Although the difference from Keanu’s experience is there was at least once a spoon. The remains of that saddle once sat proudly displayed in a bike shop gleaming all new and shiny under the brand name ‘Charge Spoon‘. After Martin finished with it, what we have here is something rather less spoon like. I accept it didn’t look much like a traditional spoon in the first place. But now the closest cookery-based cipher we came up with was ‘the cruet’

Industrial Design is a complicated and difficult thing requiring much in the way of creative individuals, mood rooms, coloured plastics and crayons. I know this to be true because many designers have told me so. It’s not just web plagiarising, a quick email exchange with a Chinese factory followed by a decent lunch while the junior designer knocks out some stoner graphics.

For balance though, that’s how every non designer has described the process. Nobody has every tried to convince me that the simple way to repurpose one thing to another is by throwing it at the Malvern Hills through the power of crashing. And yet the camera doesn’t lie – this is exactly how Martin took a solid if unspectacular product and imbued it with something of his own. Possibly a bit of thigh.

If you weren’t there it probably doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t make much sense to me either and I was there. For the bit where Martin was sheepishly mudsting* himself down in front of a few random MTBr’s who were clearly pissing themselves laughing. While Martin was unharmed other than further blows to his dignity, the saddle was not so fortunate. The entire weight of Martin’s Orange 5 – which for mathematical calculations can be considered similar to that of a small moon – had piledriven the poor perch directly into unforgiving ground. From a quite spectacular height as well.

Martin had missed a ditch you see. Only not really, he’d hit it quite hard having found it inconveniently positioned below a hidden drop. His attempt to ride it out soon became an attempt to escape the accident completely by rolling off the side and then gently down the hill. The 5 – now unencumbered by any pilot input ** – reared up before plunging into the hillside saddle side down.

I’m surprised we didn’t have to dig it out with a JCB.

It was one of those ‘take it easy rides’ because we’re off to Spain in a week, so the entire hills are a ‘no mong zone’. I’d missed that memo demonstrated by falling off on a flat bit of trail for reasons best thought of as ‘there is no talent’. I’d then ridden a nasty rock step I’ve been avoiding for about three yearsand desperately hung onto the back of a Orange-Powered Martin on most of the descents.

Both of us were quite relieved to return to the cars without any further incident. I blame Martin’s bike. It’s like bloody Carrie. And now it’s coming to Spain next week. I’m not leaving it in the same shed as my lovely PYGA. There would be nothing left but Swarf and some slightly fatter tubes.

* the well known MTB process of scraping slick mud from clothing, shoes and ears.

** which on a five is generally to point it downhill and wait for a) the end of the trail or b) the arrival of the ambulance.

Racers. You know the type. Defined by an engorged competitive gland fused with unbreachable self belief. Scarily focused and endlessly driven. Success boxed by results and targets. Sure, you know the type. I’m not that type at all as my blotted copybook of event based ineptitude confirms.

Which doesn’t stop a Wolverine like snap of pointy elbows under entirely appropriate contextual circumstances. To whit the temerity of a good mate believing there’s a line his pace and skill can lace between me and that tree. Oh there’s a line alright and he just crossed it. Catching is one thing, passing quite something else.

We’re not talking rock hard race courses here, buttressed by striped tape and peopled by those who’ve confused pain with pleasure. Nor seasonally race-boarded chubby weekend warriors gurning out mid pack mediocracy. No this is something entirely different and rather more configured for fun. It’s a cheeky singletrack nestling below the much travelled ridges of the Malvern hills. It was first an animal track and latterly exactly a minute of tree carving joy in the summer months.

Which have been and gone leaving us with sheep trampled mud, a moistness of dirt running infinitely deep and grip occasionally found but mostly lost. Martin built most of this trail and claims first-down blagging rights in conditions from dusty to disastrous. Except tonight when the tyres were slicked with a mud pack, and direction was 5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} rider input and 95{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} the current direction of travel.

I slipped by as he slipped off and gently pointed my slithering steed in the direction of any local geography not entirely filled with hurty trees. Luckily – and I use this word with some charity – the sheer volume of mud ensured velocity was restrained almost sufficiently for brakes not to be required. Careful use of the word ‘almost‘ there as a brief caress of the rear* slowed me only as a direct consequence of the tyre breaking away and attempting to overtake the front.

Probably best not to try that again. Instead hip steer the sliding bike onto a perpendicular bearing to a phalanx of glassy roots, take a deep breadth, unweight the now rather portly mud-transporter and breathe again as success is briefly declared when considering the alternative. I’ve always been a big advocate of the maxim that if ‘at first you don’t succeed, redefine exactly WHAT you mean by success’

All this dithering and procrastination has Martin line astern on my weaving tyre. In commentators parlance he’s ‘all over me like a rash’ and looking ‘fast and racy’. In my language he’s clearly cheating and that’s my speciality. All that separates us from trails end and bragging rights are two ninety degree bends that reward bravery and balance back in those halcyon summer days.

Try that now and earn a free mud pack with added twigs, stumps and surprised rabbits. I’m not really prepared to let Martin by, nor am I keen to splatter various important but squiggly body parts against a tree. So rather than make a decision, I curl my toes, worry a bit, run out of time and push oh-so-gently on the bar. Somehow we’re though the first and setting up for the second but Martin is now ‘all over me like a cheap suit’

Grr. Testosterone. Stupidity. Chuck it’ll in, it’ll be fine. Of course it will. Of course it wasn’t. Rear wheel slides are fun, front wheel slides are scary, both wheel slides are essentiality a finite period of time before brave face hits the dirt. This was a proper two wheel slide enacted at the exact time Martin made his dive for the inside line. Good luck with that.

I’d stopped worrying about being overtaken because any such thoughts were overtaken by hanging onto a bike that was rebounding between one axis and the next. The front and rear clearly had a proper strop with a refusal to agree on a common direction. Corner of one wide eye saw a bar to my left but by this time I was a passenger somewhere between ‘riding it out through awesome bike handling’ and ‘bracing for impact‘.

After a few more fishtails we regained control of the bucking bronco and stuffed it happily into the stile** declaring to almost nobody who was interested ‘that my friends is an entirely new race move. Forget that nonsense around tactics, strategy and pointy elbows. No, what we have here is a Nigel-Mansell-esque approach to trail ownership. You’ve just been privileged to witness is ‘the startled Turbot’

It only works if you’re riding with like minded individuals who really should be doing something rather more productive with their Friday nights, a trail at least tyre deep in tractionless mud, a configuration of perfect corners and a view that racing is really rather less serious than some will insist it is.

Lucky for us then that’s exactly what riding with your mates in November brings forth on every night ride. Don’t get me wrong, I’m already pining for Spring but until then I shall be ‘doing the Turbot’. It’s al whole load of fun and I’m fairly sure it’s legal 😉

* the brake in case you’ve lost the thread. And certainly not the front because that’s the hydraulic equivalent of penning a suicide note.

** Honestly, you’d never get a horse over there. I shall be writing to the footpaths officer 😉

Recently there’s been much in my life around the ball, specifically being it. Mostly while external events fetch ever bigger bats and punt me to ever more ridiculous locations; some physical but mostly mental. A year ago similar things were happening which has me considering if a better life tactic would be to retreat under a blanket at the end of August, and refuse to be roused until – let’s say – the following May.

The sporting analogy is of course exhorting you to become at one with the incoming spheric in order for the impact be it with bat/foot or something more American*. In mountain biking terms, lately I’ve been more the ‘trail‘ which sounds great until we unpick it a little to understand my connection with the trail was indeed a merger between man and land. Because of course it was man stuffed face down in the land.

None of these have been particularly painful unless one considers ‘dignity‘ a body hosted organ. Except for the last one which strongly suggested I was exactly one second from a proper ‘oooh that’s nasty, call an ambulance, I’ll fetch the spatula‘ when attempting a tricky and steep obstacle for the first time on my hardtail. ‘Be the Ball’ I thought, turn off the targetting computer, use the bloody force, whatever just don’t fuck it up”. Just downstram of fucking up is essentially a headlong plunge towards terminal velocity broken only by concrete fireroad.

I wasn’t the ball. I was instead the idiot missing the grooved line completely so travelling rather too briskly into a rocky steep that had the bike behaving in a manner suggesting it’d be far happier if I exited at any time of my choosing. I chose instead to close my eyes, hang on, somehow ride out a crossed wheel highside through the power of sheer terror to arrive at the bottom more than mildly perturbed.

“wooah that was a big one Al, we thought you were off there’ was the sweary-edited summary from my aghast riding pals. ‘Really, did you think so, completely had it under control, you should try that line, it’s gnarlllly…duuuuude’ / ‘Really they asked?’ / ‘No of course not fucking really. I’m never doing that again, not because I’m scared or anything – just don’t want you to have the trauma of you collecting my teeth and maybe a few stray but unidentifiable body parts while we wait for the blood wagon‘

My non ball like status has extended into vocational life with a far more appropriate similie being ‘be the inbox’ or ‘be the volunteered’. Somehow I’ve mostly managed to ‘be the eyeball‘ after Herefordshire county hospital finally dispatched me homeward without insisting on my company for a few weeks. The eyeball in question is mostly healthy and occasionally useful for seeing things, so on balance a better result than a few sleepless nights suggested.

In all of this, I felt being a parent might be a good thing. Jessie has outgrown that very bike we bought exactly a year ago. There’s definitely some beanstalk behaviour going on seeding the inevitable search for something a bit bigger. No sooner had the sad decision been made that the ‘Franken-Turner’ had to go, another one turned up on that vast Internet thing.

2004 Turner Burner. God I so wanted one of these. Just as I was about to buy one they stopped making them. But we have one now, after a ride on the rather splendid Yer Diz trail in Bristol where we met previous owner and all round nice fella Dave. The plan was only to buy if Jessie liked it, and if she really wanted to carry on riding and if it wasn’t an old nag, and, and, and… And since she threw it roughly to the ground about 300 yards in, this because a discussion full of moot.

It was pretty much perfect other than the scars foisted upon its innocent frame by my second-born. Money was exchanged and hands were shaken. The only issue – as defined by someone who is 12 and therefore pretty much unimpeachable in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge – was the rather dull frame colour and obvious lack of pink.

Fixed that today with the help of my friend Matt who did all the hard work while I attempted to find stuff in his garage. To say it’s messy does absolutely no justice to the word where one would walk into – say – a child’s bedroom and declare ‘pick up your clothes, put that stuff away, pass than sandwich to whatever branch of medical science deals with fungus, etc’. No what Matt has created is basically walled landfill. If you move anything, anything at all, there’s a better than evens chance the entire south of Herefordshire would be flattened in the ensuing rubbish tsunami.

Apparently Matt once threw something away. For this there is absolutely no corroborating evidence. You could get bloody Time Team in there. Well no actually you couldn’t unless a) they were all very small and b) didn’t mind hanging like bats off the ceiling.

Anyway regardless of his layered view of the world, this is a man who knows how to wield a powertool in a way I can only dream about – ‘right then we’ll just drill out these cable guides, should be fine‘. And it was. If I’d attempted that, it’d have been akin to aluminium mining. I did get to play with the impact driver tho which makes met think actually I’d quite like to ‘be the drill’.

So bike built. Daughter overjoyed. Considers it ‘just about pink enough’. We’ll go ride it when she wants to do that. But not before. She has many things going on in her life when compared to her rather mountain bike obsessed dad. And that’s absolutely fine. As long as she stops growing soon. Otherwise we’ll have to get the lintels raised.

Be the ball? Maybe not. Be the fall? Really try not to be. I’m good with getting through the day and having a giggle. Be the fool? Yeah, that works 😉

* I am happy with baseball. I really am. It goes on a bit but that isn’t my real problem with it. All would be good if they’d just ‘fess up and call it rounders.

Crowd a flange of mountain bikers around a lumpy OS Landranger, and between squeeks of excitement and the telling of tall stories there’ll be some significant stabbing of digits at tightly-spaced contour lines. ‘There, it starts there‘ shall be confidently declared ,suffixed by fast spoken local geography augmented by topological features. There may even be reenactments of bold moves over crux points with full on handlebar method acting.

And every other experienced rider will be torn between excitement and cynicism. One mans epic is another blokes pointless trudge. Awesomeness will be distilled by crap weather, navigational failure and just having a crap day on the bike. The trail will be good*, but it won’t be great. It’ll certainly fall short of the mythical status the singletrack shaman is enthusiastically pedalling.

Minton Batch falls squarely into this category. Some of which was entirely down to me failing to find it on two previous attempts. Firstly attempted into a cheeky 50 MPH headwind which turned the map both ariel and scuttling off towards Wales. A second map proved about as useful the following year during precipitation best described as localised flooding. All we found that day was mud, but to be fair we did find an awful lot of it.

After which I sort of gave up. Until this weekend where a combination of actually checking the forecast and abrogating map reading responsibilities** to a proper adult suggested third time lucky. And the 30k ridden before we finally cracked the navigational code were quite fantastic all on their own. Big climbs, fun descents, not too many people, amazing views in a semi-wild environment and my continued tortured route finding which generally led us in entirely the wrong direction.

But confidently in the wrong direction. Which I’m banking as a major improvement. Including refusing to accept that ‘the middle of three’ trails being absolutely the descent into Carding Mill was in fact more to the left of centre. Or ignoring the urgent beepings of the GPS entirely and ‘switching to manual‘ which at least proved my organic satellite navigation is exactly on par of that provided by the expensive electronic version.

So despite my best efforts, we’re the highest things on the Mynd other than the full sized gliders thermalling above us. We’re faced with an inauspicious grassy redoubt dropping into what my friends call ‘tight singletrack‘ and I call ‘wheel sucking ruts‘. But from a low key beginning this trails fires you high into three kilometres of hill hugging heaven. It’s neither insanely technical nor perilously steep so initially fooling you into a speed in your friend approach.

Only if your friend enjoys pushing you out of ten story windows. This trail clings desperately to the hillside. Put a tyre wrong here and you’re going down. For quite a while. So it’s that perfect trail which encourages speed and precision but punishes mistakes and sloppiness. The ruts give way to shaley rock surprisingly obstacled by hidden rock steps and sudden tight bends. But the views just keep on coming, firstly across the heather-strewn tops then dropping your eyes into alluvial vistas long torn by volcanic violence. But those views are sirens for those eyes and you have to tear yourself back onto the 3-d problem in front of you.

And when you do, the perfect ribbon of singletrack flows on rewarding commitment and technique with endless perfect sweeping bends. Even when the gradient is almost exhausted, the trails pushes you on – pedal, carve, pedal, push, weight-shift, pedal, drop a shoulder, rail a turn, flash past a rambler and repeat until the giggling starts. It doesn’t stop when the trail ends. It doesn’t stop when drinking sunshine-drenched beer. It declines a little to an idiotic grin on the way home. it raises a smile on a shitty day when people confuse personal with important. It’s back when you fire up the photos.

It only fades wondering when you might get to do that again. That’s a mythical trail alright – not because it doesn’t exist but precisely because it does. You cannot call yourself a mountain biker and not fall deeply in love with that descent. It’s pretty much what mountain bikes were built for. I have been lucky enough to ride some brilliant trails this last month – both here and away – but this is something a little bit special.

At no time did I wonder if I was riding the right bike, with the right wheel size, with on-trend bar widths or complicated suspension. All I cared about was the next fifty yards of trail and chasing the plumes*** of rocky dust from the rider I was chasing. Distill that feeling and you have the elixir of mountain biking right there. Bottle it and you’re going to make a fortune.

I’ll be back for another hit sometime very soon. What’s everyone doing next weekend?

* except for Nan Bield. Which whatever popular opinion may say is a whole load of carrying opening up a world of extreme peril.

** Although I did download the route onto my notoriously useless GPS. Which filled my riding pals with so much confidence they brought two maps. Each.

Way before the advent of trail centres and their associated gradings, the colour of the Black Mountains was all about the vast quantity of coal extracted, rather than a nod to perceived difficulty. I’m ambivalent over creating a riding class system based on colour, but since we’re stuck with it then this 50k loop in the heart of the South Wales valleys can be thought of as ‘none more black‘.

Not because it’s technically edgy – other than there are a few technical sections most of which seem to be only vaguely glued to the edge of the mountain – or it’s festooned with man made ideas of what an obstacle might look like; no it’s a splendid collage of tough climbs, long descents, pushes and carries, windswept summits, people-less views and endless rain which greeted us when we hit the border, made us welcome all day long and waved us goodbye with a mighty thunderstorm.

Proper mountain biking then. For proper mountain bikers. That’s us in case you were wondering, and we’ve been here before with my vaguely pretentious attempt to define the joy of natural riding and a rather more scary episode where Hyperthermia was hidden under deep snow cover. How would such a proper mountain biker be defined? That’s a whole post all on its own, but it’s hard to see any agreement for the inclusion of ‘inability to map read‘ and ‘inability to use a GPS with special consideration for misunderstanding grid references‘. I’ve never thought of myself as that type of proper mountain biker.

Still I should receive a little credit for nudging a few like minded souls into a damp car park at quite early o’ clock. The forecast suggested intermittent light showers with heavy drizzle later. Or – as anyone who has ever read such a forecast will wearily explain – pissing rain from dawn to dusk. Lots of different types; light, heavy, sideways – the kind of rain that’s on a mission to seep into every bodily crevice before partying on with all its friends. By rides’ end, my feet were a watersports park for lemmings*, everything marketed as waterproof had been outed as the emperors damp clothes, and we’d all been in unhappy receipt of grit based facial scrubs that still has me chewing sharp sand even now.

The bikes didn’t look too pretty either. There’s a noise a chainset makes when stripped of every last molecule of lube. And that noise is ‘expensive‘. Somehow none of this mattered, nor did my inability to find the excellent 500 yards of singletrack I’d insisted we start on, so adding about 9k of road trudgery to the route. Eventually the kind and supportive group stopped laughing long enough to point us up a big sodding hill that went on for a very long time. Eventually – and already thoroughly soaked – we passed the point where the less navigationally challenged would normally park; some 1 kilometre from the proper off road.

I think they were fine about it. We weren’t talking much anyway 😉 Familiarity with the route saw us set off up the first hill at speeds unlikely to trouble a sprightly tortoise. It’s a lovely climb this, alternately grassy and rocky with little challenges in and out of stream crossings on the first half and then a pull on a good but steepening track leading deep into the mountains. Amazing views here I remembered while adding another layer and shivering slightly. Up here the temperature dropped into single figures with a strengthening wind whipping away the warmth of the climb, but refusing to split the stubborn cloud cover.

Four times I’ve parked a bike at the top of this climb and taken a picture of it. Four different bikes obviously. Not today tho – regrouped we head to the summit and after a never-to-be-repeated navigational triumph headed straight to the Rhiw Trumau descent. Classic in every sense – clinging to the side of the valley, traversing gently downwards at first in wheel swallowing ruts before plunging down the spine in a deep gulley stuffed with loose rocks. The crux of which is a committed step that really has only one line and a fast one at that with speed needed to clear the rock field on the exit. Never properly cleaned that before. Have now 🙂

The rocks were properly wet, glistening even under a stone-grey sky, yet the grip was phenomenal. I’d like to put down solely to my awesome bike handling skills, but really it was the combination of 23psi in the tyres and a fantastically sorted bike crouched atop them, with my contribution merely picking a spot on the dirty horizon and bellowing out a Clarkson-esque ‘Pooowwwweeeeerrrr‘. I’ll be 46 next week and see no reason why acting as if I were in fact 11 is in any way a problem. Riding mountain bikes feeds the inner child in us all. Some, admittedly, more than others.

Three full-suspension bikes made it down at a decent pace followed by Hardtail Haydn who had the look of a man recently pardoned from a capital sentence. Vague memories of riding that descent in the dry on my Ti Hardtail engendered a very brief spike of sympathy before blasting off again on more rocks carelessly interspersed with slick mud. Which may explain why Matt decided to attack an innocent tree with his head although he maintains he was ‘fully in control‘ at the time. As we removed a good sized stump that had breached his helmet’s defence, I couldn’t help thinking ‘head wound, probably delusional‘.

After a little bleed, we started to get properly lost after deciding one GPS and three maps was an inferior route finding approach to vague memories of fire roads that all looked the same. Fortified by soggy sandwiches we somehow co-located ourselves with the official route beeped out by my Garmin, only to go off piste about five minutes later having ridden through water deep enough for it to be considered tidal. I was still loving my bike at this point feeling it was a perfect compromise between climbing and descending. Although if I’d had a choice of most appropriate vehicle for the day, I’d have plumped for a Navy Frigate.

Admitting we were lost – that’ll be the big mountain-y thing we can no longer see then – upgraded our navigational stupidity to a ‘short cut‘ comprising mainly of a 15 minute calf-screaming push into a bastard rainy headwind. Y Das is always a push as you snake round the summit. It’s steep and nasty but I’ll never bitch about it again having now made what must be the first bike-ascent of Y-DAS direct. Except we didn’t quite make the summit being pushed around the side where my GPS and map reading came to the fore again. Visibility was now about zero and the wind screamed wet expletives at our ineptitude, but good humour was mostly maintained as we tracked on a increasingly defined path in the direction of safety.

Found the summit. Went the wrong way again. Mainly because by this time I couldn’t see the GPS for mud and I’d assumed the ‘off course‘ whining beep was it committing computer suicide** Eventually we realised our mistake and splashed down the always brilliant descent past Grwyne Fawr dam. Oh it was properly wet today and rockier than I remembered. This muse accompanied me on atop my lovely full suspension bike while wondering if Haydn was enjoying himself as much. He was apparently, but it was clearly hard work and by days end, he was mostly ruined.

Fast splashy blast to second sandwich stop under dank trees, munching away happily while Matt replaced a set of ‘backing plate‘ brake pads. One last climb through Myndd Du Forest and then home for tea and medals. Matt’s route up there appeared to involve pushing up impossibly steep drainage channels. I knew another way but felt any navigational suggestions would not be taken very seriously, so I sucked up some mountain air and got on with it. Rode the last climb on tiring legs only to find a view of sun lit lowlands mostly hidden by cloud clamped on this hill.

We had our only fall on the way down with Martin failing to make a steep, slick corner on the final brilliant descent that was a rut hopping rush at the top and a fall-line plunge from half way down. Having survived that I nearly lunched myself on the final set of steps, narrowly missing a trail marker by depositing myself in a damp bush. Which isn’t anywhere near as exciting as it may sound.

Rode home on the road home up a couple of unexpected climbs, which had me pointing out since I’d abandoned any navigation many hours ago this could in no way be deemed my fault. Surprisingly such a well considered argument may not have won the day. Beer did tho, consumed in a lovely pub apparently unconcerned by damp mountain bikers clothed in anything not suffering local flooding.

Cold and wet don’t make me happy. Not at all. It always feels like a test I don’t want to take. But mostly warm and wet – well that’s a damn fine way to spend a day compared to – say – not being in the mountains with your friends. Evidently riding bikes is what I like to do, but what I REALLY love is adventuring by bicycle. More of that please.

* beginners mistake. Stuck the waterproof socks on which were BRILLIANT for almost minutes before becoming a perfect sock-pool for cooling water. A feeling of chilly moistness than lasted only about five hours. On removing the sock, a number of fish made a break for it.

** which it did when I got home. Bag of rice and all was well. Although only because I explained if it didn’t start working, I was serving it up Garmin A l’Orange.

 

Back in a time before marketing ruled the world, us plucky brits took one look at the brash offerings from our US cousins before stoutly refusing to adopt the term ‘mountain bike’ for the bastard offspring of a cruiser and a spindly road bike. Over-Priced, Over-Hyped and Over-Here we decreed, while the rump of our once world leading bicycle industry churned out slightly crap copies under the guise of the ‘All Terrain Bike‘ or ATB.

I like that; it speaks of a bike to go adventuring on. While we’re short of mountains certainly in the bits of geography not delineated by Celtic borders, we’re at the spiritualepicentre of rolling hills and wooded acres. So what happened to the plucky Muddy Fox and the generation of class defining ATBs? Marketing, that’s what happened; a huge rolling slab of hyperbole and nonsense sliced into ever thinner segments of niche.

I should know, I’ve owned most of them. A special bike for any terrain, but no bike for everything. Some with gears, some with suspension, some with neither of those, some with one size wheels, some with bigger ones, some confused examples with different ones at either end. Short top tube, long top tubes, four bar, faux bar, single pivot, virtual pivot. I’m put in mind of Billy Joel and ‘We didn’t start the fire‘ – endless stuff passing us by and somehow missing the point.

The point being mountains. Where mountain bikes should live. Not domesticated onto flat lands and herded into trail centres. Not polished, upgraded and paraded in virtual show rings. There’s something viscerally bipolar about mountains – both comforting and forbidding, warm and cosseting within their deep valleys* and terrifyingly vertiginous attheir peaks. And there’s human magnetism in those rocks, attracting seemingly normal people to risk injury and even death on slopes made up of something like sleeping adrenaline.

Wake it up with waxed planks in winter or chunky tyres come summer. Where bike parks click with the tortured transmission of the downhill Stormtrooper collective – sweating in heavy body armour and astride massive forgings holding mighty springs between two burly wheels. It’s a long way from the all terrain bike, and a long way from what I come to the mountains for. For balance, there are some truly brilliant bike-park trails that you could ride every day for the rest of your natural life without boredom setting in. But there are many, many more in the wild mountains which flick the soul-switch marked ‘now I’m truly alive‘.

Much of the PPDS was ridden on bike trails across seven centres all of which were under assault from heavy rain and – in the case of one epically chilly chairlift – sleet. I have never been so cold on a bike before – five layers on top, waterproof socks down below and multiple sodden pairs of gloves at hand. We started early and high after finally ejecting ourselves from the world’s most expensive coffee shop. I’m pretty nesh but staring at stair-rod rain at €8 a coffee isn’t my idea of a good day out.

Neither is hiding in the lift station above Champery with 3 degrees registering on the GPS, a group shiver shaking mud and rain from barely recognisable forms and another 60k to ride. One descent from there into a brilliant food village serving Tartiflette, proper coffee and even beer perked us up enough to appreciate Nigel was suffering from something like first stage hyperthermia. We ran for the lower hills to get him home on a rooty trail made slick by the constant wet.

Riding this was a lot of fun. Now the rain was more warm than icy and even with brake pads thinning as every kilometre passed and twitchy blinking replacing glasses, we had a blast first picking likely lines of slick-wet root systems that offered only molecules of grip easily wiped with the barest caress of a brake lever. And then on loose rocks hissing evilly and piling up on endless hairpins. This blue trail was as full on as the black discovered the day before rocking twice the gradient but none of the dampness.

In the mountains, everything is bigger and scarier. You trust your brakes and tyres like your best mate. They’ll save you time after time, as long as you don’t take the piss. The bike suffers in this environment tho – chewing through pads, loosening bolts, seizing bearings and rattling the shit out of anything not bolted down. Including vital body organs. But God it’s life affirming. Like a masochist, you know it’s going to hurt but you can’t wait to get back and feel the hit again.

This mentality was clearly responsible for – having deposited a still shivering Nig at Morzine – a jolly jape to adventure our way back to the car at Champery. The rain had lessened to torrential now and a map-lookage suggested we were a few lifts and some nifty navigation from something that felt like success. The beer we’d just quaffed probably helped. Or – as became quite quickly apparent – didn’t.

First peak accessed by telecabin – so far, so squelshy but at least it was warmish and, most importantly, inside. Navigational plan followed precisely saw us arrive at the exact place we’d left some two hours before. Not ideal with the required country being in somewhat the other direction. Back up, shivering, and after a few falls but no submission we found the right lift and headed into Switzerland.

Very slowly. And increasingly cold as we breached the snow line. Earlier in the day, we’d ridden on the track far below our feet, fingers numb and braking an approximation, and we weren’t keen to do it again. Finally cresting the last pylon, we shivered to a decision on exactly how much riding we had left in us. Not enough for 600 metres of mud, wind and rain so instead we took first the chair and then the cable car down. Cowardly? Possibly. Pragmatic? Absolutely.

A couple of beers restored enough spirit for the bike jetwashing to escalate to rider jetwashing, before I smuggled myself back into France (having abandoned my passport to Hadyn who’d we left on a different plan many hours ago) basking in the heat of the car heater.

45k. 3000m of descending. 6 hours in the grim. Quite an experience. No big crashes – I saved those for later in the week. Where the mountains were kinder to us opening up endless vistas taking away any remaining breath. Getting lost, finding the best trails in my riding life, missing the last chairlift home on the wrong side of the mountain before doing it all again the next day.

This is where Mountain Biking actually lives up to its name. There’s nothing all-terrain here. It’s more all or nothing, full on, consequence ridden but full of reward. Stunningly beautiful and more than occasionally scary. Next year we’ll find a way to get back, but already my withdrawal symptoms have my Flickr photostream on repeat.

Luckily tho I live near some mountains. Not as big or impressive, but still full of all those things missing from my mountain biking life. So this weekend I’m off to get my fix. Because mountain biking works best in the mountains.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

* I know what you’re thinking. And I wasn’t thinking that. I just knew you probably were. Hence feeling the need to bring it to your attention that I am more than aware of the predilections of most of what I charitably think of as ‘my informed readership‘

Yes, yes I do. Firstly a soggy romp through our Alps trip with special consideration given to the PPDS,which didn’t quite match up to a previous post promising wall to wall sun and ground to axle dust. Unless sleet counts. I don’t think it does because warm and dusty are not generally early warning vectors for hyperthermia.

So we’ll be back to that and other stories of mild peril once the therapy kicks in. But first, I’d best come clean with another bike purchase even if I hold true to the maxim that the person espousing ‘honesty is the best policy’ had clearly never tried it. Counter-intuitively this funny-wheeled addition to the shed of dreams is not a knee jerk reaction to the Rocket not being brilliant in the alps. Because it was. More than brilliant and more than once. On every trail from loose and dusty to sodden and rutted.

So one bike to rule them all then? Of course not, but 2013 isn’t about divesting myself of bicycles- it’s more about restrained kleptomania. Next time a riding agenda has big rocks or big mountains on it, I’ll take the rocket and try and forget the brakes. Because that is where that bike works; the rockier, steeper and faster the better. And those all mountain credentials don’t stop it being a heap of fun on lesser trails as well. But it’s a bit much and a bit heavy and a bit slack and all the other things I bought it for.

Whereas the Solaris is bloody lovely and with a better rider on board more than adequate for my superb and varied local riding. However, not being able to upgrade the rider, instead the irresponsible fiscal winds blew towards this South African inspired frame based on a few reviews and recommendations, a close perusal of the length/breadth/angles and a long chat with the importer. And then, by some random chance, a real world look and a sit while high in the French mountains. That pretty much sealed it.

It’s a PYGA in case you’re struggling with the ZX80 inspired graphics. The only translation of which I can find is ‘buttock‘ in a medical dictionary which is off the irony scale. My friends worked hard to come up with something better including Pay Yearly (to) Gain Ability which I thought was both funny and bloody hurtful 😉 It’s also a lovely colour in the flesh if you like your greens tinged with a hint of acid. More importantly than even that is it’s a bloody hoot to ride.

I say that after exactly one of those rides. In perfect conditions and still in the shadow of purchase anxiety. Of course I wanted to like it and of course I may find an excuse to change various bits up to and including the frame if I decide i don’t, but so far so groovy. It’s more than a couple of pounds lighter than the Rocket and sporting tyres some way away from the small tractor size I’d hauled around in the Alps. But for all that, it’s a dancing climber, finding traction anywhere and punching up climbs if you’ve got a bit of leg-grunt going.

In the singletrack, it’s remarkably composed considering there’s ‘only’ 110m of travel out the back*. Some of this is clever suspension design, some is the mythical roll-ability of 29inch wheels, some of it is the frame’s amazing stiffness. The Rocket is the stiffest bike I’ve ever ridden and the PYGA isn’t far behind. Whereas the ST4 could happily have the front triangle and back axle in different post codes.

And 29ers turn differently. Once you’ve got them pointed in the right direction, and assuming you’ve developed a fundamental belief system around the grip of your tyres, they absolutely leech into the trail and fire you out of the apex. I’m sure 26inch wheels are just the same, but it’s the one big difference I’ve noticed on first the Solaris and now this. It may be all placebo of course but I care not, it’s bloody great fun placebo.

Talking of the Solaris it’s missing a few bits I purloined for this build. But it’ll be getting them back. Because with a 29er HT, a 29er Full-Suss, a big 26er Full Suss, a cross bike, a road bike and an old jump bike, the shed nears perfection. Well if it doesn’t it’ll be nearing an extension, and I can feel the full force of entirely appropriate spousal disapproval for that idea.

I guess it comes down to this. I’ve ridden my road bike once this year but I bloody loved it. I ride my cross bike when I’ve an hour spare and I love that too. Every fat-tyre-head has to have a hardtail and mine is perfect. And while two tricked out boutique full-suspension bikes may look profligate, they make me stupidly happy when I ride them.

I’m sure there’s almost as much pleasure to be had for a fraction of the cost. Almost sure. Almost. Best not take the risk eh?

* and 120 on the front. Unless you’re an idiot like me and decides ‘well 140 is 20 more than 120 so that’s going to be better, yes?’

First up, that’s a non ironic Genesis hook. Although obviously this particular track was penned well after they’d rolled down from the peak of prog-rock light. Or to put it another way after Phil Collins somehow conned himself into singing vocals. Anybody under the age of about a hundred has absolutely no concept of what a travesty this was. Still they were also born after Jimi Hendrix died so their musical opinion is of absolutely no consequence 😉

Right then. See that ^^^, it’s like my Rocket only subtly different. Things you cannot see are a 30mm bar shave and a further short, back and sides on the fork steerer. Two reasons, none of them terribly rationale; firstly the all-Ross-how-bloody-heavy-is-my-bike roll call saw even a trimmed Cotic tip the scales as 31lbs. Not a big surprise nor a big worry – that feels ‘about right‘ for a 160mm* hill-hooligan with proper tyres and all sorts of elven magic breathed over three different suspension platforms.

The second thing is more of a worry. Since fitting those long forks and longer bars, most of my riding has been regularly interspersed with stupid crashing. Including falling off while riding uphill. Pathetic, pilloried and frankly rather painful. Deploying a strategy best thought of as ‘deckchairs‘ and ‘titanic‘, I’ve hacked chunks off various parts and switched back to flat pedals.

Flat pedals are fab. Years ago in my ‘lobotomy lobbing‘ days when ‘perfectly normal’ was chucking oneself off mini-cliffs in full storm-trooper kit, flat pedals absolutely rocked. Especially during exit manoeuvres where going down with the ship was likely to end with coming up for air in A&E. And traction.

In those days I really could bunnyhop, look evidence and everything:

But that was a long time ago which was really rather sadly apparent after digging out that bike and trying the same had me mostly digging just into the ground. Or, as the DMR is equipped with the shortest chainstays in Christendom, flailing off the back missing the rear brake but finding the concrete. With my arse. Thankfully this was away from human ridicule but the cows were pissing themselves.

Being a bloke, I’m on a serial hunt for crashing solutions. Being old and wise, I don’t expect to find them on tomorrows’ monster FoD ride full of fast, bumpy, jumpy trails. Some stuff will be co-located although it’s likely to be a spikey pedal and a soft shinbone. Still no point dying wondering eh?

My decision making is clearly miles off kilter anyway after today’s attempt to wrap new tyres on the balding Yeti. Announcing myself with a brisk ‘Good Morning, do you have a couple of tyres for my car?’ to the bemused shop owner, I was rebuffed with ‘No Sir, this is a gun shop as demonstrated by the simple fact that you have walked through all manner of small arms on your way to this desk’. That was awkward.

The rocket and me feel like we’re on different orbits right now. It needs to be ridden faster, but to do so I need to get some confidence in what the bloody thing is doing especially round the front. In five weeks we’re in the Alps which makes this next month a pretty focussed ‘stop crashing‘ exercise. Or at least learning to crash with a bit more style and a bit less pain.

I blame that road ride. It’s clearly bloody ruined me.

* I am aware of a metric/imperial switcheroo but there’s always google for the hard of arithmetic.

Hidden in the Internet-Tardis that represents my many years of dead-electron drivel is a post which raises mirth and incredulation in equal quantities. Gasts have been flabbered on bike forums patrolled by hardcore keyboard warriors whocurmudgeonlyconfuse cost and value. And yet hidden somewhere in the ‘more bikes don’t make you happy‘ dogma nestles an unhappy truth.

Lots and lots of bikes HAVE made me happy. They didn’t make me any better. They do however represent my view of the mountain biking world and my place within in. That place being a somewhat chaotic meeting of real geography and the rather more impressionist landscape of my mind. For the Chilterns, lots of twitching eyebrow lock-to-lock steering short travel hardtails seems just the ticket. But that ticketgainstayedany entry to the new world of bike parks where riding was more short-and-mental rather than long-and-unthreatening.

And then there were the blind alleys, the drunken eBay purchases, the niche chasing nonsense all seasoned with a heavy whiff of nostalgia.Somewhereout there was the perfect shed of dreams. I just needed to keep on looking. And buying.

But let’s not look for reasons or even excuses to my revolving door approach to bike ownership. Instead it’s time to bring the story up to date where I hoped to show a new found maturity and laser like focus on a bare minimum of bikes which were well ridden, much treasured, carefully maintained and obsessively retained. This didn’t quite happen. Okay it didn’t happen at all.

Right then? Kettle on? Biscuits ready? Then we shall begin. This isn’t quite chronological. I did the best I could with fading grey matter and Flickr EXIF data, but when there have been so many, owned for so few months, it’s always going to be more of a jigsaw than a timeline.

Summer of 2007 saw Roger joining the fray via a half price fire sale at Sideways Cycles. It was a lovely colour. Manly purple with a bit of sparkle. Jealous sorts refused to accept it was really any colour other than a sexuallyambivalentpink, which I think we can all agree is green-eyed blindness. Sadly my ever more desperate denials were merely displacement activity for a frame that was about 2 inches too short in the top tube. The only riding style for my gibbon like frame was that of a praying mantis attacking a purple (okay pink) frame shaped fish. It wasn’t pretty and it didn’t last.

Clearly it was time to move on. Which begs the question of exactly why buying another singlespeed seemed like a good idea. Especially from the same manufacturer who were on some kind of metal saving top-tube reduction vibe. I rode it exactly oncewhich I think we can all agree fits perfectly in the envelope of long term bike ownership. Then we moved to somewhere hilly, rocky and significantly more like proper mountain biking. Good excuse for some more bikes then.

So abandoning singlespeeds for the last time, I emerged like a man from rehab stating that suspension and gears are a victimless crime. And what a statement the Cove Hummer was. Just a brilliant bike ridden anywhere and everywhere for four years. FOUR years, that’s a bloody lifetime in my riding pantheon, The bloody thing should have been awarded some kind of gold clock for long service. I don’t have it anymore having decided the top tube was a bit short (honestly why didn’t I just chop a couple of inches from my arms? Bloodied stumps would represent a rationale fiscal alternative to just setting fire to tenners which is pretty much my bike buying/selling approach).

But this one has many memories that make me smile. I don’t miss it, but I cherish the time we had together. It was a great bike and I should have chucked fiscal prudence out the door and hung it on the wall.

I accept it’s getting on the dull side ofrepetitive blaming my transient bike collection on a single measurement. Especially when I actually test rode this and declared it ‘the one’, And it was for a while being campaigned both right here and all over the country including a fantastic day on the Cwmcarn downhill course, multiple presentations at Scottish and Welsh trail centres and some awesome natural riding in the peaks and the lakes. Then I rode the ST4 and that was pretty much it for the Pace.

Which didn’t in any way persuade me that collecting more bicycles that really didn’t make any sense at all was anything other than the logical progression of a rationale mind. Firstly there was clearly a hole in my riding life where a cyclocross should be.

I absolutely convinced myself I needed a cross bike. I’ve yet to convince myself otherwise, although what wasn’t apparent to me on purchasing this rather lovely older example was the simple fact that the brakes are merely bar mountedaccoutrementsto tick some legal boxes. It was fun off road until any retardation of speed was required, after which I would either a) fall off or b) nut a tree. Reduced to commuting duties for a while, the writing was on the wall once I’d decided – for the standard period of ‘al-time’ (i.e. not very much) I liked road bikes. First tho, we headed off in yet another direction.

Back before a beer fuelled sabbatical of a few years, one of my first mountain bikes was a Kona Kilaueu which somehow I survived some real off road rides in the peak district. But soon it lost its lustre and was consigned deeper and deeper into dusty sheds before being abandoned in a house move around the turn of the century. Always regretted that which gave me an ample excuse to buy a rather fine example off eBay one drunken evening. Being just a frame and fork, time and money were thrown at recreating afacsimileof my long abandoned bike,.

And it rode great. Lovely. Just like the old one. Right up until the point of pointing it off road where, after only a couple of rides, it was clear that I wasn’t close enough to a man to ride fully rigid off endless roots and rocky steps. So I sold it to a man who thought he was and moved on. Lesson learned? What do you think?

So back to that ST4 then, remember the one perfect bike – but before we talk about that, let us bring out our dead and prostrate ourselves apologetically in a desperate attempt to avoid censure. Okay, here goes, road bikes. Two of them. For commuting and, well, commuting. I tried road riding and frankly it was slightly more dirty than the darker arts of animal husbandry. Somehow I managed a few 100k sportive’s with a scary bunch of chest-toast-racked billboard-lycra-wearing aliens but it’s not my world. Not even a little bit.

 

The latter commuted me to my office over nine months and a thousand miles saving me/the planet/randoms on the trains I would likely have killed until I decided that job was about as much fun as a 24 hour testicle slamming in sharpened drawer and moved on. As did the bike. Ihesitateto admit this but I sort of liked it; sure it was heavy and unsophisticated and a bit ordinary but that fitted me pretty damn well on all sorts of levels and we grinned our way through some truly epic commutes full of rain, wind and snow.

I still have the boardman. One day I’ll ride it again. I expect I’ll be about 84.

Right back to the good stuff. We’re not done yet, but we’re making damn good progress. I finally found a bike I really loved which was heavy, flawed, flexy but otherwise perfect. Rode it, rode it, rode it and finally bonded with something that suited my riding and strange dimensions. Lavished love and cash making it perfect and then the ungrateful fucker exploded into un-fixable pieces after aPyreneestrip.

Orange were great and sent me a brand new one that wassignificantlymodified, considerably less flexy and somehow less fun.

 

This one didn’t break at all and rolled 2000 kilometeres under my ownership before being moved on. By this time I’d got a pretty good handle on what I wanted to ride and a plan of sorts was formed. Not before this happened tho.

On selling the Cove, I decided a long travel carbon hardtail was missing from my life. The gap was filled by this on-one Carbon 456 which was essentially blameless if a little crude. Had lots of fun riding it which was far better than having to look at it.

About the same time, it became clear i’d failed to fully mine that niche that was cyclocross. At no time did I consider myself close to adequate enough to complete – instead I felt it would be an ideal companion to speed into the local woods and explore the myriad of tracks discovered through years of dog walking. Assuming I could buy one with some real brakes.

And in a spooky realisation of some random thought process, that’s exactly what’s happened. I absolutely love riding this bike and it keep me more than honest in rooty singletrack 10 minutes ride from our house. I’ve changed exactly nothing in over a year making this something rather unique in the shed of dreams. A bike that’s ridden and not modified? It’ll never catch on. Because…

Since that photo was taken in December 2012 (Mount Tide in Tenerife if you’re interested), it’s had a new fork, mech, tyres and bars. An astonishing bike that takes me so far out of my comfort zone I’ll near to get a taxi back. Fast – oh so very fast – composed, carve-y and on at me all the time to be a whole lot better rider. I love it like addicts love crack-cocaine. It’s probably going to hurt me quite badly but what a way to go.

And being a fanboi, I had to have another Cotic.

Having dismissed 29ers as a fad that not even a niche-chaser like me would ever be interested in, my position softened a little bit after riding one. The Solaris is fast and fun. Belying its little 100mm fork, stuff just gets rolled over at silly speeds until the terrain goes the other way at which point it just eats that up as well.

So that’s it. I think. There may be a few missing but that feels about right. For those not paying attention, I’m left with the Rocket, Solaris, Boardman CX, Boardman Road and long serving DMR Trailstar LT. So of the thirty or so once owned – however transitory – we’re left with just five.

I’d like to say that’s absolutely it. But of course, it absolutely isn’t. The bloody industry is throwing every more diversive platforms at us – long travel 29ers and 650b for a start, while writing off the 26inch wheels size that’s served us so well. An intelligent rider would declare ‘stop the world, I’m getting off’,

Honestly, I wish I was than man. But realistically I’m not. See you in a year with an update 😉