A worrying window into the soul. Take a deep breath before starting any sentence. Sheer restless energy banished the comma and full stop during these outpourings of drivel.
Nice bike that Mister. Shame if anything happened to it. Something has happened to it alright, it’s become a shed queen. Along with the other *ahem* trophies from my winning strategy of N+many.
Lately I’ve struggled to reconcile the number of bikes with the number of legs, but right now rideable ‘N” is zero. That’s a challenging theorem counting a room full of expensive bikes numerating no new stories. Unless adding dusty pages counts.
It doesn’t. It feels more like how the end starts. When important artefacts defining the thing you did instead become accusatory statues recording an imperfect history landscaped by a hinterland of the “further back you went, the better you were“.
That was pretty much my happy thoughts as I saluted the six* with a recovery cold beer after a hateful hour on the turbo. Prefect conditions to ride outside, terrible conditions in a hot and humid shed. Showing great restraint not to be adding a triple whiskey chaser as images of all my friends doing the stuff recently mostly my world pile in on the WhatsApp groups.
Well that’s just pitiful isn’t it? It’s not like I’ve lost a limb regardless of some pseudo bullshit that riding bikes for 30 years somehow makes them a recognised appendage. It’s a broken bone, annoying yes, life changing no. Longitudinal analysis suggests bullets dodged, reward crushing risk, limited ability punching way above its weight. Sure it’s okay to grieve for lost summer, but everyone is fucking bored of it now. Even me.
So let the eye of negativity roam a little wider to the institutional despair of the county hospital. An oasis of beige furnished by the lowest cost bidder. Short of almost everything including technology solutions with appointments arriving by text, post, app and barely rage suppressed phone calls. Often at the same time, leaving one Brownian motioned in the eye of an informational tornado.
Feels like it’s doing its best but probably not quite good enough. A reflection on the logistics, politics, funding and the sheer clusterfuck of complexity rather than the lovely people who battle on everyday with tired smiles attempting to shove massive square pegs into tiny round holes. Heroes without capes indeed.
But fuck me from a sample size of me, it’s bloody frustrating. Four weeks, four different medical professionals. One I paid for myself who charged me about 25 quid a minute selling a future I wasn’t sure I wanted. A whiff of the US system where everything is possible, but nothing is free. Ask yourself the question if a fix with a five figure price tag beats the weary chaos of the NHS.
Hint. It bloody doesn’t. But shit it’s not without mental effort to zero in on the intersections of a Venn from four white coated individuals all telling you slightly different things. Those things include “It’ll probably heal, but it might not“, “It’ll be as strong as it was but it may not be“, “It’ll be fixed in 12 weeks but also could be 12 months“, “We could operate on it, but then again we probably should not”
Practising medicine and all that. Not helped by my mate Simon suffering a similar injury a week later (must be a summer bug, go outside, catch the broken collarbone virus) only to be under the knife 7 days later. I’m not a medical man but on examining his x-ray I couldn’t help think “well that looks less shit than mine, I now have plate FOMO”
All of which has made me an absolute shitball to live with. I’ve done my best but again it’s not good enough. Not even close. As a bloke who is officially “not great” at doing nothing, apathy has become my strategy. My post crash plan had lots of aspirational stuff around doing things normal people do, see some stuff, do some stuff, don’t lament the stuff you can’t do. Not gone well. Bodes poorly for the future.
And then two days after my three week “splataversary“, I was summoned back to Gloucester Royal for what I expected to be a very disappointing consultation where being mostly ignored then vaguely patronised would outcome a “come back in four weeks if it’s not dropped off before then”
Enter Tim. A man of many words often impervious to raised hand questions, but nevertheless a script spoken by a man clearly knowing his shit. We had a fifteen minute conversation back and forthing over surgical interventions. A further five of prodding and whirling the previously sling bound arm on what felt like an organic roller coaster of free movement. An abrogation of NHS responsibility transferring those decision rights to a man chaffing at one armed disability.
“See you in two months, good luck” he said. “At which time I expect your multi-part collarbone couples counselling will see it again conjoined and we’ll all do a lap of I fucking told you so. If not, it’s full on Winter Soldier, but really do you want to go there? Are you a betting man?”
I am not and he didn’t say that. Well he may have, but my heart was already singing a little ditty named “I’ll take it from here“. Agency is quite the thing, dump the sling, drive my car, ride the turbo on the drops*** but better still in FOUR WEEKS I can ride a bike outside. Okay maybe not a proper bike and not proper outside, but that’s a target I’m going to smash though a month of sweaty Zwift sessions.
Because when I get back out there, I’m going to be in the best shape I can. And come the next Al-Tim meeting, I’ll be shoving him aside to get a damn good look at the new x-ray. If it’s not fused, at least I’ll have one good arm to punch him with 😉
I swaggered back into the big shed finger pistolling the bikes with a “we are so not done”. For a while there I forgot I was – and will probably always be – a mountain biker. It’s so fucking good to be back.
Too Early For A Beer. I think probably not.
*Too Early For A Beer? A semantic proxy when FFS is also a little to early in the morning.
**Amusingly I sold one exactly two days before “splatter-day”. It was only the gravel bike tho so it doesn’t really count
***Trust me this is A BIG thing. Ask my arse. Sitting up on the turbo feels pretty much like dropping the soap on your first day in D Wing 😉
Bike Packing. Something I wanted to like and do more of. Neither of those things has come to pass. Reasons for which may soon become apparent. Read on for the thrilling narrative of why it’s not me, it’s the bike.
However, I’m making probably dangerous assumptions about the level of interest that whinging interspersed with facile route observations* can sustain, but hey if nothing else there are plenty of pictures.
Because as soon as Guy “Beeeeaaauuutiful” Kestevan uploaded his YT tour of this route, I was in.Even tho my only previous bike packing experience was the Lon Las Cymru back in July 2019.
I do look quite a lot younger there. And a bit thinner 🙂
Having sacked off the King Alfreds Way about three times due to illness, injury and inclement weather, the planets finally aligned for this trip. Sadly my LLC buddy Adam could only make one day, but happily first reserve Nige stepped up. He doesn’t have a gravel bike so ‘adapted‘ his Santa Cruz Hightower by adding a bit of air in the shock, some slightly less sticky tyres and the brilliant Tailfn rack.
I was on my 2022 NukeProof Digger- stock except for some wider Richey bars and an 11 speed mech that went up to 51. At no point was “camping” on anyones agenda**, so it was three excellent Hotel/Pubs on route, a kit list pared back to the encouraging forecast and absolutely no idea how things would go. Both Nige and I are pretty fit, do quite a lot of long rides but are more winter than spring chickens 😉
Also the longest ride I’d ever done on the digger was about 50km.
Yeah that’s a bit longer than 50km.
Still no point dying wondering eh?
Day 1: Knighton to Montgomery : 70km/1150m climbing.
I am clearly attempting to look fit and ready. But instead I just appear to be constipated 🙂
The route starts in Shrewsbury town centre. We didn’t because Knighton is way closer to home and I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be a ride of two halves. Or two hards as it turned out.
End April can be – and regularly is – banked gray cloud, 12 degrees, grim headwinds frequently punctuated with savage rainstorms. Not today, wall to wall blue skies and summer temps. A good way to start a route that is both brilliantly planned and brutally sadistic. Often at the same time. Let me furnish an example- first proper climb after 10km meandering up the valley on quiet lanes.
Doesn’t look like much, but loose gravel at 14% grade on loaded bikes is no gimmee. Definitely had to pause for thought half way up. Once up there though, there’s an ancient long ridge (“Kerry Ridgeway”) – somehow still puddle filled after weeks of dry weather – but easy mlles after I’d been forced to stab the front tyre with an anchovy. Not a great start for the “Road+” Senderos, but the repair held and amazingly this was the only mechanical we had the whole trip. Other than my knees and I don’t think they count.
Two tumps, many hills
There’s a lot of gravel on this part of the route. Most of it is perfect for the digger, but some was more rock than gravel with a few steepish descents. My 160mm rotors – previously fine – seemed to be struggling to slow me down as much as I’d have liked. Views were amazing tho.. this is at the ‘two tumps’ viewpoint.
Along with the views were many and varied steep climbs. I regularly saw 15% on the Garmin and up to 25% at one point! 40-51 loaded up is still a struggle up there – for me anyway. There’s also not a great deal of resupply on the route. We had a quick bar/bottle fill at Clun after the 2 mile descent off the ridge. After that not much until Newtown. We experienced Newtown as any experienced tourist would- straight through without stopping and onto the canal path 🙂
Leaving us just the joy of a steep road climb to Montgomery. Sure there’s the valley road but it’s fast and open and no fun on a bike. This is the joy/pain of the route, you absolutely attack every major town in some kind of hilltop pincer movement. Often finding yourself meandering up some random hill in apparently the wrong location. Pretty sure there are at least four Church Stretton’s in Shropshire for example.
Anyway got that done, I was feeling pretty good. Nige had it harder on the MTB on the road climbs, but he absolutely smashed the next two days, in the same way they smashed me up. We even had time for a mooch round Montgomery castle. Our first one of the tour. Very impressive it was too.
Once we’d run out of things to point phones at, it was down into the one horse town that Montgomery is (and the horse appears to have left!) and into the bar for a well earned beer.
Quite a tough day. It was blooming hot and there wasn’t much shade or cover. Would have been approx 100 times worse if it was wet as it had been only a few weeks ago when a friend rode it. Still we’d enjoyed the variety of the route across a good balance of trail types.
Tomorrow though was our hardest day, I’d always planned this to get the three biggies from here to far side of Church Stretton over the Stiperstones and Long Mynd done in one hit.
On reflection, possibly a bit ambitious.
Day 2: Montgomery to Upton Magna: 81km, 1815m of climbing
After an excellent stay in the Dragon Hotel, Thursday dawned hot and it was only going to get hotter. 25 degrees, maybe more. Couple of salient points here- firstly there is bog all cover on the hardest three climbs, which you spend longer on than expected because RideWithGPS uses spot heights and the Garmin uses, well, GPS (that’s my guess about RWGPS). So what I thought was a 1600m climbing day was over 10% more than that. And 1600m is hardly an easy day!
The three big climbs- Stiperstones, Mynd, Stretton were all properly steep in places, lots of grass, gravel and rock. Some tarmac but I’d have been happy with more 😉 1100m of climbing in less than 30km. I was nearly 100% on the hoods climbing up and on the drops going down. My lack of proper gravel riding was probably the reason by the end of the day my palms were blistering. The digger is quite short as well, it’s a fun bike but maybe not ideal for this type or route. Or I’m a wuss. That’s certainly a possibility;)
Nig on proper bars and proper gears!Are we.. no we’re not there yet
Photos never show the gradient! Tough climb, but amazing views and I live in the Wye valley so I’m used to big skies and rolling hills. This though was something else. Really hard to take your eyes off it, which when descending at my level of gravel bike skill came very close to consequential a few times!
Still not there. We’re somewhere but not at the top. And this is the first big climb of 3
Climb to the Stiperstones done- didn’t bother to go actually climb the stones, done that before, so instead dropped down in the next valley which I’ve ridden up on a MTB. It’s a pretty good surface and blooming fast off the brakes. Not sure my heart rate came down much after the climb.
Yes we’re definitely there at at last!Stiperstones in the distance.
That’s Nige pointing back with a “I’m bloody glad that’s over” expression. Sadly this was merely the aperitif. On that note time for a spot of lunch.
Stopped at The Bridges for an ice cold Lime and Soda and a generously filled bap. Too soon after we’re were back climbing, this time over the Long Mynd, a mere 375m above the pub.
Making use of the 32inch gear 🙂
First time pushing. That was a steep and loose climb and I really couldn’t be arsed. Nig got up it I think but Ads and I engaged the 32inch gear 🙂
The descent into Carding Mill Valley/Church Stretton was pretty full on. Pretty sure I’ve ridden it on a MTB and Nige dispatched the tech sections with aplomb. Ads and I walked down and there’s no shame in that- odd tho the only 1km section on the route needing either proper skills or a walk. Seemed very out of character with the other 99+%. Still did get to ride some lovely singletrack on the digger and it’s more than capable. I still kind of wanted my MTB at this point. In fact that was my feeling across the whole day.
It may not look much but it was bloody terrifying on drop bars!Not lost 🙂
Full fat Coke and double espresso in Church Stretton represented my desperate approach to refuelling. Ads – suffering from a painful neck injury from a previous ride – left us to find his way back to his van. That’s a whole other post in itself- fair to say it wasn’t straightforward! Nige and I had *only *450* metres to climb according to my route plan. But somehow spread across 50km. That didn’t seem right but neither was I at this point. Hot, bothered and a bit knackered.
Terminator Nige powered by cake headed up the absolute shit of a climb from Church Stretton which appeared to hump us up 150m only to drop us back on the flat road out of town. I was a bit grumpy at this point. About the only time when the dial cranked from Fun to Type-2 fun. If the weather was rubbish, it would have smashed against the “no fun at all” stop.
We’d mostly swapped gravel for dirt which would normally be absolutely fine. But hanging on for grim death had every bone from ankle to shoulder queuing up to write a strong letter of complaint about their treatment.
Misery not shown
Looks fab eh? And it was mostly except the roots, big dips and tractor ruts not shown. The final climb flipped tarmac for another – for me – impossible off road singletrack climb. Not so much a sting in the tail, more a hoof in the slats. Still having met a quite elderly gentleman riding the route on a 60lb fat bike festooned with sufficient kit to sustain him for, I dunno, maybe a nuclear winter, I felt significantly less heroic, so gave myself a talking to and just got on with it.
A navigational triumph had us route south of Shrewsbury, ignoring the official directions, instead loping 10km off an already long day heading fast into a weather front that had extreme wet and misery written all over it. Arriving at the very welcoming Haughmond Inn in Upper Magna, the lovely staff were keen to show us to our room. I countermanded that with a polite but firm priority involving their bar, their beer and my immediate requirements.
I even got to mutter my favourite pre-first-sup axiom “if I told you how much I needed this, I wouldn’t have time to drink it“. Thanks Zaphod.
Another tough day, properly tough. We regularly ride 60km/1200m+ on a summer MTB ride. But this felt so much harder. On the upside brilliant weather, great company, lots of laughs, stunning scenery that just keeps on rolling out amazing views and a post shower feed ensconced in a snug bar while the rain rattled the windows outside.
Pleased to have done it. Probably wouldn’t rush to do it again without a change of bike. Or knees.
Day 3: Upper Magna to Neeton. 60km, 1180m climbing.
A bridge too far?
Back in Jan when the route planning was mostly in my head, the idea was go hard first two days, then easy the second two. That’s exactly the opposite of the official route where you roll out of Shrewsbury on road and easy gravel, climbing easier gradients all while making good progress. I kind of get it as chucking people at the second half first up might be a bit dispiriting, but I’d still back my route over theirs.
It is a route of two halves. Now we were into more rolling countryside- switching between Wales, Shropshire and Herefordshire was barely noticeable other than road signs and speed limits. But this felt more like “home” to me.
Riding into a Turner painting 🙂
There was a lot of this kind of thing. Early on we met the fella prepping for the end of the world. He’d been caught high up in the rainstorm and had had quite the night setting up his tent in a storm. Still fairly sure he’d dispatched some local wildlife with whatever hidden weapons were in one of his many packs.
This was a day less of ancient landscapes lightly touched by humans to very obvious industrial heritage. Nowhere more obvious that Ironbridge where we marvelled for a while at 300 year old engineering, gave it a respectful nod and then headed off to eat some cake.
That cake lay heavy on the next climb. And the one after that.
The route now flicked between grass-up-the-middle tiny roads, old railroad tracks and rock hard dirt bridleways. Garlic and bluebells signposted the way and everything was pretty good in the world. Until we hit a bumpy field when all my yesterdays became very much todays problem. Still nice place to stop to take in the view while various body parts grudgingly shuffled back into recognisable human biomechanics order.
This definitely reminded me of the Wye Valley. It’s such a good way to cover distance – keeping the speed up but not road’y-ing on tarmac. Good fun on the gravel bike as well as it’s so quick to change direction and easy to loft over roots with a bit of speed. Sun was out, everyone we met seemed to be having a good day, no trail conflict, no grumpiness just the joy of riding your bike with no real purpose other than than a pint a bit later on.
Wild garlic and a pint a few hours away. Hard to beat that.
The last climb was a chewy 200m but I was wise to the elevation vagaries of the route now. It wasn’t especially steep so dispatched with a gear or so to spare. The rock hard descents were still taking names, mostly of my crumbling spine but still a bit of a rush with line choices treading the line between “brave” and “catastrophic”
Never go “full gravel” 🙂Last climb of the day is DONE!Very late lunch of champions 🙂
We arrived at our final night’s accommodation with 3 minutes to spare before it closed until 6pm. Our impeccable timing was rewarded with a room key and a couple of beers to enjoy the garden with. Beer, Shower, PowerNap, back in the bar for 6pm ready to order most things on the menu. Sometimes twice. We didn’t really do lunch, but by jove we certainly did dinner 🙂
One day to go and it was a bit of a cop out. For which there are reasons. Some of them possibly valid.
Coffee and Cake. With our reputation? 🙂
Day 4: Neeton to Wigpole. 37km, 715m climbing.
Somewhat belated but still relevant – there is so much history lightly buried on this route. Often not buried at all, remnants of castles, fortification and long lost towns act as crumbling waypoints and signifiers of long forgotten battles. It’s a rich and violent history with the Marcher Lords brutally suppressing anyone who defied them, or whom the King wasn’t very fond of. So mostly the Welsh.
Nowhere is this better rooted in the modern day than Ludlow with a good chunk of its castle still dominating the high ground. We had to get there first with a couple of minor obstacles in the shape of pointy hills blocking the way. Leaving the Pheasant pub (another recommendation, have the pie or the fish, or the cheese, or in our case all three!) we spent 10 minutes on a busy B road to reacquire the route. It was the kind of crap experience that puts sane people off cycling. It also highlighted how well the CtC route is planned, so we were grateful for that gravelling our way though some massive estate apparently all belonging to a single person. Maybe some history hangs around.
To complete the loop we needed to feed our legs into the hilly grinder of another 60km and 1200m of climbing, Was never going to happen. I’d planned the pick up as close to home as possible, and – having been at it for three days – didn’t feel the need to be a completist in terms of hills and kilometres. Even when my legs still felt pretty good and my back was given the day off as much of the route was road. Not sure if this was part of easing people in who started from Shrewsbury, or just a lack of bridleways.
We rolled into Ludlow after a couple of hours and paused for caffeine and a marvel at how busy everything was. Anyone would have thought it was a bank holiday weekend. Having seen almost no one for three days, it was quite the shock! As was the weather, which while still sunny, realised it was not high summer and reverted to late Spring with a chilly northerly cutting through not enough layers.
I signalled the retrieval vehicle promising a slap up lunch just in time for Nige and I to send those weary legs up one final sharp pull from Ludlow through Mortimer forest. I know there are loads of official and non official off road routes through here but the GPS resolutely pointed to the road and I was absolutely fine with that.
The climbing really never stops!We’re done. All downhill to the pub from here!Loads of great trails that way. But not for the gravel bike!
There are some great MTB trails up there***
All that was left was a fast road descent, where I properly scared myself with a butt clenching speed wobble and a final meander through windy country lanes to Wigmore when the day was called, and beer and medals were awarded.
Well done bicycles. You continue to be amazing.Worthy? Oh yes 🙂
So yeah a bit of a cop out. And I’m fine with that.
Scores on the doors: 3 1/2 days, 252km. 5025m of climbing. That’s the same climbing as my previous tour but in HALF the distance. Oof, it’s a hilly bugger all right.
Life behind bars
So would I recommend the route. Absolutely. Variety, views and vast amounts of elevation. Would I ride it again? Yep, now I know what’s coming I might have one less beer on day one 🙂 Same bike? Nope, I think I’m done with long gravel bike rides.****
A perfect bike for me for this route would be a lightweight steel hardtail – something like the Cotic Solaris – spec’d with a 120mm SID, dropper post, light wheels, XC type 2.2ish tyres. That would be way more fun down and better – for me – on the off road climbs.
It’d be less good on the road but a good trade off for me. Nige and I reckoned two days were better on the MTB, two on the gravel bike in terms of terrain. Even so, hardtail for me. Might need to go shopping 🙂
Kit wise, used everything except my rain jacket. Took way too much stuff last time out.
Next trip? Two day “Lightening” tours I think. Maybe a couple of train stations to make it more than an out of back. Pack super light, wait for good weather and just go. Camping tho? Absolutely not. Like I say, I’m not that kind of idiot.
Great experience tho. Packed with a whole load of fantastic memories.
*we climbed a hill. then another hill. Then another ****** hill.
**because while I accept I am an idiot, I’m not that type of idiot.
***We rode them last week. And yep, fantastic fun on the right bike.
****This has come to pass. Another blameless bike punted out of the ShedOfDreams. A post shall follow with what passes for a reason but more importantly how I intend to balance N from the current N-1 🙂
1965 Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island USA. Bob Dylan plugged in. And most of the folk world freaked out. That’s the summary, the detail is a limitless rabbit hole of contemporary accounts, first hand interviews and long shadowed documentaries. I have spent far too much time burrowing deep into fact and myth but “Dylan was said to have “electrified one half of his audience, and electrocuted the other” pretty much covers it.
It’s also a solid metaphor for the eBike revolution. And be in in no doubt this is exactly what it is, right down to eating its own children. My ambivalence / shifting views on whether this is a good thing recently sparked a bit of Twitter back and forth which, on reflection, was firing darts at the heart of the periphery. There’s no Canute pushing back the sea here*; anyone riding mountain bikes (in fact all bikes) cannot miss the opening up cycling to the masses/debasing the purity of the thing. Delete as applicable. Nobody cares. Especially the manufactures scrambling to play to an audience through the power of electricity.
Plugging in has the historical whiff of full suspension versus hardtail, 29 or 26, trail centres or natural tracks. Except it’s way bigger than that. And more diversive. It’s is one of hardened positions, not arguments on both sides, it lacks nuance. It’s become a bit of a cult, the root of which appears to be guilt.
Right table, see those cards they are all mine. I have absolutely no problem with eBikes. Appreciate that’s a sentence adjacent to ‘I know lots of gay people‘ and ‘some of my best friends are black‘. I’m not trivialising the problem with such phrases often being – at best – cultural adoption or virtue signalling. Rather I know this is a position oft taken to claim some nebulous moral high ground before righteously pissing off it.
So let me be absolutely clear on what irritates me when conversing with our electrically enabled brethren.
1. I’m working just as hard as on a normal** bike. “riding twice as far, twice as high, loads more upper body strength required, etc“. H’mm if you’re racing E-EWS then sure. In my experience of trail eBikers, you’re really not. Cinderella pedalling on glass cranks as you breeze by. ***
Jealous? A little. Bottom of another 20 minute climb, I’d be lying if wishing for a bit of assistance isn’t a guilty daydream. But I’m at an age where a cheese and beer diet is incompatible with going steady. Or taking an easier option. I hate it sometimes, but it still feels good to get it done.
And I don’t need to ride all the trails. I’m happy – deliriously so – just riding a bike with my mates. Making choices based on trail conditions, companions, capacity of legs etc is all part of it. I am not a completist, I am not a Strava whore, I’m not confusing time on the bike with only descending.
So sure, eBikes mean you can ride more downhills. That’s not the same as riding more.
2. I only have anhour. This I have more time for. If I don’t drive, it’s 30 mins to decent trails and half of that for Gravel bike technicality. Sometimes this cranks the ‘can’t be arsed‘ gauge deep into apathetic self loathing. Would I turbo charge my motivation with voltage? Amp up my laziness into a new me? Maybe. Probably not. Everyone is not me though.
3. I can’t ride a normal bike. You’d have to be a total twat not to be swayed by this rationale. That’s before we agree that more people on bikes can only be a good thing. If it’s mountain biker with a ruined knee or a commuter getting out of their car, electric bikes level a previously lumpy playing field.
When I smashed my ankle a few years ago, I’d have given the other foot to get off the turbo to ride outside with my friends. An eBike would have enabled that.
So for the hard of understanding I get it. What I don’t get are the endless reasons for why someone has chosen an eBike. Just be honest about it. We’re moving into a new phase where riding is about making choices not entirely based on fitness or injury. I still don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing. But it’s a thing and it’s going to be a majority thing at some point. Feels quite soon.
There’s something else here. Price of entry and all that. eBikes are expensive – even compared to normal bikes – and I worry this is just another barrier to riding bikes. Don’t want to ride a normal bike, can’t afford an eBike. It’s not a new issue because there are already massive disparities between buying a utility bike and buying a mountain bike. eBikes amplify this disparity but they didn’t cause it.
Oh I just bought an eBike. For none of the reasons above. Obviously we’ll be back to that.
*to be fair, didn’t go well. Still you got to admire the self-belief 🙂
**The bike lexicon fails to align on what a non eBike is. It’s not acoustic whatever the mags might tell you.
***Yes I know this is massive stereotyping. It is based entirely on what I see every week. I’m sure there are many examples / outliers. But the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
Words allegedly. Many of them. Yeah about that. Let’s kick off with some honesty. Appreciate this challenges the norms of this blog, but just trying to keep things fresh. When film was king, the shutter release demanded some respect. 36 images represented a couple of pints and a week of waiting for the postie*.
Now it’s spray and pray. Well just spray and post really. The photographers art has been mostly lost to a signal to noise ratio long on notoriary and short on quality. Honest admission number one: I’ve been the noise to that professionals signal. Too many taken not enough deleted. Relied too much of photoshop. Seb’s – www.cranked.cc – words ring loud in my head. Composition not compensation.
Here’s number two. I’m mostly done with writing about riding bikes. Fuck me I’ve mined that seam well beyond exhaustion. There is so much more riding behind me that before me. That’s just bloody depressing. So as a muse it’s suffused with melancholy and pity. No one wants to read that flowery-wank. Not even me.
But we’re not dead yet and I’m giving Dylan a beery hug when he tells me we must fight the dying of the light. Fight yes, write no. Back to those flickering images. A moment catching something special; golden hour light, snatched facial expressions, sustained bravery, momentary pratfalls, ride-end tiredness, glorious companionship. All this and so much more.
Casting aside planetary orbits charting 53 years of my wizened fizage, let’s move right to the the good stuff. It’s been a strange year. Dreadful in so many ways but life affirming in others. Dragging the focus back to my tribe and the stuff adjustable in my purview, there have been many fantastic moments.
Time to stop talking.
Heading out after a day of Zoom calls.
Solo riding in the bluebells.
Crappy Selfies during lockdown
Riding past our favourite pub. Closed for four months.
From driving every day to working at home with help from pets.
Back to riding with mates. A video still of my good mate Martin.
Riding with the offspring
Back in the room! H enjoys Wales being opened.
Wales doing its big sky things. What a day that was.
The pubs open. Dave and I make haste.
The Saracens head reopens – rejoice!
Riding with Seb in the mendips. Good times.
12 years old. Big dog bossing the lawn.
Riding with Jess. The best of times.
Walking the Pembrokeshire coastal path with Carol.
Travelling with the family, not for work.
Riding my favourite trails with my favourite bunch of idiots.
Adequately distanced, relatively relaxed 😉
So what does this tell us? That I missed my friends but remembered my family. That Inbox Zero ended up as Inbox Zero Interest. That however down you may feel, you must always look up. That loving what you can do is a fuck load more productive than lamenting what you cannot**
What else? I dunno. There’s likely some crappy metaphor peripherally linking riding bikes with more important things. That doesn’t feel right. It’s not one or the other. Multifaceted problems are not solved through the power of a pedal revolution. You may feel better, but the real world is oblivious to that. It’ll drag you right back in.
All is not lost. Bikes have a superpower. They are binary. There is no nuance. No degrees. No strategy. They drop you in the moment and you can grab that by the balls or walk the excuses line. Either is a simplification, a choice, a moment in time. One of those 36 exposures.
I’ll never stop loving it for that. The world feels a pretty scary place right now. But in two pedal strokes that’s someone elses problem. Let’s go ride into those pictures. The words can wait. But I won’t be.
* followed by disappointment. Flicking through – shit, rubbish, crap, over-exposed, under-exposed, oh and a random picture of a strangers arse.
**my mum is 88 and not having a great time. This is her advice. It’s definitely something to live by.
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” – so goes the military protocol often re-imagined for the corporate world. It’s common sense but as Voltaire was keen to point out common sense is rarely common and often diffused by bullshit*
Today a plan DID survive first contact with the weather. But only though peer pressure and the promise of beer and pizza. That hides a deeper truth best summarised as ‘there is nothing better than getting the band back together’
Post lockdown we’ve upped the numbers game. Two, three then four guilt-free riders seeking the touchstones of the ‘old normal’. We remain socially distanced but socially comfortable. The banter splits the two metre divide, the climbs tell stories of the solo training, the descents remind us why that doesn’t matter. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed.
Roll forward to today. No one really knows what day it is anymore but we’ve plotted a straight line between a skive ride and beers in Matt’s ‘SpeakEasy’ built during the endless blue sky days when lockdown angst morphed into activity. Six are due but few are counted an hour after 36 rain filled hours suggested winter had mostly returned.
Full disclosure I must take some of the blame for this precipitation event. After two crashes on sand where dirt used to be, I out-louded the heretic notion that a bit of rain might be welcome. I probably should have been a little more precise with my definition of ‘a bit’
It’s not quite the ark-building 40 days and 40 nights but we’ve had deluge and drizzle in equal amounts. Hence me wintering up in waterproofs from head to toe. 11km of road separates me from the trails and every metre is pot-holed miserable damp. The quiet roads are gone and I’m being moisted from top, bottom and side as cars slide past with that minimum of caution I’d almost had time to forget.
The rain stops as the dirt starts so I pack most of the rain kit and join the fellas. Surprisingly the other five are waiting for me. Maybe not such a surprise as this is what we do. Even when that common sense suggests we should be doing something else.
It’s all a bit slithery and I’m back on the hardtail after three months of faking it with multiple double sprung trail dampeners. A double espresso wake up call ends with the first two corners avoided via a fern-slapped straight on option.
Get a bloody grip, The damp trail is surprisingly giving it plenty. Lean over the front end, punt the eyeballs away from the glassy roots and revel in a 2.8 tyre that laughs in the face of mud and slop. I’m not laughing because there is bog all cerebral capacity left over from concentrating hard and revelling in the visceral joy of riding a proper sorted hardtail.
I’ve missed that. But not as much as I’ve missed my mates. There is much piss taking. Fingers are as pointed as the barbs. Everyone laughs because this is what we do when pedalling stops. Some like to ride alone but for me that’s a denuded experience. I’m fine being isolated in my own head, but once we head outside then the Brownian motion of like minded souls is the very thing which fills that soul.
No one crashes. Close calls and cat calls. Taking risks and sharing how that feels. Bottling it and making excuses. Bottle this, it is the stuff of life. It’s what we do that others do not. Fuck me I’ve really missed it.
We retire to the ‘Speakeasy’ where beers are opened and tales are told. Matt has built a Pizza oven which requires all sorts of activities long distanced from any kind of health and safety to fire it up. More beers soften the hard fact we should be in the pub.
The location is irrelevant. We’re getting a bit pissed while attempting to send pizzas into Hell’s kitchen firing out smoke and flames in a happy version of Hades. Now I remember what I’ve forgotten, the easy company of those who’ve you shared so many experiences.
‘You remember that time in that hovel a hundred miles than civilisation?‘ and ‘that snow-bound winter ride when we had to dig ourselves out of a four foot snowdrift?’. Of course we do, some of it might even be true. Or at least true to the power of beer exaggeration.
None of that matters. What matters is this: days like this do something to still the madness. They distill the uncertainty into nothing more than having great mates who share a common cause. Who are probably full of the same insecurities eating away at me, but not today. Not in this moment. Not when you realise you have taken friendship for granted.
Let’s not do that. I pulled a final beer, grabbed my phone and captured a 2-d image of a 3-d event. That one up there. These are my favourite bunch of idiots and I’m very grateful to have them.
That’s the clan riding on Sunday. If we had a club this would be it. But we don’t. Which is kind of the point. People transcend constructs.
*not quite a verbatim citation but if François-Marie Arouet was still with us, I believe he’d nod that through.
Welcome to the zombie apocalypse. Dystopian fiction made real. Hunger Games re-imagined for toilet roll battles in Morrisons. The very end of days indeed. Grab a bottle of your favourite medicine, a copy of The Road and consider which household items might be reclassified as food.
Or not. Let’s not trivialise the facts here.* People are dying. Many more will follow. As ever the poor, the marginalised, the desperate will suffer more. History teaches us disease has no class vector, reality suggests otherwise. The virus has snared royalty and heads of government but let’s not confuse their treatment with some poor bastard on a sink estate struggling for breath.
But we have new heroes. No that’s not right, we have old heroes properly dragged into the light. Sure there’s a government, whose welfare policy can be neatly summarised as fucking the NHS up the arse for ten years, is now apparently in awe of what’s left.
Forget them and their frankly embarrassing attempts at empathy. The irony that the saviours of our world are not running banks or financial scams, rather those on the front line of what is essentially a war without ordinance. Doctors and nurses, thousands of committed researchers, decent souls stacking shelves, school ‘failures‘ driving trucks, ranks of forgotten minimum wage slaves stepping up in a way their more privileged contemporaries entirely fucking avoided.
And they are dying as well. Because ‘getting Brexit done’ is a ‘look at me’ slogan while basic PPE is a bore. Still got to give the ruling class some credit for a bail out that’s basically nationalisation and socialism hidden under the banner of an emergency measure. A tory government massively expanding the welfare state? Fuck me it’d be funny if it wasn’t for the whole people dying thing.
At some point in the distant future, there needs to be a reckoning. Not just finger pointing of who didn’t do what, but also if we learned anything. This is what I’ve learned so far.
Most humans are decent individuals. Those who don’t monopolise the news media. Stuffing blogrolls into trolleys, picnicking on the beach and essentially mainlining the selfish gene. Through stupidity or hubris, who the fuck knows. But these people are not important.
Who are important is everyone else. Mostly everyone else is synonymous with not being a dick. Quietly doing the right thing and not wanting some kind of social media medal for it. Of course I counted myself amongst their number until around 3pm today.
After 10 days inside** most of which has been lost in virtual conferencing*** or finding new friends on on-line platforms, I cracked. So all my virtue signalling up there isn’t worth shit when, after FIVE MONTHS of riding in the grim, the trails dried up.
Oh irony again. It’s been literally seconds since we last met. Our freedom gave us Carte Blanche to slog about in a festival of slurry. And when that freedom is rightfully restricted it’s all bloody lovely weather, t-shirts and dust, dry lines and new flowers. You know the gig. Spring spinning the season ratchet. But like most things it’s less fun watching than doing.
I’m no rebel nowadays. I get the social distancing thing. Both because it’s absolutely the right thing to do and – as an asthmatic – I’m keen to swerve a dose thank you very much. So riding now isn’t like riding used to be before all this started. Was it only a month ago? Already feels like a lifetime.
I’m opening any gates with a jauntily angled elbow. I’m making judicious use of a small bottle**** of hand sanitiser. I’m acknowledging my fellow trail users with six feet of good natured hellos. I’m two hundred miles and a million light years from my brother living in a small flat in Ealing.
I’m also not a total bloody idiot. The NHS is kind of busy right now. It doesn’t need entitled mountain bikers to rock into A&E with wonky body parts. So riding downhill is more about precision than speed. Crank not, brake not, find some flow. Pump the trail, don’t bend it to your will.
Then stop. Sit on a stump. Pig out on a bag of sweets. Listen to the birds. Remember all this will pass. We may lose a summer but most people are losing a shit load more. Maybe the world turns so we can learn those lessons about what’s important. And who. And why.
Maybe we don’t. Maybe it snaps back to survival of the assholes. I just don’t know and there’s nothing I can do to influence that. But we are not powerless. There are things we should do.
Spend time with your own family. Catch up with everyone elses. Help out those who may not even ask for help. There’s something about the stripping back of our vocational and social veneer which feels important. I’m not sure there’s any such thing as over-sharing right now.
Above all observe rule#1 ‘don’t be a dick’. Closely followed by rule#2 ‘be kind’. We’ll get through this. Even though the other side looks pretty scary. Still anyone making predictions is merely selling snake oil.
So let’s stick together. These last three years the politics of division have set the agenda. All of us should feel pretty bloody motivated to do something about that.
*a Venn diagram not including experts on Facebook, conspiracy theorists and shouty nutters. The media is doing a decent enough job aiming at the heart of the periphery.
**and we’re very lucky. Healthy family, large if unruly garden, walkable paths into open fields, customers who still want to buy things, significant stocks of alcohol etc.
***We’ll so be back to this. Many years ago I wrote a very cutting article on the desperation of ‘second life’ and now I’m living it. Karma is indeed a bitch.
****Like bitcoin it’s worth about a million pounds today. And peanuts in two months.
This is Seb. Seb is both my good friend and the editor of the fantastic Cranked publication. Full disclosure here, Seb pays me to write for that magazine. This, however, is not the basis of our friendship.
We share many things. The love of hardtails, the hatred of modern politics. The understanding the eBike genie can’t be re-bottled. The analogue worry that the digital world is debasing our hinterland. The acceptance we’re not the people whose opinion matters.
What we share most is the joy of riding bikes. We’ve both be at it rather longer than we can mostly remember. But we are not the same. Seb is a rapier – he’s old school quick in un-bermed turns, and gigglingly expressive when the trail rewards handling skills over grapefruit confused for bollocks.
I’m more of a thug. That tight and twisty stuff is all fine and everything but my rocks are getting off on, er, rocks. Wider trails, stupid lines, hang on and hope, take a bead on the far horizon and trust in the awesomeness of modern bikes.
Some of this is where we grew up. Seb cut his teeth* on bar wide singletrack navigated by eyebrow twitching bikes short on fork travel and long on terrifying angles. Me, I was more stemming arterial bleeding when a short terms skills crisis overlapped with some rocky madness in the Peak District.
We’ve both moved on. To be fair I’ve moved on a bit more with my bike rental scheme. Seb’s old job involved testing hundreds of bikes which stayed the collection of his own fleet. My pursuit of stupidity spun the revolving door of the ShedofDreams at such ludicrous speed, I can barely remember what I own anymore.
It’s no surprise tho that we meet at Cwmcarn on a cold November’s day unpacking modern hardtails from warm vehicles. Seb’s missed out on a whole load of riding this year, so the plan is for an easy circuit of whatever is currently open. Larch disease has decimated the UK and this valley hasn’t escaped.
So we’re climbing within the trees but it’s not long before the bleakness of clear-felling** makes that climbing just a bit more miserable. Trees hide the gradient, while a barren hillside mocks your puny efforts with a summit appearing impervious to the physics of mechanical advantage.
Sadistic minds graded this climb. Constant gradient happens at other trail centres. This is all maximum effort, false summits, pointless freewheels and haven’t-we-been-here-before ascents.
One such concession to the properly knackered is a 5-metre rocky descent we ride a few times for the camera. It’s fun to be on my side of the lens with Seb throwing appropriate shapes while I fail to remember all that stuff he taught me ten years ago. I probably need to go and climb a tree***
The descents are fun. Missing the BMX vibe latterly infecting the trail building community. I’m six weeks out from riding my Solaris, so re-calibrating for hadtails makes me clumsy. I get back to it soon enough tho.
Even with a long fork, this is a switch-y bike. Push it into a corner and lean into the carve. Spot a mess of rock and rock back a tad so the fork can do most of its stuff while your legs do the rest. Crest a rise with extended limbs and feel the front go airborne.
Yeah we agree hardtails rock. We talk freelance life, the guilt of not working, the futility of anxiety, the anger of politics, the pointlessness of giving a shit and the importance of doing so. We’re at an age when we wonder if this is as good as it gets. We worry we’ve maybe missed the point.
And then we sit on a hill looking across the devastation of a forested hillside and we fade to silence. There are many things which are important, but right now all that is important is being collected in our optical nerves. If we missed the point then that’s okay because in this moment that is more than enough.
Soon we’re pointing the bikes downhill and thoughts pretty much stop. Hello again moment, okay if we live here for just a few more seconds? Those few seconds are epic. I’m a million miles from perfect but fuck this feel good. Feels real. Feels right.
Seb’s got the same vibe. We hit the last decent a little weary and maybe just a little more cautious than we might have been a few years ago. Like that matters. It’s a combination of high lines, bracing for braking bumps, flat out corners and something close to the abandonment of risk management.
The car park is a happy place. We retire for tea and medals. Soon we’ll do this again. Not because we are lucky enough to fit riding between working hours but because we should.
Both of us chose a path of self-employment. It’s becoming clear what we failed to do was to choose a path of self enlightenment. If that sounds like bullshit it comes down to this; ride my bike or make some money.
Really. Like you have to ask.
*possible literal reference here.
**and a fire three years ago which even now blights the landscape with charred stumps.
***No photoshoot with Seb even ends without someone hanging precariously out of a groaning branch.
There are many things I can be legitimately be accused of. However overreaching in terms of anything even tangentially linked to exercise is not one of them.
Not unless it’s reaching over a honed athletes Broccoli-with-added-misery special lunch to get elbows deep in a massive portion of chips.
A consistent arc of my athletic ability is not the only issue with the digital narrative being pedalled here. I’m as skeptical of the hooky algorithms as I am of the source data. It’s kind of my job to be professionally cynical when some chancer thrusts ‘their latest visualisation’ into my scowling visage.
‘Data Lineage?’ I bark. They look confused. ‘Algorithmic veracity?’ I enquire with a look of utmost weariness. ‘Derivation rigour?’ I shout at their retreating form. Standard data management lore holds ‘Crap in, Crap out’. That there shiny thing you’re showing me is mostly a pig wearing lipstick.
Honestly it’s all gone tragically downhill since the abandonment of the trusty slide rule for those new fangled pocket calculators. This is of course not true. Well mostly not true anyway. You can show almost anything with data. Torture it long enough and it’ll tell you anything*
Combine this explosion of data with the Internet of Things (or Internet of Shit as it’s been memorably described) and you can’t move for data points sticking up grubby electronic digits for analysis. In Garmin’s case they’ve made the classic mistake of starting without the end in sight.
Garmin devices started with a tiny data set logging speed, distance and time. The development of GPS chips flipped that into basic navigation. But it was still a narrow set of attributes focussed on one individual.
Then Strava brought its segments, Zwift its gaming and suddenly we’re cheerfully sacrificing our privacy to lob random data into questionable public facing data stores. Tin hats not required, but the product of those services is our data being sold to third parties. We need to keep that in mind.
You may not care. You probably should. Google buying FitBit fills me with horror. They’ve already been caught red handed surreptitiously shipping individual medical data to health care companies. We all know FaceBook is basically an evil business model, but the likes of Google and the other massive content aggregators/search engines aren’t far behind.
Years ago the UK government attempted to quietly create a ‘UK patient database’ with those records being available to all sorts of nefarious third parties. It was called CARE.ID, and the reason you’ve probably never heard of it was due to it being stillborn after significant lobbying from anyone sensible who criticised it for the privacy/ethical shitshow it was clearly going to be.
We’ve pretty much arrived there by stealth. And while it’s hard to argue that AI/Machine learning unleashed on massive data sets could/might/hmm schmaybe create stunning new insights and breakthroughs for all sorts of conditions, it’s equally stupid to hand our data over to organisations whose entire value proposition is monetising that data.
Right sorry about that. Got a bit distracted. So this data arriving from cadence and power sensors is tossed together with heart rates, Vo2 guesstimates** and all that malarky to make an unwelcome metric salad.
Which is then liberally garnished in digital snake oil. Ooh the shiny. To be fair, these kind of algorithms are predicated on some kind of structured training. It’s looking for a variance off a baseline.
My baseline was two weeks of not riding because I was too busy waffling myself stupid in Brussels, followed by all the self medication required to survive a wet week in Preston.
So no exercise to a fantastic three days riding in Hebden Bridge. Trouser tightness suggested this hadn’t assuaged the gluttony of the previous weeks. A glance at the scales nudging towards 13 stone confirmed that waistband metric. Right then things must be done.
Those things didn’t include riding outside. As outside appeared to be a crap CGI version of Waterworld. I’m okay with wet trails, less keen on riding through rivers. We’d done enough of the the previous week.
Turbo it is then. Passed the 1000km of going nowhere slowly last Thursday. Not something I’m that proud of. Most of those came from a mammoth 830k in a single month at the start of the year. No way I could face that regime again. So I’m mixing it up with a bit of virtual riding with my Bro, a few bastard hard interval sessions, a few group rides and no racing***
After dismounting earlier through the simple Newtonian principle of falling gently to the floor, that image was my reward. Unproductive. I know it’s bloody unproductive. It’s getting sweaty in a cold shed going absolutely nowhere. That’s pretty much the sodding definition of unproductive.
Well fuck it. I’m going to ride a proper bike tomorrow. Maybe I’ll ditch the trackers and just stop when I’m knackered. It’s not training is it? It’s dicking about in the woods with your mates. Good luck finding a metric for that.
Anyway I won’t be getting any more data devices for Christmas. I’ll be having that tin hat instead.
*I’m re-using that line from my latest Cranked article. What do you mean you’ve not got a copy? There’s loads of good stuff in it. And one of my articles.
**Calculating Vo2 Max from Heart Rate data is like me extrapolating the Severn tidal bore from standing outside and counting raindrops for a few minutes.
*** As a seamless transference of my real world racing prowess is going to beat the crap out of any remaining self-esteem.
Gravel bikes. Let us take a moment to reflect. A pause to understand others who are not like us. A gap between riding proper bikes and being a genre-chasing dick. But it’s all bikes, right? That’s a good thing. It’s not like it’s electric.
Yeah but really what the fuck? Is that a cross bike cross dressed by some self absorbed hipster chasing razor thin niches and suffering cognitive dissonance? Get a grip- if you want to race in the depths of the grim buy a cross bike, if you want to go full-MAMIL on summer days, go full roadie on a bike designed for pain and suffering.
Otherwise we’re back to the ‘third space’. A blank vision of utopia conceived by a marketer, then coloured in by people who should know better. Dig a little deeper and what we have here is a 90s mountain bike butchered by a drop bar. Rigid double triangle silhouette, bollock troubling top tubes and twitchy eyebrow steering.
Really, you’d need to be absolutely fucking tapped to consider this as something different to what you already have, or – worse still – a thing of desire for reasons yet to be articulated. What kind of idiot would fall for that?
Well this kind of idiot. Obviously. I’ m not blind to the latest content of this blog appearing to be ‘random Bikes AL is buying for increasingly obscure reasons’. Reason feels a bit strong, but for this latest purchase at least there is a goal, an end game, a possible viking burial when that is done.
Come July my long suffering friend Adam and I shall be riding the classic Lon Las Cymru. The Welsh Coast to Coast starting in Chepstow and ending in Holyhead. Taking in all sorts of lumpy geography including a chunk we suffered during the Trans Cambrian a couple of years ago. Hoping this time there will be significantly less hails of trout.
I could have ridden my eight year old cross bike. But of course I’m not going to and – in recognition of the intelligence of my readers – there’s no good reason than an email flyer offering a Titanium lovely for really not much money – at least compared to the insane nonsense of the niche providers*
Let’s move on from the transactional tedium of going from idea to Yodel delivery. Except I mean Yodel actually delivered a thing. On time and in the same post code. I was so stunned, it took me a while to assemble it and consider its lightness against its alloy double bolted to the turbo.
Yeah but not that much lighter. Quick spin up the lane made me feel a little better, and 40km the next day confirmed it was quick, direct, stiff but somehow compliant. A second ride in the dirt had me giggling in singletrack and dusting myself off when it all went a bit wrong.
So what do we have here? A Ti frame draped with pretty nice kit but most importantly hydro brakes which do the stopping thing my old CX bike cable versions promised. This is a massive difference. Good brakes make you ride faster. And then crash a bit when you fail to reconcile ‘small obstacle’ with ‘SPDs after 7 years flats, how do they work?‘
I wanted to feel the same antipathy to this bike as I did against the CX bike and the even older road bike. Tool for the job. Get this challenge done and then swap it out for something more nobbly.
Sadly I really like it. Even on the road. I wish I didn’t but it’s so comfortable, so effortless under power, so precise in the turns, so analogue in how it rides, so Labrador like to go do the next thing. And the thing after that. What’s over that hill? Let’s go find out.
It’s a very clever bike. But that’s not the point. What it really is is an instantiation of the first bike you ever rode. The one that split you from your local geography. The excuse for not coming home. The seeker of adventures. The pal your tired parents never could be.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve just gone out for a ride with no fixed destination. 40mm tyres are a passport for choosing any path merely in the spirit of enquiry. Finding new things and old forgotten things. Keeping going until the legs or the light give out.
Riding bikes – any bikes – is a righteous thing. I’d rather be doing that over anything else. But for a whole bunch of years riding I’d categorised anything not satisfyingly my definition of singletrack as ‘Roadies missing the point’. Now I’m not so sure.
It’s not proper mountain biking of course. I’m don’t really know what it is. What it isn’t is the purgatory I expected. I think I need to understand a little more.
Best get back out there.
*my brother has one of those. It’s really nice. It’s not 3k nice. You could buy a decent mountain bike for that.
Twice this week, I’ve made a beeline for a bar. Nothing unusual in that other than the fella behind the jump acknowledging my familiar presence with a knowing smile, and a significant glance toward my self-medication of choice.
Chaucer coined a phrase now found in the common lexicon; ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ although I’m more taken by Mark Twain noting that ‘Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it’.
Fair point fella. If we did politics on the hedgehog, I’d be all over that referencing current events. But we don’t, and as this blog is all about me let’s instead pick a couple of examples which brought me up a little short this week.
Monday finds me bored in the same hotel I’ve already wasted fifty nights this year staring at walls. Those walls are not something I can stomach when autumn light pins you to a room with not much of a view. Instead I’m up and out, walking the streets, shunning the bright lights, looking for a place to eat alone. I’ve been doing this for twenty plus years and it’s never glamorous. Especially in Coventry 😉
So after much perambulation I’m back in the hotel. I trade a high five with Petoir – he’s the lovely fella behind a shiny bar and a similar suit and tie provided by the hotel, but inside that he’s far more interesting. We talk family, football teams and fantasies – him: bringing his wife and child over, me: retiring and giving this shit the middle finger.
In between he pours me the beer that has been our calling card over all these months. I give my thanks, while nodding to the other poor bastards I see weekly living in a world exchanging home for money. We never really talk because their iPhones virtually project a physical distance I nowadays think of as ‘London’.
Some are pissed already. Many are desperately heading that way. A few amusingly believe they are the main event. Others exit stage left. All the world’s a stage and we’re merely players apparently. Could be that – whatever it just feels desperately sad. I’ve been here in over a hundred bars in more than forty cities and it’s all horribly familiar. And that does breed a bit of contempt for your life choices.
Bar closes, now it’s just me and Petoir sat on the other side. He’s knocking back decent brandy while explaining that everyone treats him like shit. This is not the way it works back in Poland. Apparently they stab you in the front rather than slice you with impatience and passive-aggressiveness. Or, worse still, just an ignorance which considers you a proxy between their entitlement and a drink.
This really pisses me off. Some of that is because I’m also half cut drinking brandy, a little because I’ve been guilty of similar behaviour in the past. But mostly because of what belonging should feel like. It feels like this:
Four days later, I’m making determined tracks to the bar of our local in Ross. I name-check Jamie behind the bar, check out how his world is before making a three fingered gesture triggering a phalanx of favourite beers leaving the taps.
While I worry that maybe this is a cipher for alcohol dependancy, I love this pub for its old-worldly charm, it’s comfortable chairs, it’s lack of electronic coin magnets, it’s choice of conversation over music – but even so, this feels a bit too familiar, a bit to close to the knuckle, a point between giving up and selling out.
So I chuck it out there; is this as good as it gets, is this a rut we’ve dug for ourselves, am I just being a pretentious twat? The view from those who I’ve come to rely on to calibrate my moral compass tell me it probably is, we probably have and you definitely are. They also explained something far more interesting.
‘This is community Al. You’ve never lived in the same place as long as this. You’re always searching for something better. But this is what real life is like, flawed individuals and messy lives. Stop worrying if this is what you should be doing and get amongst it’
I’m paraphrasing here; it was more ‘stop being a dick and get the next round in’, yet the totality of that narrative wasn’t lost on me. My best friends are anchored in a time and place with an iron certainty it is will endure. Familiarity isn’t contemptuous – it’s binds you to some important certainties. It’s not perfect but you’re a local, a person who gets it, an advocate of what is right, who can – and should – make a difference.
I never wanted to settle down. That felt like getting old. The idea you weren’t windswept and interesting was a little demeaning. Not being tied to a place because no place was quite good enough for you. The grass was always greener. Even when it wasn’t.
The difference between a generic hotel bar not even close to living the dream, and having a beer with my best friends has made me reevaluate that long held maxim.
