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 😉

… you a bit better that average. Possibly. There’s not much evidential measurement in mountain biking unless you categorise improvement by shaving seconds off your Strava times, or extrapolating a downward curve when plotted against A&E entries.

Quite a while ago, Tony Doyle rebooted my mountain biking world by breaking down riding into a small number ofcongruent techniques, which was as much about stopping what was wrong asconsistentlyattempting what was right.

Tony’s continued success is atestamentto – generally – older riders accepting that no amount of travel and technology will ever cover for an approach that is little more than ‘hang on and hope‘. And that’s great, more people riding, for longer, on harder terrain without hurting themselves.

But this hides a dirty little secret. Away from the bubble of a skills day, those bad habits creep back in. We all know that to be fast you first have to be smooth, to carve corners your body positon and weighting are everything, to ‘attack‘* steep, technical sections needs speed management and clear focus. Right up until your best mate starts to ride away from you, and – BANG – Mr Cahoonies elbows you out of the driving seat and we’re back to wild eyed desperation, naked terror and consequence delusion.

There’s nothing wrong with this of course. Adrenalin spikes and Dopamine hits never fail to raise the silly grin of the recently spared. Having fun does not always mean riding faster. Accepting your limitations is part of growing up. Our riding reality is never close to the minds eye view, so why not kick back, hang on and tweak the nose of terror with a technique that has so far kept you above ground.

The answer I think is because one day you’ll really, really hurt yourself. The difference between learned and instinctive skills matter most when it’s all gone horribly shit-canned, and the next two seconds are the difference between riding home and not riding for a long time. Since buying my Rocket, it’s absolutely clear it puts me into situations that are beyond my ability to get out of with any degree of safety.

Most of these are likely to be in the Alps. Where we’ll be in eight weeks throwing ourselves down mountains day after day, with ego, testosterone and big bikes for company. My riding is a mash up of half remembered techniques, sloppy copies of internet videos and burned ininadequacies when things get tough. Strava – we will be back to this very soon on the hedgehog once I’ve finally decided if I hate it or like it – tells me I’m fast compared to my peers. But that’s mostly the bike which is very capable. I’m not even sure I’ll ever get tocapable, but I’d quite like toachieveadequately brisk and relatively safe.

Which is where Ed @ Great-Rock comes in. A Calderdale based skills coach who impresses with his easy manner, outstanding riding ability and legendary beard. It’s worth the price alone for a front row seat to view robustious facial hair last seen during the Victorian era. Behind it is an intelligent bloke with the knack of making hard things seem easy.

First up this is a very different approach to Tony. Not better, not worse, just different. Ed’s training ground is the steep sided valleys above Hebden Bridge, full of West Yorkshire’s finest rocks and roots. He sized us up very quickly, me – too far back on the bike**, Matt – too ‘closed in’, H – not loose. By then we’d ridden two or three great trails in the manner of those ‘travelling far too quickly for their own ability‘

This is where practice comes in. Ed doesn’t reconstruct your riding, instead he focusses you on a few moves to make it somewhat more fit for purpose. Firstly a more open body position combined with better management of speed before letting it all hang out on technical sections. This act of faith to abandon the binders means taking more direct lines and committing 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} to the terrain. There’s some soundbites around ‘chin up, elbows out‘ but it’s more subtle than that.

It’s also not easy. Trying to unlearn everything that’s so far made you a bitsuccessfulis frustrating and a bit scary, but the reward is when it feels right, it is right so even if – when – you screw up again, at least there’s something to go back to. The same with drops and lips. Ed has us attempting to bunnyhop – not as a car park stunt – but because it’s a brilliant way to launch over trail obstacles without losing speed. Years ago this was one skill I actually had, back in the days of flat pedals and short chain-stayed hardtails. Today – not so much.

A fast top to bottom run putting it all together was great right up until the point that crashing somewhat interrupted my flow. At attempt to clear an entire root section with a committed un-weightingmove was scuppered by a distinctlyuncommitteddab of front brake. The same error had me over again a little later while attempting the kind of steep, loose off-camber corner we’ll see a thousand of in the Alps.

My increasing frustration at being a bit shit was mitigated by Ed’s calm explanation of what was going wrong and how to put it right. Which I finally did on another steep switchback, but this time with a proper line fixed by looking a long way down the trail, a flick of the hips to drive the bike round and a committed body positionthat had my head somewhat nearer the stem than the rear axle.

There’s lot more here mostly around being less of amannequinand more of a man on the bike. The realisation of all this were a few more fantastic trails at the end of the day where my riding yo-yo’d between really quite good and really quite tired. Sufficient energy barely remained to throw ourselves off a concrete slab demonstrating new found confidence and technique. Even if in my case it came after a few attempts where Ed’s kindly instructions couldn’t quite eclipse the sound of a 160mm travel fullsuspensionbike being rocked against its stops, as Herefordshire’s answer to the Kango drill honed his skills.

Sitting in the pub afterwards with a well earned recovery pint, it was clear that there’s a pragmatic way of going fast and having more fun while all the time reducing the fear factor of that speed.

In six hours you’ll learn why that is. And what to do. And a bit of how that works on every trail you ride. But you won’t leaveproficient in those skills – certainly not if you’re starting with me. You will leave with a head full of ideas and a very sore set of muscles unused to being included in the great sport that is mountain biking.

Ed’s a great conduit for this. He’s a very approachable fella with a quiet passion for doing things right. It was a six AM start and an eight PM finish to squeeze in this skills day, but it was time perfectly invested. We’ll be back to ride those trails, and to borrow Ed for another day so he can teach us ‘olds‘ some the dark arts of proper jumping. Until then, I’m digging out the old jump bike and practising.

Because average is the new fast.

Pics here and here for those wanting to see more. Better still, speak to Ed and get yourself booked on a course. For the cost of a couple of tyres, you get to see a whole new world of awesome 😉

* I find that word a bit insincere when considering my riding. Honestly would replace it with ‘mildly menacing’ or ‘desperately trying’

** Removing my head from a perceived place of terror, i.e. the trail ahead.

 

A glacial epoch back or so, I expounded my new found theory of cyclonomics, at which point – work being pretty much done – I smugly awaited multiple nominations for economics awards, Nobel prizes and global lecture tour invites to wow the world with this unheralded insight into why riding bikes was both fantastic and fiscally stimulating.

As even the most delusional – even those barely tethered to reality – would quickly ascertain, any letterbox widening on my part was somewhat premature. For me it’s been a one man credit card crusade to prove a theory that has so far delivered not much more than ‘bloody hell that’s a shit load of stuff I appear to own now‘.

Take the Goshawk 50 for example* where any treasonable thought of Gym membership was usurped by freezing my cods off on a weekly basis to ensure a result somewhere at the respectable side of mediocrity Saved myself thirty quid a month for at least two months before spending the balance and quite a bit more to actually participate in the event.

£20 to enter of which a chunk is donated to charity feels like a fair swap. That lot ^^^^ up there less so. Best described as analogous to a hated visit to the dentist. After pondering it for a while, you sort of feel you should, but you rather wish you weren’t. And then you get to pay a huge chunk of money for the privilege of having a shit time. I’ve always assumed this is how posh status-concious people feel about the private school system.

So what we have here are purchases that represent nothing but survival. Some items shall be eaten, some will be drunk, some shall protect important squashy bits from collision trauma, and the remainder may partially protect ones derrière from a Welsh enema.

Let’s start there; on leaving the Chilterns and their 10 month mud cycle, I swore that never again would any proper money purchase another mudguard. Gopping horrible aesthetically reprehensible objects best left to those with map boards and a wardrobe full of Ron Hill. Really, just BTFU,**, splash out on some splash resistant shorts and embrace the dirty protest served from your back tyre. Then I considered the enduring misery of a 50k pebble dashed arse, and a quick about face suggested twenty quid was an excellent investment. Sadly that budget wouldn’t stretch to my first choice, which was obviously a Navy Frigate.

This Welsh forest is trumpeted by the organiser as “all-weather.” I assume because that’s what it receives on a daily basis with a very clear emphasis on rain. Dispatching even David Attenborough to this latitude, he’d be bloody lucky to find any plant or creature which needed even a glimmer of sunlight to survive. And, as anyone whose ridden a bike off road in any kind of wetness, we can all agree on the almost limitless traction provided by wet roots. Right up until the point where we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed half way up a tree.

What else; well you the more keenly athletic of you may have spotted a collection of expensive placebo cynically marketed to our roadie brethren. My consistent if not always successful response to this nonsense around fuelling and hydration was to simply drink beer with bits in it. But always looking for a cheeky edge, I had my time trialling mate write me a plan on exactly how to prepare, what to eat, when to scoff it and how much to stuff in.

Absolutely nothing in there about a nice sit down mid ride with a cheese butty washed down with a cold lager. Worse still was his advice which suggested I’d need to find space in my bulging pack to bury my ego. Apparently any attempt to keep up with the fast/quite fast/a bit slow/one legged people on pogo sticks would torpedo my shark like assault through the pack some 10k from home.

Just the two little problems with that approach; 10k from home the real Al will be tucked up in the pub with a recovery pint and a bag of nuts, having decided that 25k of that winter madness constituted more than enough. And secondly the idea you’ve even sufficient energy to get in the way of any proper athletes when only single metric digits are between you and sweet, sweet non bikery lying down computes not at all.

Still the way he tells it, it sounds a bit like cheating so on that premise alone I’m up for it. And it validates going very slowly indeed, which opens up the possibility of taking a DFL position before hiding behind a tree then sauntering back to the start and turning the car heater on.

The rest of that package is mostly for the Alps trip some two weeks distant where body armour, van shuttles, big bikes and almost no pedalling at all shall take the place of pretending you can still vaguely hack it amongst your cross country peers. Ying, Yang and lying face down in the mud with bark abrasions are what make up this mountain bikers’ life. Could be worse, could be facing the same but worth next month with the HONC.

Oh. Shit.

* I’d very much like to take it and place it somewhere in the seasonal cycle where hypothermia is less than a 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} possibility.

** Bottom The Fuck Up.

Or wagon wheels as this new niche/the emerging standard/the ONLY wheel size you need – delete as per your standing in the internet-blowhard wheelsize jihad. All of my bikes seem to have a difficult birth, and – unsurprisingly as Random’Al was left in charge of collating all the bits – this one was no different.

However some things were exactly the same. Firstly my protestations that a busy man has many better things to do than build bicycles, even if that means occasionally riding them. Result being a desperate husbanding of likely looking parts being carefully thrown into a box before being presented to a wary bike mechanic with a breezy ‘all there Nic, everything you need, absolutely no issues whatsoever, really can’t see a problem. Pick up at lunchtime?’

Things didn’t go smoothly from there. Although almost fifteen minutes passed before a bemused Nic telebonged me with a polite enquiry on how exactly he was to transfer the donor headset from a bike of entirely different dimensions. The ugly stick, in a last act of defiance, disgorged bearings and the like with it being built to a set of measurements clearly translated from English to Chinese by a man with only a vague understanding of both languages, and a specialism in camel selling.

I left Nic to serially problem solve the many other issues my desperately time poor assemblage of possibly useful bits and pieces had left him with, to motor across the county with strict instructions to return only with a part best thought of as unobtanium. Amazingly, skills honed on long winter nights* presented me impatiently at a counter manned by a nice man called Dave who opened about a thousand boxes before an Alan Partridge ‘AH HAH‘ signalled success.

Back in the car, and back to Ross for a second time having taken in the lovely environs of Hereford’s world famous Saturday Traffic Disaster, I presented Nic with my find in the manner of Darwin – recently de-beagled – stunning the scientific world with a slightly bonkers theory on why Church Building may not be a wise investment. He took this opportunity to regale me with certain ‘issues‘ my motley part collection had caused during what should be a simple build.

At times like this, I find it best to nod apologetically and wander off to Lunch before to avoid being roped in to any actual work. Returning an hour later, a bike shaped object was more than taking shape even if my choice of BFFT** demanded a micrometer to measure the gap between front mech and rubber nobble. Still with trail conditions being essentially dusty right now, what can possibly go wrong? Failing that, I’m firing up the dremmel and customising Shimano’s finest.

On my THIRD trip to the bike shop, I reflected on an approach which selected parts by colour and shinyness probably needed some work. The bits I’d left out I now shamefully handed over, and the bits that were wrong we silently replaced. But at the end of this painful process – well for Nic, I’d basically spent the day with Jess making jokes and eating cake – the result is something really quite pleasing. Even if it appears to be missing 50mm of fork travel that’s clearly been lost in the wheels.

A quick spin down the road confirms it has the ride characteristics of ‘a bike‘. There’s definitely something odd going on with gyroscopic effect which makes me wonder if I should have fitted a speaking tube ‘ENGINE ROOM, ALL AHEAD FLANK‘ – that kind of thing. But what’s done is done, even with the rider that the remains of the ugly stick nestle malevolently in the rafters above my head in case the clothes of this new emperor are entirely fictitious.

Tomorrow I’ll go ride it. It’ll be an experience similar to lying face down in a muddy puddle for four hours, so empirical data to support the big wheeled apologists is likely to be lacking. On the upside, it’ll be riding a bike in the sunshine with my friends, with beer to finish. That’s significantly more important than what you are riding.

Lance was right about something. It’s not about the bike. Of course it isn’t. It’s about the beer. Bloke was clearly an idiot 😉

* that’s surfing the Internet for bike bits. In case there was any doubt.

** Big Fat Fuggin Tyre. I’d rather be slower uphill than upside down in a tree. Grip over Weight every time. Probably a life statement right there!