-law.

And, of course – aside from the muddy misery of a new section which appears to have been designed specifically to suck the enjoyment from riding – we had a rather wonderful time as Andy trudged back downhill muttering choice curses to the bitch Godess of Mountain Biking. My fellow splitter – Nigel – was riding like the wind, flowing with irritating ease through bends and over jumps. I was more riding with the kind of wind that only a dietary switch to bran products could ease. This – annexed to a lame excuse of flat pedals only occasionally troubled by cold feet – was the only reason I was languishing some days behind after each section.

But while Nig was admiring the scenery and possibly engaging in a spot of sheep worrying, I was having enormous fun being bullied by a long travel hardtail that eats this sort of terrain for breakfast, and then demands seconds and thirds way after your body is crying out for a post lunch power nap. After a day of this, my shoulders ached, my wrists exhibited a weakness possibly occasioned by a 24 hour wanking competition, my thighs burned, I had a bad case of hardtail arse and my neck couldn’t even manage a truncated nod to articulation.

Even my teeth hurt. And I was walking like an old man having recently been surprised by a very large horse. Still after salving my wounds with beer and my ego with thoughts of being a bit less rubbish, a rush round Cwmcarn broke our long journey home. As Andy sat forlornly in the car, Nig ripped up the climb while I merely tore a strip off my legs for hawking their energy. Downhill they clung on like the rest of me as eyeballs, roughed up by fast, rocky trails, were added to the list of hurty bits.

Between many incidents of just about failing to crash, there was much imagined railing of singletrack and more real world death-gripping of bars. Occasionally I’d see Nigel sweeping imperiously down the trail, but each time I’d convinced myself I may be reeling him in, he’d dance on the pedals and his lighter-than-air Titanium steed would bunch and then accelerate at a speed barely under escape velocity.

And then a tiredness that can only be partially explained by physical exertion rolls over you, and left me lolling in a chair when I should have been making up for abandoning the family. There is a hollowness that aches to be back out there on the trails, punching the bike into a turn and feeling the tyres bite as centripetal force flings you out the other side. You have to come back, to adjust to the mundane world of not riding, to banish the selfishness of being an obsessive cyclist. And that’s hard.

That said, you can reflect on some wonderful views when you’re not absolutely sure what’s coming next. Sadly most of them are inside your head – a collage of possible futures each of them spiked with that heady concoction of fear and joy.

Perspective is the thing I guess, so on that note I’ll wish all the readers of this continuing nonsense a Happy New Year.