Oooh Spring. About blooming time. Evidence was all around as we passed plants bursting into flower, trees risking a little leaf and stretchy t-shirted fat people wearing sports sunglasses while contesting narrow byways*

It’s been a week of glorious sunshine since our last slippy ride out here. The four hardy perennials gathered early – except in my case late, frustrated**, post too many beers, and a bit chilly riding into a season switched back from a phony summer.

Progress was therefore understandably sluggish with the moaning one lugging a crippling heavy hangover in his backpack, and demanding relief for two spin classes and three rides in the previous four days. Sympathy was not forthcoming.

This self inflected load crushed my spirit as we ambled up the bitch*** blissfully out of the chilling wind, but deep into ‘I may soon be messily sick‘ territory. Sometime much later a confused looking man rocking some 90s rigid bike action wondered if a responsible adult might point him in a direction of home.

I wandered off in case my involvement would direct the blameless individual to Reykjavik or the moon, and instead practically experimented the theory that ‘Sweat is just Butty Bach leaving the body‘, which trumps Lance who intimated Fear but really meant EPO.

Eventually the up stopped triggering a game of ‘A tree? there? I wasn’t expecting that’ as the drunken delay between my optic nerve and steering muscles extended beyond a second. I slavishly followed Haydn’s rear wheel in the hope a) he knew where he was going and b) if he did crash I’d have something a bit more squashy than bark to crash into.

Even in a state of physical and mental brokeness, the perfect trail conditions couldn’t pass me by. No, it’s was more about getting right in there, feeling at least one half of the bike/rider combo come alive, and hanging on to those faster people who’d decided internal poisoning wasn’t on their Friday night agenda.

There is very little in life which can mirror the joy of letting the bike run. What in winter are stiff, steppy individual impacts on a phalanx of steep roots become a glorious unbroken dart between apexes, with the bike matching the terrain and arms and legs beating to a similar rhythm.

This is the physical representation of that mythical quest for flow. It’s committing to everything learned riding around in circles for twenty years, whilst at the same time dumping the doubt, fear and anxiety cataloguing your many failures.

It’s a belief system of sorts. The tyres will grip, the suspension will control, the brakes will stop, the big lump of vegetable on top can be brave. Believe and all shall be well.

It kind of works but nothing is infinite, especially grip as my rear tyre spat traction on a fast turn. For a second I thought I’d caught it, but this thrill was short lived as a stout tree hove into view. Making the split second decision to abandon the bike saved me from a crunching arboreal halt. The bike caught it with a tyre as I tumbledpast giving a relieved wave.

No damage done and the quiet gratification I’d pushed the rear tyre so hard, it actually broke traction. Could have been rubbish technique, could have been proper commitment. Probably somewhere between the two, but it matters not as it is a story to tell without an injury to show.

The great thing about having average ability but unlimited ambition is it always feels that you can improve. So when occasionally flying perfectly over a jump – fully committed but still in control, or properly driving your hips into a turn and flinging the bike through an accelerating apex, this feels like real progression. Then you case a smaller jump, drop into a rut and almost stall into the next corner – so dropping you back to the baseline of about average.

No problem with that at all. I’m probably way past whatever represented the high water mark of my mediocre ability. But I am nowhere near close to finding the edge where the simple fun of riding mountain bikes with like-minded people feels like something I no longer want to do.

And on that note, it’s worth asking myself why I’ve bothered to buy a new bike. The Pyga is more than enough for my ability and ambition. It’s also a whole lot better than that. For a few brief seconds yesterday I sensed how brilliant it really is, and how much more it could give under the hands and feet of a proper rider.

I’ll never be that rider. But for the next few months, I’m going to have a lot of fun pretending I might be.

* route between the pub door and the bar. These vital commercial arteries must be kept clear!

** lost my wallet. Spent 20 minutes looking for it. The first 10 carefully retracing my steps, the second angrily throwing random stuff in the air and glaring at the non-walletless hole below. Arriving home, I found it in about 30 seconds. Alcohol is bad for you kids.

*** There is a similarly horrible climb on the other side of the valley which is – somewhat predictably – named ‘the bastard’

Most of us live little lives. This is not a bad thing, especially when buttressed with the ongoing delusion we’re far more important than the person stood next to us. We’re convinced the world revolves around me, which makes absolute sense until the realisation dawns that there’s only one of those and six billion of us.*

The point of differentiation is amplitude. Flatlining days of endless drudgery are spiked by the crash-trolley of defibrillating otherness. Only outside the standard deviation of dullcanyou discover the fantastic outliers of possibilitiesand dreams. A landscape found though pointless Monday morning meetings, stupid people confusing volume with importance, in trays full of tedium and days long on repetition,but short on anything within drinking distance of joy.

Hang on you say; surely the solution is a Steve Jobs-esque vocational transformation triggered by the fleetingly logical ‘if you hate your job two days in a row, go do something else’. Really? Or to be rather less fence-sitting; fuck that. Love my job so much that Mountain Biking somehow becomes Any Other Business? Stare out into a windowfull of big skies and wonder how I could make more money? Not willing the clock to tick faster so I can be done, outside and the person I believe myself to be? I say again, fuck that.

The clocked ticked and we’re sat in a van packed full of awesome mountain bikes, testosterone and a level of anticipation last found on a pubescent boy venturing out on his first date. Months of slogging through the mud and sweating on a spin bike brought us here – impatiently waiting forthis day, THIS DAY, pretending to be adults, but our inner children are stuffing gobs full of crisps and turning up the stereo**.

It’s an 80 MPH sleepover heading 900 miles due south to a place where the earthis bleached in sunshine, the trails are mostly rocks sprinkled with a little dust, the beer is cold and the decision tree is forked between ‘ride‘ and ‘drink‘. There is no nuance, no compromises, no weighing up the options, no looking for angles – this is life on uppers, amped to the max, full of opportunity and newness. Wake me up in heaven.

After 2/3rds of a journey spanning fifteen hours, I shaded bleary eyes against an encroachingdawn expecting skies the size of Kansas burning under equatorial temperatures. The optic nerve doesn’t have much truck with metaphor and offered me instead snow and -2. First thought; Cez has white line fever and – as most people faced with four hours driving at 2AM – gone with ‘Fuck it. Change of plan, we’re going to Austria’. But no, this was the last high plateau separating the flatulent four from sea level.

Took a while tho. And our arrival failed to coincide with the early summer we’d been promising ourselves. Still huge relief to unfold ourselves from stiffened sitting positions and allowing fresh air into the recesses of a van recently populated by four men engorged on crisps and energy bars***

French Coffee. God I’m alive, for a minute there it wasn’t entirely clear if I’d passed into a better place. Big ask that with blue skies silhouetting snow capped mountains refracted through medieval walls and sunglasses dusted off from last summer. This is the stuff of life, right here. Let’s get amongst it.

Bikes out, critical faff, clothing located with’hands like waterwheels‘ travelling throughcarefully packed bags. Chains lubed, tyres pumped, sinews stiffened, muscles stretched. Time to ride. Not – and I think it’s important to make this point – time to ride well.

Fifteen hours in the van. Sleep best categorised as fuck-all. Desperate not to ride like a twat. Equally desperate not to mong oneself on the first descent. Trying to play it cool, but basically mainlining the friendless kid shouting ‘pick me, pick me‘ withteam games configured for social angst.

It’s all good tho. We’re out of the town and climbing on an ancient firetrack opening out views to a lotof France and a bit of Spain. Not pushing it like the uber-competitve two hour Wednesday night ride. Not checking watches for the Sunday ride finish. Not thinking about the bastard climbs coming up, nor the tricky obstacles you need an excuse to avoid.

No just ride, up a big hill, stop for a sandwich and a laugh. Take the piss before someone gets to you first, then drop into box-fresh trails without any idea of what happens next. Shall I tell you what happens next? Three turns in, you regress to being eleven years old and the first time you ever scared yourself in the woods. Your head is full of nothing and everything; solving difficult three dimensional problems in real time, searching for grip on unfamiliar dirt, heart pumping adrenaline laced blood, eyes wide scanning for the next line, wondering if’ll end in a second and praying it’ll go on for ever.

Shuddering to a stop, giggling and pointing and wondering if you could ever feel this alive all the time. And of course you can’t, because while the minutes and hours of a little life may drag, it’s the seconds which elevate itbeyond the angst of ‘is this as good as it gets?‘

Days later Matt and I shared a thought that while we felt smooth and safe, we didn’t feel fast. One trail later all that changed in a maelstrom of rocks, risk and reward. But we were asking entirely the wrong question. And it is this, where do I genuinely feel at peace with myself?

Out there somewhere on that trail we found it.

* incidentally this is why you should never worry if you’ve offended someone with a crass remark. They haven’t noticed because their entire cerebral processing is focused on what they’re going to say next.

** including such classics as Highway to Smell and No Sleep Till Paris (especially if you’re driving)

*** Air has no self determination, right? That’s what I thought until the mild zephyr we opened the door on escalated to a majorhurricane as the air desperately evacuated the van. I think my ears popped.

Why, What, Who, When and (w)How. Those radiating grammatical keenness, edging worryinglyclose to the border of insanity,shall be raising grubby digits and demanding satisfaction on exactly how many wublewus there are in ‘How‘. As ever, my response is loquacious, obscure and essentially blaming someone else*

Let’s move the discussion on under the auspices of misdirection, and apply this questioning method to riding mountain bikes in the winter. The mentally deluded, southern geographiedoraggressively medicated will make much of false idols preaching the canon of the unridden. That fat demons await those afflicted with sofa-suck, unable to shift ever lardening arse from beguiling images shifting fast on 50 inch screens. Those righteous worship atthe shrine of ‘any ride is better than no ride at all‘.

Well yes up to a point. That point being the first W – Why? Why am I out here in the pissing rain? Why is everyone else apparently enjoying themselves? Why are they better liars than me? Why am I ruining expensive components to slither darkly in gloom of night and endless slop? Why did I use to find this fun?

Good questions but the wrong ones; lacking existentialism, for which you need a what. What is the bloody point of doing the same thing week after week and expecting a different result? What happens if I don’t do this? What does riding through the winter actually prove? What happened to the fun?

Ah the final question is a good one and it has much to do with the third W. Who are the silly fuckers slogging through this 90 day quest? Who cares enough to face the mirror in the clothes we were born inand exclaim ‘this shall not be’? Who will fetch me out of a snowdrift and provide cheery commentary on a day shivering in the windchill? Who’ll share a beer, a grin and a memory once we’re all bled and done?

For all of that support group, there is a point when enough really is enough. A place in time when you’ve been sleeted on just one too many times. A period when shrugging into four layers of winter gear feels too damn hard. A vignette of misery as almost frozen mud pebble dashes an already bone-chilled individual from earlobe to toe.

When will it get better? When will this stop? When does this bastard chill wind warm me? When do the trails force themselves above the water table? When will there be something to look at other than the endless bleakness of leafless branches reaching into a storm filled sky?

Which brings us rather nicely to How. Technically it’s a mostly circular planet hurtling across space and time with a spin of 70,000 MPH, all the time balancing gravity and momentum to circle rather than plunge into a gas giant usefully exploding at regular intervals.**

How do things get better? How is it that imperceptibly longer daylight hours and a barely noticeable increase in ambient temperatures move the cycle on? How is it that tiny plants sucking moisture from long forgotten fun trails divinea dry line where for months it’s been a messy watercolour?

Five questions. No real answers. Every year it gets a little more difficult to find a reason to bother asking. Coping strategies and indoor cycling bulwark fading motivation and a fat slice of can’t be arsed. Until today, until opening a car door isn’t instantly followed by a retreat to add many more clothes. Until the trail gives only a little under tractionand a little less under cautiously placed angled tyres.

Until the wind is welcome and warming. Until you stop and stare at the curvature of the earth without a shiver trigger to move on. Until every run in and run out from tricky obstacles are firm and sure. Until the fitness you’ve selfishly hoarded all winter makes climbing mostly a joy, traverses fast but not loose and descents so simple without combating the slimey.

We ask the wrong questions. Sometimes the why, what, who, when and how seem as insoluble as the trails which are exactly that. It’s caterpillars and butterflies. You’ve got to ignore the misery of the winter to fly in the joy of Spring.

Today made that real. We didn’t ride that far. We stopped for tea in the sunshine. We stared long at muscular hills backlit by graduatedazure skies. We pushed it a little bit, but laughed a whole lot more. And all around us were the buds of Spring ready to explode in the sunlight.

In six days, we’ll be riding bikes some 900 miles south of here, ripping up arid trails under a mediterraneansun, bookended by drinking beer under clear skies, andwondering what all that winter fuss was about.

If it’s even close to the fun we had today, I can hardly bloody wait. Someone finally crankedthe season-ratchet. I’m out of metaphors so let’s go with ‘thank fuck for that’.

* This is how Business Analysis is taught under the auspices of an apparently rigorous and matriculated curriculum. You are encouraged to always be asking questions. Apart from this one.

** I’ll concede better explanations are available for those with more than a passing understanding of astrophysics. As are worse ones, generally from the God Botherers, flat earthers and almost any group with a terrifyingly narrow focus on how the world works. ThinkUKIP if you’re struggling for a representative example.

Moments make a ride. The drudgery of winter riding is elevated by stuff you’ve slogged for everto experience, and experiences which are much shorter lived but splendidly fulfilling.

Language generally provides context. Examples abound; peering into the 8/8ths clag hiding fantastic views and delivering instead only freezing conditions, Rex rolled out of the mist to declare ‘this would be a properly shit day if you didn’t have the right attitude‘. We had that alright, and cake. Lots of cake.

And then many tired revolutions later, when a thrown out warning intoned’Cez has engaged downhill mode on his Orange Five*, stand well back‘ , drawing the rejoinder – quick as a flash – ‘What? has he removed the bottom two drawers?’leaving our little, shivering group incapacitated with mirth.

(the filing cabinet at rest)

Some of that tiredness was nothing more than repeatedly attacking the loaf like geography of the Long Myndin some kind of eight man pincer movement, it’s a Malvern-esque lump with steep ups, fast downs and bugger all flats. Not made any easier bythe endless mud composted by farm vehicles andincontinent sheep.

Quite a lot more was entirely attributable to our inability to convert fuzzy digital pictures to the tracks on the ground. To be fair, we were actually lost some 100 yards from my house when I directed Matt on a short cut to Hereford as requested, but missing the wider point that Hereford was inentirely the wrong direction.

Predictablyour lack of navigational triumphs continued with an aborted breakfast stop peering through the closed, darkened windows of a much loved cafe, and a confident vector inscribed by muddy middle digit which dropped us beneatha hill we were due to climb. Strangely from this point on, my route finding based on a hypothesis of ‘it all looks the same in the fog’were largely ignored. Probably for the best.

Best to get the push out of the way early on eh? I rode a bit of it through the medium of geographical embarrassment, before joining the earth bound misfits slipping and sliding up a wet, grassy steep encumbered by bicycle. They said it was fine, but I could feel the hate.

Things improved as the easy track, missed early on floated out of the murk, while suggestionsof ‘there’s a lovely view all the way to the sea there‘ were largely ignored as the enigmatic eight peered into freezing fog, and hunted for these mythical descents hidden from us all.

Took us a while to find it, but it was entirely worth it. A blast down increasingly steep switchbacks allowing all sorts of things to hang out, especially for those of us rocking the elixir of endless grip that is 20psi tyres inflated on fat tubeless rims.

There’s something sort of important here; not about tyre profiles or pressure or stickiness, but the stickiness of those who’ll slog up a horrid climb for 30 minutes or more to access 120 seconds of potential injury. It’s fucking stupid and that’s why I love it.

I didn’t love the next climb quite so much as it meandered under the muscular shadow of the Mynd, traversing this way and that before pitching upwards on a double track full of sheep shit-apparently designed to suck the joy out of everything.

We got it done eventually via a shivering snack stop taking in a view of cumulus clouds at zero feet above sea level. Finally topping out, I felt a joyous statement was entirely called for. My plan was to arrive at great speed hanging off the rear brake in a skid parody remembered from my 9 year old self, before spinning about 180 degrees so scattering my now panicked friends.

Plans eh? Never survive the first contact with the enemy. Started well, the swingarm flicked out and began to slide in a rather pleasurable way right up to the point to where that fat, grippy tyre found something in the wet grass to adhere to. Suddenly we’d gone from amusing skid to terrifying tank slapper and my immediate future had a face plant written all over it.

Somehow – and I feel confident in declaring that we shall never know quite how – my un-athletic frame took fright at the imminent ground-nose** interface and hurdled the bucking top tube with some alacrity leaving me just to deal with 20KPH kineticenergy being unwound by10KPH legs.

I went with insouciance. Desperately running like a man wearingseven league boots while still finding the time to punch the air in the manner of an individual who has completely thought this manoeuvre through. ‘Do it again for the camera‘ they said as the bike was flung over my head and into fogbound damp heather. I declined on the grounds of no one could ever get that lucky again.

Instead we discovereda little more perilonthe descent – eventually because again we were lost – leading back into the valley. Interlocking, glacial spurs abound here and the simplest method to follow the ancient route of icy glaciers is atight, steep singletrack hanging off the side of a virtigous valleys. Committing, technical, slippy but basically fun if you avoid an arse-over-tit plunge onto the flat ground many metres below.

Nofun onthe next bit as we climbed back up to civilisation in the form of the National Trust Cafe at Carding Mill. Where I ate my own bodyweight in cake, added an extra layer and pretended I didn’t know what was coming next.

It still came tho, a 300m climb out of the valley on a track somewhere between ‘quite pleasant‘ and ‘absolute bastard‘. I rode most of it which mostly did for me, although Mike rode even more rendering him supine and breathing like a man only recently introduced to oxygen at the crest.

Another 5km of what could charitably be called undulations, but I’m calling out as endless climbing, delivered us to a still snow bound road solving a simple navigational challenge to the last descent. So obviously we got lost. Twice. Once because the rather cynical cycling group refused to follow my directions, and once more when they did.

Somehow we fell into Minton Bach which is a lovely way to go home. It hangs precipitously off the side of a sodding big hill, weaving in and out of exactly the kind of natural geography which makes you think ‘Trail Centres, Why the fuck would you ride there instead?’

And because it’s not bench cut, or drained or armoured with stones, this time of the year it’s slippy, difficult, committing. Not technical really, but big consequences if you stray off line. Three minutes of nuance to the square root of fuck all – be good or back off, be brave or make excuses, be scared but do it anyway. The thing that separates me from you is pretty much this.

Not that I was fast, oh no the quick boys disappeared with what I can only think of as a lack of imagination, but on reconvening in farm yard encrusted in the liquid poo of a thousand large animals, there was shared understanding of why entering the grim is almost always worth the effort.

Hungry work this winter riding – arriving home I ate everything in the fridge until there was virtually nothing left. Only Carol’s intervention stopped me devouring the light at the back. Then I sat down with a beer and processed fifty photographs of cold looking people peering into a fallen down sky.

And at no point did I think ‘well that’s a waste of a day’. Looking forward to Spring, looking back at winter with a grin and a giggle.

* Nice bikes, unapologetically industrial. Quite noisy when descending. Oft likened to the cacophony unleashed when a filing cabinet ishurled at a metal fire escape propelled by a Saturn V booster.

** A nose like mine appears to have a Darwinism lineage to the first plough. I’m considering hiring myself out come planting time.

See that, right there? It’s a flat 2-D depiction of something rather more awesome. And that’s theword used in its correct context before the whatsapp generation graduated in semantic mutilation, and recast many of my favourite nounsas shadow players on the vocabulary stage. Tots Amaz for Evs, apparently.*

My eldest offspring regularly responds to parental extortions that outside has many fantastic opportunities, with ‘tried that – the graphics are crap and there’s no Internet connection‘. Apparently there are important cats on the web that don’t get tumbler’d all on their own.

So both living in a world largely uninhabited by those who are about to inherit it**, and a a relic from a generation where playing outside was actually some kind of privilege, a cross section of the ‘getting old and a bit wrinkly’ loaded vans in darkness, and crunched ice under dashboard lit traction control panic before heading tentatively to ride in a mid Wales landscape largely sculpted by our forefathers.

Birmingham has a lot to answer for. Really, quite a lot, but on the upside it kept me employed for many months, and – close to a hundred years earlier -was the thirsty symptom causing an epic dam building programme in the Elan valley. 6 were commissioned, 4 completed, one submerged withthe final one never completed. Allconstructedin the dying arc of a philanthropistVictorian era taking great pride in public works.

Water was a constant companion on a day of much frozen, some trapped insnow and a brooding sky-full precipitously close to dumping more of the wet stuff on our tiring bodies. Not at first tho, as we crunched out of the car park wondering if at any point fingers, toes and noses might find a way back to otherfully-blooded and properly insulated body parts.

A long – and long remembered – climb fixed that problem while throwing up another one, mainly that everything under tyre appeared to be formed from organic glass. No matter, when the going gets tough, the tough get pushing – once appropriately heroic photographs captured much gurning up a first off-road climb.

Good practice for a track, which having disappeared into a tussocky mess, reemerged as an ice-cold stream bed. Bikes on shoulders, far peak selected, we grunted our way through a pristine white-on-blue landscape filled with many amazing things and no people. Just the way we like it.

Unsurprisingly this ended with a trudge to the highest point followed by a navigation conference best summarised as ‘you can’t get from here‘. No matter, snow under tyre is always funny as all sorts of lines and techniques dropped us into one valley, before pushing us out of the next one.

First proper descent. Steep and deep ice filled ruts, mildly amusing drop to one side, somewhat more terrifying hidden rocks under a snow carpet. Nuance everything – brakes, weight shift, lean and steer. More grip than you think, a bit less than you need. Arrive at the summer crux which is a committed wall ride through a steep gully. A gully today full of ice and potential damage.

We’ll walk it, most of us thought. Except for Cez who opted for a line best thought of as ‘would you like grapes with that?’. We grabbed cameras so the local hospital had some kind of baseline to reassemble traumatically misplaced body parts. ‘He’s only fucking ridden it’ was the cry as Cez dropped onto the steepest pitch, while I mostly fell down it.

Rode the next bit tho. Not quite sure how. Was ready to abandon bike where Haydn breezily suggested trying something quite so craven was likely to end in a rock facial. Fairly sure I closed my eyes at that point.

Which Ian must have been doing as he ‘rear ended’ an innocent rider on the next road section. Poor bugger never even had time to brace. Still the views were fab, and continued to be so as we got entangled with some kind of organised ride with all sorts of map boards and abilities. Some pushing was involved. Then some more through soft snow stealing effort.

Descending through snow is always fantastic fun until someone catches an edge and pings off to silhouetean impromptu snow angel. To be fair, it’s still bloody good fun especially when that’s happening to someone else. We all had a go over the next couple of hours, between carrying, pushing and cursing at bikes somewhat ruining a fantastic walk.

Ah but what a day to be outside. It’s not epic really but it feels that way. Even with the weather closing in and another massive valley to push out of. The first section was eminently ridable and unrelentingly stunning. The second – which we’d breezed up in early Autumn the year before – was a calf-burning slog which went on for really quite a long time.

Not that I cared. Being out even in mini-mountains when snow transforms the landscape, and just riding within it feels like an adventure ticking all the boxes for a proper day out. Other than beer, and that was one more road climb and a fun descent away.

Fun near the bottom. A bit more challenging further up where this 4×4 track was hub deep in 10 metre, ice-filled puddles. Although puddle really doesn’t do the frequent plunge into foot-freezing water justice. Some of them were tidal.

Gradient finally replaced ice smashing by wheel and pedal seeingus sweep past a Landrover party, to feel real bedrock rather than something proxied by hard-set ice. Recalibration is what Winter is about; forget hard packed trails and embrace the mud, assume zero grip rather than tyre shredding adhesion, look at a wet off-camber root and think ‘you know what, that’s WAY better than the ice I just turned on’.

Big grins at the van. A winterscape of white wonderlands viewed from steamed up windows. Internal playback of that first descent, trying to wrench your eyes from the big skies back to the ten metres of trail in front of you, laughing at shit jokes, stealing sugary sweets from your mates and standing – just standing – in the best IMAX cinema in the whole damn world.

Wide eyed with amazement at the panorama. Cynical about everything except this. Desperate to find the next place which makes you feel something even close. And yet so many people don’t ventureoutside in Winter because it’s cold and wet.

Have you any ideaat allwhat you might bemissing?

* I’m not quite that much of a lexical curmudgeon, because I know language must evolve or die, and every generation adds a richness entirely missing from their tutting parents. I do get that. But Tots Amazballs? Really? I’m off to buy something beige.

** Younger offspring, on being collected from school the other day, was most put out that one of her teachers had essentially summed up the problems of our plant-raping and fuck ups with this simple message: ‘Yep that was us, but we’ll not be around to sort it out. That’s your job‘. Teaching has come on a long way since my day.

Or, as the Internet generation insists on calling it, MTFU. That’s a good start to end the nonsense of a New Year, with the geo-virtual warriors stuck fat behind keyboards pedalling their forum-based snake-oil distilled from pseudo-science and delusional self belief.

Move about more, eat a bit less has always worked for me. Even when I’m elbows deep in a Stilton Massacre and reaching for the port. Because tomorrow I shall sally forth from my feckless munificence to point a muddy foot at the querulously crapulent*

So tomorrow comes and I go into the default mode of not really wanting to back hubristic boasts with any physical effort. No matter, my friend Matt – the master of the winter death march – suggests an early start and a late finish interspersed with a few surprisingly dry trails and whole lot more trudgery of the first, second and third degrees.

Degrees of both latitude and longitude. First up, then down, mostly sideways and occasionally in a state of peril. A 9:30 meet assembles only two riders, but four sets of lights, three pairs of spare gloves, multiple additional layers and – because this is a training ride – money for beer.

The composition of a riding group potentially makes perfect trail music or discordant harmonies when a single member fails to ride to the beat. With just the two, there’s a lamentable absence of faffing and few hiding places. Other than those off-the-trail ‘resting areas‘ best found afterdesperately ejecting from a bucking bicycle.

Heading out on local trails and then abandoning the same some 45 minutes later, we stiffened suspension** and upper lips, before bending tarmac to our weak-winter will in a quest to find a favourite downhill some two valleys distant. This is not trail-centre riding, the good stuff must be earned through raspy-breath climbs, tremendously muddy cut throughs and head-windy yomps across seasonally bleak landscape.

All good. Or at least better than being inside. Soon we’re splatigating*** to a much loved trail, autumn leaves hiding winter mud and suggesting discretion trumps valour in terms of speed and bravery. Still fab tho in the kind of sideways type riding that always feel like fun at the time. Until someone nuts a tree.

Soon we found solace at the FoD Cafe and all things central for those who can’t be arsed to pedal. The gravitational pull of the uplift truck and the pies can clearly be seen as the extremely-upholstered slide off lovely bikes and stretch lycra with not-very-earned cake.

Not us of course. Honed athletes and all that. 20km in and we’re destroying bacon and egg sandwiches with the zeal of men last fed some days ago. But not for us a lap of easy, no we went hard on softtrails oft ridden to point muddy bikes at the Yat where every trailhad a Coroner Verdict of ‘assisted suicide’ written all over it.

Except Matt felt this lacked ambition. Instead we added another 90 minutes pushing increasingly confident lines into surprisingly grippy corners. Which in no way stopped me casing a couple of jumps fully justifying expensive forks andtheir inherent ‘don’t throw the idiot over bars‘ functionality.

Finally we began to head home – still some 25km from roofs and warmth – as the early sun disappeared behind dirty clouds, and legs began to make the kind of excuses suggesting this could be a bit of an epic journey.

It was and it wasn’t. Matt and I have been friends enough to know our strengths (mainly his) and weaknesses (mostly mine), ensuring we make the best use of drafting, encouragement, piss taking, and shared-pain as the kilometres oh-so-slowly pass by.

When your mental cartography spikes every known climb and the long road home, it’s time to stuff that into a box marked ‘stop whining‘ and just get on with it. Because getting on with it encompasses two wheel drifts, desperate saves and the occasional unscheduled punt into the shrubbery. On stoppingfor a rare breather under grey-clamped skies and fading light with much still to do, Matt declared ‘I fucking love mountain bikes‘ and I couldn’t do anything but agree.

And lie down for a bit of a rest. After riding like a twat for about three weeks, I finally got my shit together and made endorphic things happen leaving the brakes alone, disconnecting my hind brain and sashaying from entry to apex. It felt terribly real and important, so entirely missing from the whole Strava-Esque ‘am I going faster than someone I’ve never met?‘

Then the rain came. Then the last off road climb was done. Then the last descent was as well- without the injuries it promised. We rode past two favourite pubs as the weather closed in with legs pretty much in limp home mode. It’s been far too many weeks since I’ve pushed my body this hard for so long.

Needed to be done. Felt worthy. And shaky on the final little road climb to a pub some 1km from home. Beer tasted great but not as good as a chair for some much needed sitting down. We left in the pissing rain and howling wind, but that’s fine because we’re a month into winter, and a single big ride prepping for Spring.

Sometimes you really just need to ride, ride and ride. For six hours and sixty five kilometres withover a thousand metres of climbing. Because what else are you going to be doing?

Inside is overrated.

* this is a real adjective. Vaguely remembered from a long abandoned dusty classroom and confirmed by the power or Wikipedia. Really I couldn’t be happier

** No idea when I do this. Because it’s only as we roll into the pub some five hours later do I twig it never got switched back. Not that I noticed much.

** like navigating. Only mostly sideways.

Done – the lastrideof 2014. And in the spirit of all these indeterminable auto-generated face-cloth and Strava summaries, the two hour muddy endeavourperfectly encapsulated a year of many adventures, more than occasional timidity and a whole load of clean and dirty fun in between.

Firstly I crashed. Three times. Once adding a tree to the whole ‘it’s all gone wrong‘ experience. Secondly I avoided a difficult obstacle a couple of my riding mates sailed over. That’s Dean ^^ up there who gave it a damn good look on multiple run-ins before committing. Another pal, Cez, mistrusting that approach, instead launched himself at the gap jump with so much speed, he was still seen pedalling while both wheels were in the air.

I took some pictures. Then just before Beer o’ clock, we arrived at a freshly dug trail barely clinging to a slithery hillside. Apparently this ‘new way down‘ started with six vertical switchbacks, immediately followed by a couple of nasty drops and finishing in a run out to the fire-road where you could collect all your teeth if it went wrong.

I asked Sean – who built it – if I’d die riding it, evenutilising the full range ofmy legendary skills and bravery. The look with which he responded had me scurrying away to an easier trail less marked for someone who’d plumped for’involuntary suicide‘ as their New Years resolution.

So crash, nary and avoid. There’s been a bit of that this year. What do I mean this year, every bloody year really. Hard to know if I’m getting any less brave, or – as I suspect – because I’m starting from such a low base , it’s pretty damn hard to tell the difference.

Determining fun through progression is a slippery slope. I should know having fallen off many times attempting to navigate it. This year – when compared to 2013 – I’ve ridden about the same number of miles, climbed a bit more, visited a few less places, and had a similar shit load of simple joy.

I weigh about the same, pedal about the same, maybe arc through the odd corner a little sweeter after being up-skilled, brake when I shouldn’t, hesitate when I should just go for it, find excuses to quit and get lost in tangled mental thickets of over-thinking.

And for all of that, I love riding mountain bikes more than I ever did. I’m stupidly excited about new bikes, great adventures and unknown trailsin 2015. I have the best friends to ride with, and – right here on our doorstep – many amazing places to explore.

There’s a shitty season to ride through first, but ‘pre-spring‘ is just a couple of months to stay fit and healthy before it’s all drying trails, carving bluebell singletrack, kicking up dust and having a ball. Sliding about in January and February isn’t entirely without comedic merit either – especially if it’s someone else nutting trees.

Being such an antiquated sort of bloke, there’s something reassuring inunderstanding thatall these good things are coming, while retaining a childlike enthusiasm for spontaneous stuff that’ll make me point, babble and giggle.

Age is a number tho, not a barrier. Today after riding, a pub full of similarly chiselled*mountain bikers decided our mental age is about 27. Frankly I think we were overstating our maturity by at least 10 years. I looked around and saw old people with their tired eyes and well upholstered bodies. Their chronological clock may tickthe same as ours, but wechime to a different beat.

As an adult with a loving family and paying work you really must pay some attention to, there’s all sorts of commitments and deadlines outside of any control. The antithesis of that is being able to play outside on off road bicycles.

It’s all about balance. Until you hit a tree. Come on then 2015, let’s see what you’ve got. I’m ready.

* it’s a good word. Wrinkled might be a little more accurate.

Go badly that is. My last Gap year project was back at the end of 2012, after which I wrote a predictably pretentious load of old cobblers on exactly why I’d been avoiding it for ten years, and basically why it wasn’t anywhere near as terrifying as internally marketed.

Today was different. For a start the sun was providing the kind of light we photo-snobs dream about. Although so pre-occupied was it with projecting perfect mountain reflections in glass-still lakes, it entirely failed to provide any kind of warmth whatsoever.

Shivery start then. When faced with a big sodding mountain at which your current location is a million miles from the summit, go as cold as your dare.

That’s pretty cold so almost 2 kilometres passed before fingers inside thick winter gloves thawed out, and toes signalled they were in fact still attached. But God it was so worth it – a two week period in which I’ve eaten loads, drunk far too much, wasted too many hours and ridden not at all. Morethan just being back on the bike tho, much more aslimitless panoramic viewsbouncedaroundmy optical nerves.

If I may just be allowed a further moment of pretension; riding up frozen mountains with your friends, all the timebeing assailed with infinitelybeautiful glacial landscapes pretty much encapsulates all of’this is why‘ Thank you- from hereon in, I shall attempt tostick within the confines of a more descriptive narrative.

Illustrative couplets include ‘frozen-icy’ ‘slippy-frictionless‘ and ‘scary-terrifying’. As we climbed higher, hard ice replaced the trail – peppered only occasionally by soft dirt. A couple of short, steep technical ascents were summited through a combination of extreme effort and grip-less tiptoeing.

Enoughof this brought us to the first proper descent whichwas clearly going to be bowel clenchingly sketchy. It started well enough with baby headed rocks – free of ice – passing swiftly under superbly suspended wheels, before dropping into the type of frozen tundrathat can only be properly ridden rocking therictus gurn.

That Gurn is a facial summary of many things clenched from toes upwards. I wasn’t sure if the rear wheel was sliding, or my arse was merely twitching in the manner of a rabbit’s nose. Left, right, straight on – all choices entirely arbitrary and barely affected by wrenching the big steering handle things. You could try braking of course. If smashing face first into gritty ice is your kind of thing. Eventually the trail finally ended in a mess of Forestry brutality, and soon we were climbing again heading for the Gap from which the ride takes its name.

First tho, a nasty little rock strewn climb immediately followed by a short – but fun – plunge down a rocky escarpment. Not today though as it was filled with ice and even walking down, portaging the bikes, didn’t feel even close to safe. It was all a bit Blakes-7 ‘Down and Safe‘* vindicating my continued dalliance with flat pedals, and more importantly grippy shoes. Not that these saved me later on.

First tho, big climb up to the saddle. One of those ‘pick a gear and a point on the horizon‘, start pedalling, take in the view and think happy thoughts. Twenty minutes later these thoughts didnot include navigating a precipitous ice fall where the trail used to be. We recce’d it from all angles before agreeing the best approach would be two legs and two wheels, entirely separated.

This didn’t prevent me from an unscheduled arse-ice incident leaving a proper bruise and apparentlyamusing photographs. By the time I’d regained biped status and the remains of my dignity, the rest of the crew were long gone. They waited in the perfect spot to be enduringly polite at my attempts to actually ride some of this ice/rock/ice/ice horror.

I didn’t ride much of it, but I managed to throw myself roughly to the ground one more time. In the spirit of absolute fairness, this time a single pointy rock savaged the other arse cheek. I shall spend the remainder of this week walking like an aged cowboy.

No matter, reunited with my ‘rode most of that‘ pals, we set off for the classic descent on this loop. Firstly, a little up and down, launching over water bars and keeping a wary eye out for more ice, even tho we’d broken back into the sunshine. Never have I been so happy to see water streaming down the trail.

And then the increasing gradient and narrowing track tumbles you down into the valley at somewhat more sedate speeds than in less treacherous conditions. Still fast enough tho for Cez’s attempt to lob himself over a dry stone wall. Reasons mostly unknown.

That’s enough for a winter’s day, especially considering all limbs reporting in as still mostlyoperational. But there’s a little more, two tough sections demanding a decent pace as narrow paths throw up endless tyre stopping rocks. Physical, committing and on the ticked list to clear today. Proper, hard mountain biking.

All that was left were a couple of cowshit strewn roads, hidden from the sun under high leafless hedges and glistening with fresh ice. Safely navigated, we turned onto the frozen canal path and made haste for the pub, where beer was of course for winners/survivors.

There’s many other things I could have been doing today. Working for a living being one of them. Or lying on the sofa complaining of continuing plague which appears to have pressurised my small intestine. Or finding a thousand other reasons not to go and play outside where it’s cold and icy.

I’m so bloody glad I chose wisely 😉

* for readers under the age of being allowed to wear long trousers outside, this is a reference to the superb 1970s BBC Sci-Fi series somehow being both mostly realistic** and produced on a budget of about 10 bob.

** if you were very young. It probably hasn’t dated well.