The only conclusion that can drawn from my advancing years and hardening opinions is I am increasingly an unreconstructed Mountain Biker. This despite a magpie penchant for anything marked “new and improved” and a constant low level whinge when faced with distance or difficult. Especially if it’s muddy. Or cold. Or wet. Or – as is generally the meteorological joy handed out by our storm battered island – all three at the same time.

Early in 2010 a calling to convince trail-centre conditioned mates of an awesome mountain experience nearly put one of them in hospital. I’ve dragged dubious friends over very large hills generally immersed in clag and rain only to disappoint them with “on a clear day, you can see for absolutely miles” and “Today? Not so much”. I’ve poured over maps*, planned multi day epics, carried my bike in all sorts of interesting spots and generally loved arriving in high places to worried smiles wondering “how the hell did you get here on a bike?”

So when a break for the mountains offered respite from the traditional Xmas <-> New Year lassitude, it took exactly no time at all to grab the opportunity with both hands and a happy smile. The break was actually the GAP – a route through the Black Mountains where my friend Russ broke his back nearly ten years ago, and I’d been making excuses not to return every since.

Without the emotional baggage, it’s an absolutely classic ride; the nearest to thing to singletrack is a canal path on the way home. There is a chunk of pushing, the chance of a carry, hours of exposed bleak glacial valleys howling with wind and a epic quantity of mud. No mid ride cafe or groomed trails await. Climbs that’ll run close to an hour, descents that must be tackled with bravery and commitment and the very real prospect of a proper beating – or worse – if you get cocky of frightened.

The joy of riding is split evenly between the place you go and and the people you are with. The seven experienced campaigners on our midweek mission packed two spare layers, a second set of gloves, endless tubes and tools, many rounds of sandwiches, a stout rain jacket and a big mountain attitude in their packs. Back in the cars were a change of clothes, a bin bag for their riding gear and money for beer. Exactly the type of riders to share a proper day out.

Which starts with big up. Six kilometres of increasingly technical climbing gaining you a 300 metre view of the valley floor. If you could see it through the low hanging cloud, which brought with it the prospect of rain but also silly spring like temperatures. We’ve all been exposed on this route in proper Welsh Wintry conditions, unprotected skin subject to icing, frozen gears and the not that outside possibility of hypothermia. Today was almost disappointingly easy.

Notice the careful use of the word almost. Early season snow buttressed by days of rain left the ground swollen, slick and mostly below the water table. Winter skills of balancing the power of the cranks against the traction of the rear tyre made those six k’s fun but tiring. Near the summit, a couple of climbing crux’s left most of us floundering and pushing onto the bleakness of the first ridge. Here it’s all about line choice – a choice that is either hub deep dank puddles or a desperate thrutch through clay/peat bog offering either something vaguely solid or a bike swallowing crevasse.

Been there, done that, got the trench-foot. First descent opened up over a million rocks peeping out of a stream, none of them attached to the bedrock and shaped somewhere between personal Grim Reapers and Mini-Headstones. I’m not a fan of trails that follow you down the hill, but killing velocity and hunting for lines is not a good option for the preferably unbloodied.

No, speed if not your friend is at least a shoulder-based devil that will see the bike hydro-plane over wheel chewing rocks. Five inches of travel on the fork beats six inch rocks every time even as they hiss and cackle when they chase you down the trail. Arriving alive and breathless, a quick limb count suggests no proper accidents although everyone has the look of being pebble dashed with a mud and shit mixture. Trail Food for the soul.

Now we can see where we want to go, and it’s up for miles. First on an old railway hewn out of the landscape to carry coal from the mountains. It’s a nice gradient to spin and chat before we hit the Roman Road snaking up the valley into the gap for which this ride is named. Before that tho, a sandwich stop – mouths full of Xmas leftovers and piss takes pointing out various bits of useless kit**

Colder now, wind whipping down the valley but for once mostly pushing rather than punishing, we head up for another thirty minutes of pitting your puny efforts against the majesty of glacial erosion to the power of a million years. I absolutely love this, a speck under darkening skies seemingly immobile against a backdrop of brutal peaks. Anyone with an ounce of self importance should be forced to stand here and work out their place in the world.

We tarried only briefly at the top with that chill wind whistling through. Just enough time to prod tyres, set shocks to fun and tell Nic again that no it wasn’t going to be rocky***. The top of the descent from the Gap used to be a steppy challenge over eroded rocks left from the last ice age. Now it’s a ruin of trail sanitisation, washed away aggregates and loose rock in wheel grabbing sizes.

I was rubbish. Not because of the worry I’d carried with me about how the descent that left my mate in a wheelchair was going to mess with my head, but just because I’m bloody useless at that kind of obstacle. After a while I man’d up, shoved the fear in the mind-box most of us use as a coping strategy, picked a spot on the far horizon and allowed the bike to be very, very good.

It’s out here that you realise how astonishingly accomplished a modern mountain bike is. If you’ve got the balls, it’s got your back. Make a pact that’ll see the brakes being bypassed by a death grip on the bars, and twenty years of development will carry you into a place perfectly balanced between terror and exhilaration. If that place had graffiti it would read like this; Without risk, there is no life. Without the possibility of failure, there is no joy of conquest. Without the ability to replace logic with fuck-it-it’ll-be-fine, there is no reason to place yourself in danger.

This is what the mountains do. Most of us had donned a bit of body armour but it’s nothing more than plastic placebo. At 45kph careering over wet rock sandwiched between dry stone walls, a mistake here and the accident is going to rate somewhere between extremely painful and horrific. As my mate Russ found out all those years ago.

But you’re not a passenger here. It’s not hold on and hope you don’t crash. It’s one of the few times that all that suspension travel, all that engineering, all that riding in your past, all those times you’ve pushed it a little bit make absolutely perfect sense. 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} commitment, 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} faith in your tyres, 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} trust in your own ability to nudge and commit, to know when to push into the rock and when to launch off it.

3 minutes of nirvana. 300 metres where there is only black and white. A final kilometre that defines the simple difference between living and being alive. You’re not beating the mountain, it’s merely nodding you through to come back another day. There isn’t a lot of point in trying to explain this to your riding mates because it’s written all over their faces. On two wheels, this is about as good as it gets.

Show me that on a pay-to-play trail centre and I’ll sign up. Until then, I will be happy with my mountains.

* Wine generally. Said it before, maps are like a copy of Hustler to me – love the pictures, no real idea of what’s going on.

** The pinnacle being Gary’s ridiculous Commuter mudguard on his Spesh Full-Suss. It provided no protection but much mirth being favourably compared with “Donald Duck with Epilepsy”

*** A joke that never stopped giving. Nic was commendably quick on his hardtail, but I don’t think he’ll ever believe anything any of us ever tell him again

The 26th of December is the traditional day for me to bugger off riding somewhere for two or three nights away. This spookily coincides with an influx of relatives with whom my civil relationship is based almost entirely on abstinence. Which highlights both a lack of social skills and tolerance for which excuses are legion, even if reasons are not. I am just not good at being inside toeing the line when I could be outside nailing some singletrack.

It’s one of my many faults. I like to think it’s counterbalanced by honesty and forthrightness. Others may not agree. I’m generally over that fairly quickly

Carol cleverly sideswiped the issue this year by declaring the Leigh household a closed shop, and repelling boarders to anyone even vaguely related until 2012. An excommunication which instantly cancelled all of my travel plans, making for a more happy tribe not tiptoeing around a grumpy father.

Amazingly I appear to be getting even more riding in, all without the standard seasonal accompaniment of guilt. Today Jess and I mud-tested her new shoes and pedals, which started the ride in pristine condition only to finish it looking appropriately mucky and scuffed. Much like the pair of us – exactly how it should be.

Jess has some decent skills, a nice bike, a determined attitude, more than a whiff of inappropriate bravery allied to the stamina of a dead sloth. She is only eleven and the bike has only eight gears, of which even the easiest can become a bit grind-y on the steeper climbs. Which – apparently – on the Blue FoD trail “there are millions“.

I appear to have fathered a shuttle kid – this conversational extract makes the point “Dad is this the last climb” / “Yes” / “You told me it’s wrong to lie” / “Okay, no“. On the dowhills she’s a little flier tho, gradually getting to grips with berms again after meeting one earlier in the year head first having ejected from the bike. When she stands on those new pedals and looks through apexes, it’s astonishing and terrifying in equal amount the speed is carried through the corners.

When she’s tired and sat down getting buffeted and battered, she’s more a chip off the old block here. Although I’m not sure where the competitiveness and demand for where she stands against others here age comes from. Yet to learn the art of pretending not to care while fostering excuses on ones own inferior performance. The problem is her assertion that I’m pretty handy on a bike which suggests some way to travel before reaching any kind of reality.

The far more important thing – and this is one thing we absolutely do agree on – is riding mountain bikes with your Dad/Kid is just the best way to pass the time. Especially when your dad sorts out all your gear,loads and unloads the bikes, washing them when they are dirty and fixes them when they are broken.

It is a very, very small price to pay.

Riding with Martin has always been more about the smiles than the miles. Our rides are measured not in kilometres covered or metres climbed, because such dry metrics cannot record the pleasure of hiking up unpromising trails, only to add a hidden gem to the map of cheeky.

But we’re worried. Worried about middle aged porkiness, worried over lost winter fitness, worried watching the “Malvern Labrador“* chasing his fitness goals with the kind of single minded determination we really don’t understand.

Decisions were made – cold smelted in mud – in an airy hand waving manner that we’d try a bit harder, ride a bit longer, drink a bit less tea and eat a lot less cake. No dicking about, plan a route and get on with it. So I did just that; bypassing the midday hoards and iced up peaks – a hard tramp through multiple peaks that just happened to orbit around two cake stops.

Important to ease ourselves gently into the new regime. Which probably excused an off trailexcursionall of five minutes in when a thinly disguised dirtrivuletheaded off in promising direction. That direction being directly into the abyss of the worked out quarry that has many fenced off entry points – all of which are vertical.

We made those fish-hand-movement indicating a ridable line before running away should any suggestion of attempting certain death be made. Conditions of mud and ice – both offering more grip than expected, but less than required – felt scary enough with sections ridden brakes off/eyes squeezed closed hanging on to the edge of scrabbling traction. Properly absorbing.

Martin had clearly solved the numbers game refusing – for the first time in living memory – cake and tea after nearly forty minutes of riding, instead shipping us back into the busy hills on a cheeky mission to access the “antler trail“. Named not formarauding stags fighting over gene rights, rather a branch/camelbak incident picking out the “holy horns” in a tight night-riding beam a few weeks before.

It’s not legal. Not even close. A footpath would be a paragon of trail virtue compared to this well shrouded tree lined bounty below the hills. What it is though is unique within the Malverns – loamy singletrack hard pressed by mighty oaks starting fast/steep but mellowing to a perfect trail gradient snaking on a flow of sinuous curves.

Come summer it’s a perfect test of weight distribution and tyre grip. Fast as you like if you’re as brave as you say. The rainy season pits your wits against slippy but predictable dirt and moist roots. Chasing Martin – for it is his trail and he’s bonkers fast in any conditions – I had both tyressimultaneouslybreak away which would normally trigger a panic/brake lever/crash process. This time I hung on and, for about the third time in a 12 year MTB career, drifted perfectly through an apex.

I’d pay good money to do it again. Really good money. Even some of my own. It was that good. The grunty hoik up the valley was made easier by fadingadrenalinespikes especially now tea and cake were definitely in the ‘training plan‘. This new regime ensured only half a pasty each washed down with hot tea knocked back quickly as the day rapidly cooled.

A final tramp over and around the hills finishing on a descent predictably full of people mostly incapable ofindependentmovement. I’m a huge advocate of shared trailetiquettebut if a mountain bike is heading down a trail you’re perambulating on some 15 MPH slower, it might be a good idea to move aside. My internal laser beams were fully paid back by karma when Martin received a free puncture half a mile from home.

Being a proper mate, I left him so to enjoy the remainder of the descent, dropping into icy steps, taking a deep breath, surviving that before freewheeling back to the truck. Martin turned up about a minute later which somewhat ruined my perception of just how fast I was going.

We had had a fantastic ride. Standard Al and Martin messing about and not taking it too seriously, But the GPS coughed up a nadge under 20k and quite a bit over 2000 feet of climbing. I toasted such amazing statistics with a beer or two. Softly Softly Catchey Monkey.

Training then. It’s just riding until your legs give way then is it? I’ll give that a go.

* That’ll be Jez, the third MalvernMusketeerwho has time trials on his mind and a training plan clearly dreamt up inGuantanamobay

which – whatever your non wiki’d history teachers may have told you – MarieAntoinettenever actually said. So 250 years or so later, the mantle of cake eating has been vigorously grasped, forked and shovelled by none other than “no not another slice, I really couldn’t, body is a temple you know, oh go on then, just a small one… er not that small” porky Hedgey here.

But first I had to earn it.

Today’s ride went something like, apathy, rain, cold, wind, giggle, cake, grind, giggle, cake. The longer version started with me motoring into the hills through a curtain of rain hanging from an endarkened sky. Further reasons not to leave the safety of the car were a swirling wind and biting cold that speaks far too loudly of the Winter to come.

I was only half joking on offering an alterative indoor beer serving location for the ride to Martin, but he is made of stouter stuff and off we trudged up one of the many steep, grinding climbs that define the difference between the valley floor and the peaks.

“Martin and Al” rides lack the discipline, pace, distance and general seriousness of the mid-week night rides. These worthy tenets are replaced with exploring, silliness, careless line choice and – often – thumps of rider into fauna. Today we had all of those in a smidge over ten miles, with even that short distance split by tea and cake at St Anne’s Well.

Cake wasn’t foremost in our minds what with survival filling all the available space on a descent from North Hill that was even more sideways as usual. Two key factors; one a sizeable cross wind cheekily punting us into a rocky void, and two my choice of tyres which are the “go to” excuse of any proper mountain biker.

“Yeah would have ridden that, but these tyres (point vaguely at rubber which looks suspiciously like everyoneelses) are rubbish. Wrong trousers as well. Bad egg for breakfast. Honestly lucky to be here at all“. Secretly I’ve always viewed perceived tyre performance as marketing fluff, but in the case of Ignitors, Maxxis really aren’t kidding in labelling them not suitable for mud. Unless you’ve a penchant to lob yourself off the trail into the nothingness of a semi-vertical drop.

I wasn’t. So installed Mr. nesh&frightened and his brakey/slithery descending technique. Which left the rest of me time to worry if those bloody tyres were about to explode having been wrenched on with the force of a million newtons. At least it had stopped raining, which would make it easier for the emergency services to collect me from wherever the fall line ended.

Fun though, oh so much giggly fun that ended near the cafe. Which was open. And Martin had cake funds. Never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, we stuffed some chocolate cake in their instead. Suitably replete, the horror of a climb all the way to the Beacon was mildlyassuagedby a speed of ascent on a par with an oak tree. And quite an old oak tree at that.

Switchbacking to the Beacon, a rather wonderful vista opened up with blue sky backlit by a fast approach twilight. Views across the Northern hills down to a twinkling Malvern below wereuninterrupted by many humans who had long scuttled back to roofed safety. From the top we rolled fast, chasing the fading light with the kind ofunreconstructedjoy you envy your kids for.

Just a great flow down a brilliant decent chasing a fast mate knowing that 20 minutes away awaited a steaming cup of Tea perfectly accompanied by a slice of that rather fab cake mostly made by Jess. That’s a good a way to finish a weekend as I can think of.

Except possibly two slices.