Mountain Men

On April 4, 2010April 4, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography10 Comments

Lately my castigation of something dubbed “a mountain bike lifestyle” has known almost no limits. That’s a good enough reason to why we tried a ride that didn’t have any either.

Now I accept that my Internet-Blowhard categorisation of two season Scalextrix riders who want it all sunny, dusty and expertly buffed hides a dirty little secret. I quite enjoy my trails riding like that too, but sometimes you just have to kick back against the hype, go lose yourself in scary mountains, to find out why you ever started riding on the lumpy stuff in the first place.

Exactly a year ago, a few riding buddies stayed over to sample those exactly perfect conditions, and the promise of much the same enticed most of them back this weekend. Anyone looking out of the window this past two weeks will understand why dry and dusty was to be replaced by mud and slop, with sunshine being backstaged by rain, snow and skies the colour of angry lead.

So my route was chosen with care. Not high enough to breach the snowline, not forestry enough to hide a million miles of mud, and not busy enough to ruin a big day out. The Elan Valley is a place I’ve been desperate to re-visit since we moved within a reasonable day trip of the start point at Rhayader.

Many years ago, some of my first proper days out revolved around the dams and reservoirs of this beautiful, wild and mostly deserted mid-Wales riding hotspot. 50k, a tad under 5000 feet of climbing, starting easy and picturesque, ranging high and bleak over a tussocked moor, and finishing on a couple of descents best described as steep, fast, shaley and potentially one bad line choice from a skin graft.

Things started well with the forecasted uninterrupted day-long drizzle staying away long enough for a little warmish sun to peak through the, er, peaks straddling the valley, but these were dwarfed by the Snow covered Brecons to the south, so the decision to stay low seemed a good one.

And that smugness remained for the first 6 kilometres with the flat cycleway pulling us into the ride, and depositing jaw dropping views of dams every so often. Amazing feats of engineering these, but we couldn’t help noticing the thundering volume of cascading water being driven over the dam wall.

No matter, soon we left the water for a while only to find it running down the first proper off road climb. We chose to walk the first super steep part before sliding about in the mud a little higher up.

Good spirits and being out in proper hills kept our spirits going the same way as the climb, and soon we were a little gobsmacked by the Arctic tundra lookalike stretching horizon-wards in every direction. There was some snow as well, and if you lifted your eyes from the amazing landscape, the nearest hills looked more than a little dusted.

No matter, a fast rocky doubletrack descent led into a techy-rutted section onto most of a bridge which was a fine spot for some bar-fuelling while Frank attended to a ‘not so smooth‘ snakebite in his rear tyre. Further muddy but perfectly rideable loveliness took us to another dam where we branched off again to follow the stony track circumnavigating the reservoir.

I’ve ridden this a couple of times and it’s been pleasant in a non-technical/big view kind of way. But I’d never seen it like this, desolate, pock marked and awash with cold water. The sun chose to hide at the same time as an unrelenting loop of “Manual”, “Splash”, “Dodge” played out on trail repeat for quite a few tough kilometres.

A second food stop outed the map and showed we were soon to be leaving this relative easy – if wet – riding to head over the moor, which I’d warned may be “a tad moist“. I was right. More than right in fact with energy-sapping sogginess dragging tyres into the peat, and a snowline barely 100 feet above the valley floor.

It was fun at first hike-a-biking through ankle high drifts and affirming our Mountain Man-ness in this fantastic, if desolate, landscape. “See” I theory-expounded ” this is proper riding, none of that on your plate nonsense, hard, worthy, difficult and rewarding“. There may have been grunts of affirmation from my riding pals, or just grunts as carrying and pushing replaced riding, and route finding in deep, brackish water replaced the track.

Elan Valley Epic - April 2010 â’¦

And my extollation of how good winter boots were compared to the disco slippers of my waterlogged companions had the fateful result of a deep water excavation of one of the very bogs I’d so far avoided. It was funny at the time, especially to those not knee height in cold liquid wondering how they were going to get out.

A further carry to reconvene with the trail opened up a view which should have been labelled “Welcome To Mordor“. We could see for miles, and that vista included no people and quite a lot of snow. And no obvious way of where the mooted downhill section was be.

It was in a river. I am not exaggerating here, we rode to a depth of 3/4 wheel which is 20 inches even in man measurements. When you’re on a bike and your bollocks are still essentially underwater, you begin to wonder at the sanity of the enterprise.

A couple of painful klicks further on, Jas asked me how my Mountain Man outlook was going right then. Since, right then, I’d just extricated myself from another hidden crevice, my response included two very rude swear words. Very close together as well they were, as I didn’t have much breath to waste.

From there it went from a bit difficult and lacking in fun, to properly unpleasant and a bit scary. Dave’s feet by this time could have belonged to someone else such was the lack of feeling from the ankles down.

It’d taken us nearly an hour to travel less than 4k and we had that and a bit more before any kind of respite became available. This is a bad time mentally and physically with endless carries, brief periods on the pedals and frustration with the never ending snow and non existent trail.

But it’s a good time to be out on a big hill with mates you’ve known for years and sharing the experience with people who are far more than fair weather friends.

Blissfully, the snow thinned out after a couple more k’s and suddenly we were riding more than we were walking, and that felt like a big win. There wasn’t an obvious way out into the lower valleys but at least we were moving, and occasional far away farmhouses promised civilisation might not be too far away.

It wasn’t, a rutted double track descent full of slick mud and challenges we were struggling to get motivated for saw us hit the road and I – for one – was bloody glad to see it, as it had started to get a bit scary up there.

And although conditions were pretty atrocious, the weather held, we had plenty of light, food and gear. Had Fog clamped the ground, wind and rain dropped the temperature and the day faded at the speed of night, I think we would have been in some trouble. Mountain Men? We really weren’t.

And we weren’t done yet, because our original route took us back over the moor to hit those fast descents we’d been anticipating the night before with a beer in hand.Since Dave could barely clip in and we were all cold and tired, a decision was made to roadie it home. A distance of 7-8ks according to our fuzzy map reading, but it ended up being more like 15.

A retreat into our own personal thousand yard stares saw pedals being pushed and cold extremities being ignored. When the rain started, I found myself laughing because clearly this was Mountain Biking schadenfreude at my big ideas showing me how small my resilience to proper difficulty really was.

We made it back in a convoy, shepherding a broken Dave between us, before ripping off frozen clothes in the municipal toilet. No idea what the locals thought about that, must have looked like some kind of extreme dogging convention. We fixed Dave with hot tea, sugary products and the car heater turned up to nuclear, before heading east back to England, hot showers and big dinners.

There is no denying that, at times, that ride was properly shit. Right in there with my bottom five times out on a bike. Climbing for ever, not much reward going the other way, off the bike every 30 seconds and stranded-cold on an endless moor.

But, on reflection, it was something I really needed to do because we don’t just ride bikes, we head off to wild places and test ourselves, we push into a zone where there are mental demons, we get scared, tired and exhausted. And then we use these experiences to calibrate our life.

There’s a phrase for that; it’s not some marketing bullshit, it is merely this – “Mountain Biking“.

Sections

On March 24, 2010March 24, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography9 Comments

I’ve always had a suspicion that Mountain Biking is really something rather simple, made complex by marketing fiends pedalling pointless upgrades on some gold-paved trail to cycling nirvana. Countering this is the assertion that any bloke staying trail side up is essentially a cycling God who has hit the tyre choice/stem-bar combo sweet spot, and is therefore impervious to either criticism or improvement.

I say ‘bloke‘ because there is a strict male taboo over even the tiniest admission of poor performance in any of these three three locations; car, bike and bedroom. A link has been forged between fitting expensive new parts inside and technically accomplished riding outside. Trail snobbery – in too many places – confuses how you ride with what you ride and that can’t be right. Tony Doyle of UK Bike Skills is trying to take riding back for the riders, and our day with him was quite different to an outwardly similar experience a few years ago.

That course was all about locating my riding Mojo which had been lost, along with a chunk of knee, in a big crash. This time around, I was hoping to break through a skills ceiling into which my riding has been banging against for too long. I have exchanged ragged for fast and coping techniques for trail skills to the point where my options narrowed to slowing down, having another big accident or learning how to ride properly. I thought I’d try the latter.

Tony is a passionate character with an interesting history including bike racer, North Shore lunatic and long time corporate coach. His approach is an enthusiastic mix of simple theory, clear demonstration and concise feedback. Before you can learn anything, first there is the group-humiliation of a “skills check” where we all rode over small logs and around figure eights. As usual, we all tried hard but achieved little, with Nig being the stand out rider in terms of technical skill. And he fell off. Twice. On flat ground.

Undeterred, Tony explained that our collective rubbishness would somehow bear sweet trail fruit come the days’ end. To get us there, he spent the next four hours taking every thing we thought we knew about how to ride a Mountain Bike and carelessly pitching it into the forest. A place where a few of us followed while trying to unlearn much vaunted trail skills that had no place in Tony’s world of ‘just riding bikes‘.

He showed us how the trail has a bounty of velocity which can be happily stolen by those with timing, body position and commitment. A marker here – Tony teaches four basic physical skills and a similar number of mental techniques which I’m not going to document as they’re a) pretty bloody obvious but b) entirely anodyne unless someone shows you why.

And we’ve all been focused on how. Bad, bad mistake. The plethora of How to DVD’s and endless magazine articles preach conflicting ideas and play into those greedy marketing hands. Anyone reading this who can ride a bit can do exactly that. Ride A Bit. One of the most instructive things I saw all day was a random rider shooting the trail we were sessioning and despite his “look a me” trail jump entry, he was properly rubbish. Too fast in, too much braking, too slow out, no flow at all. Bit like you and me eh?

One thing I have learned is that riding is really simple if you do it properly. Nothing more than physics and geography perfectly aligned. If you let your brain have its’ head, burn a couple of basic moves into muscle memory and trust that this stuff will work even when your instinct is that it cannot, then you’ll be smooth, safe and fast. Tony gains that trust through a series of “Shit, that really works” exercises and some tiny setup tweaks that completely change the way you interact with your bike.

Any bike. At no time in the day was I concerned about tyres, frame configuration or suspension set up. I was too busy deconstructing my riding and starting again on a path littered with partial epiphanies and much giggling. For example, pumping trails should be simple but I’ve ridden 15,000 miles over ten years and I’d no fucking idea at all to be honest. No that’s a fib, I had many ideas – most of them conflicting and all together quite properly wrong.

When you feel your front wheel going skywards without the normal associated bar wrenching, the whole concept of trail riding become significantly more interesting. Because that’s what we do ; ride trails, we don’t huck 30 foot gaps, hit a set of six dirt jumps or launch a building sized drop. We did ride some drops thought but my misplaced confidence in ability honed on some big fellas was mitigated by having to unlearn everything that used to work.

More is less, no pelvic thrusting your arse over the back tyre, no wheeling off drops, no – well – drama. Eventually Mr. Brain overrode Mr. Instinct and we moved on moved on to my trail nemesis – corners and specifically long sweeping examples similar to the ones where I’d torn my knee apart. I’d been meaning to explain this to Tony and ask him for a fix or a cheat, but I am glad I didn’t as it is a stupid question.

Because if you aren’t staring at the apex waiting for the tyres to slip, the shape, size and radius of any corner is irrelevant. Only your speed, your commitment and most important where you are looking have any relevance. It is very odd, getting your head up and looking into the next corner while still being deep in one arcing the other way. Odd, but ace, fight the urge to up your entry speed, and feel the acceleration as you exit the turn. Oh, and don’t brake.

Braking only happens outside “Sections“. A section can be anything; turn, stack of roots, drop off, tricky climb, whatever. Hence not a lot of point in a “Fools Rush In” approach as it wastes energy, you’ll have to brake so losing that speed, and you’ll be ideally set up for making a right hash of whatever is in front of you.

Knowing that is my normal modus operandi, I really enjoyed the first two corners both 180 degree sweepers which’d normally have me threepenny bitting round. It felt slow until I saw the video recording and then it looked fast-ish but most importantly smooth. Couldn’t believe it was me riding really. Tony asked what we thought about the big root section between the two corners, but none of us had even noticed it. That’s what happens when you get your head up and look at what you where you want to go not at where you don’t.

We strung together every section and finished with a few runs top to bottom, ending is a one metre drop nailed in my head before I’d even picked my bike up to ride it. Definitely would have given me pause for thought at the start of the day. Physically we’d ridden about two miles, but mentally I was shot away so Tony stopped us before we hurt ourselves, leaving us with a warning that with increased speed comes increased responsibility.

So Biking God now am I?No of course not, because I’m still working with a very limited set of physical and mental attributes. But ask me instead if I am a re-invigorated rider? Oh yes and some. I’ve had some brilliant days on a bike over the years, and this day will absolutely ensure I have many more.

I am like that kid with a new bike for Christmas. I just cannot wait to get back out into the woods and look at the trail in funny directions. If you’ve money to spend on your bike, I’d heartily suggest ignore pointless upgrades and spend it with Tony who will make you a smoother, faster and safer rider and change the way you enjoy the sport for ever. That’s got to be worth more than a carbon bar.

You can catch some short video and Tony’s commentary of our day here.

Double Take..

On March 14, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

Best way to describe the FoD return ride today. Except the trails were even dryer, the car was frost free when we left and my attempts to conquer the Downhill courses started small and worked down from there. I added another Tim (that’s him above) and nature gave freely of her spring bounty. Dust motes flashed in the weak spring sunlight and shone on white knobbly knees which powered black knobbly tyres.

Even Mono-Lung appeared to embrace it’s lost twin and for most of the ride, I was blessed with most of my aerobic capacity. Careful use of the word “Most” there, but I’m increasingly hopeful the worst is behind me. Generally struggling to breathe and making gasping noises. See how tomorrow’s ride to work goes, six am has not generally been associated with a peak flow much more than a coughing squirrel so we’ll be leaving the cold beer on ice for a while.

Riding was good tho. Spring feels really well earned and the harshness of the winter places the firmness of trail and warmth of rider into pretty stark relief.

You never know, maybe we’ll even get a summer this year. I’ve just taken the mudguards off my road bike, which confirms a mental state on the rubber roomed side of delusional.

Spring Therapy

On March 7, 2010March 7, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

Forget the seasonal pedants – for anyone with a love of outside, March 1 is the unofficial start of Spring. And, whilst we know it is irrational, the expectation is for the hedgerows to explode into growth, the sun to come – and stay – out, the trails to dry up overnight and with all this, seven months of uninterrupted MTB goodness to begin.

For those of us with a real weariness of winter, these changes cannot come too soon. With two events already entered, both with the number ‘100’ in their distance classification*, and the first of which is less than six weeks away, I’ve been upping my riding frequency as soon as the clock struck March. This has already included a Malverns death march, and two commutes that are mildly life-affirming, but generally undertaken in the dark, cold, wind and rain.

Through such trails and tribulations, it’s important to remember why you’re doing this; increased fitness, good summer base, miles in the legs, pounds off the belly, all that sort of stuff. But I have two problems with that; the first is MouseLung(tm) has played the Squatters’ Card so I’m struggling with about 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} lung capacity**, and secondly that’s not what I ride a bike for.

Time for a change then. Today I needed to tap back into my woody roots, get back to setting off with no plan, no target mileage, no goal for vertical distance. Just go and do what started me on this ten year journey of fun and frolics; messing about in the woods if you will. And there is no better mate for that sort of thing than TimH of this parish, who greeted my question of “What’s the plan then?” with an airy digit waving in the direction of some trees.

No ride with Tim is complete without some hike-a-bike/trail finding action, and no sooner that we’d spun up a sun-splattered fireroad had he dived off into the bushes promising “There’s a trail in here somewhere“. Indeed there was, and more than one frozen solid but lightly warmed by a weak sun and shielded from the bitter wind. Tim found us a fun little bombhole to play in, which we did for quite a while even getting the cameras out. Obviously we were both WAY better before new-media was there to catch our efforts.

A little more perambulation round some recent logging had Tim apologising for missing some tasty singletrack action, but I didn’t care one jot. Bike, Hard Dirt, Narrow Ribbon of Singletrack, Woods, Mate, Sunshine, Bacon Butties to follow. Doesn’t just tick all the boxes, but writes mile high in neon crayon “I REMEMBER NOW WHY BIKES ARE ACE”

And they are, especially when thrown roughly at a couple of the FC sanctioned DH tracks. First up “Corkscrew” a belter of tabletops, berms and one fairly “woooah where’s the bottom of that?” drop. It’s all rollable – ask me how – but a second and third run had me hanging onto Tim’s wheels, as his lines tore up the trail and beat down the obstacles. We approached the drop at a speed entirely inappropriate for a man of my bravery, but – as ever – enthusiasm had taken over from common sense.

There are points when you are riding trails on the limit of your ability when you need all your bike skills RIGHT NOW. As we cleared all three foot of the drop, this was clearly one of these times. I landed near the trails edge facing a tree, with my rear wheel locked up. A moment of adrenaline fuelled clarity sequenced a brake release/turn in/push down/grit teeth approach which gained me the corner, but lost me too much time to catch Tim.

I kept trying tho on the next DH trail named somewhat extravagantly “Sheep Skull“. I didn’t see one of those, but what with everything else going on including steeps, exposure, encroaching trees and relentless roots, I’m probably not the most reliable witness.

DH Sated for the time being, we headed off to the next valley searching for the next slice of singletrack – allegedly totalling over 200k in the entire Forest. After some more tree wiggling joy, time and tiring legs conspired to place Tea and Medals in our immediate future, but we were high on the ridge now – cold out of the sun and in the wind – searching for the most fun way down.

This appeared to be a mellow top section which dropped into a close contoured hairpin alley. Two of these steep and loose exposed scaries had to be conquered before plunging into a high speed chute over another maelstrom of interlocking roots. I’ll not document the rider who managed to do it first time, mainly because Tim had shown me a clean pair of wheels all day, and I reckon he was just trying to salve my ego a little!

Giggling like the inner children we are, big hand waving ideas of where we were going to explore next time, accompanied big handfuls of tea and pig-inna-bun. We hadn’t ridden that far, or for that long, or climbed very much, nor maintained a high average speed. And you know what I’m going to say next – it mattered not at all.

This was a ride which reminded me why I ride. Last week a different Tim and I messed about in a similar manner on the fall lines in the Malvern hills. In between I feel like I’ve been trying to damn hard for something I’m not that bothered about.

More Spring is good. Less targets are welcome. Bikes are ace. I’ll not be taking myself too seriously again any time soon.

* and one is more than that in real non metric miles. Gulp.

** Which, with Asthma, is about sufficient to tackle a difficult set of stairs.

Filthy Rich

On February 24, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

That’s pretty much how I was feeling when taking that photo. Which would seem a difficult mental equation considering the evidence; endless swathes of wet, mud to a depth which offered drowning as a real possibility, encroaching darkness and being quite properly lost. But I always find it really rather simple to solve: Bikes + Dirt = Happy Al. Hence my plan to make my personal World a better place snatching a ride between work ending and family stuff starting.

It didn’t start well. I was gritting my teeth on the first road climb soon to be picking detritus out of them, as my choice of mudguard* failed to prevent tarmac shrapnel fired by water tracers blasting me at high speed. Inevitably this wetness extended to an all over moist experience which at least prepared me well for when tarmac switched to trail. The woods here share none of the porous geology found in the Malverns. Instead they hold rain in a thick clay soup, making them largely off limits for MTBing during any prolonged wet spell.

This “Red Death” sets in about October and hangs around past Easter. There are – for the adventurous rider – some lovely dryish trails** but these are mostly lost in a delta of mud fed by rivers of gloop. I’ve seen terrible thing happen to great tracks when over-ridden during shitty conditions, so my approach is always to head straight down the centre regardless of any wheel swallowing puddles.

This served me well until I attempted to pedal or steer. Pedalling immediately drove the rear wheel sideways, and any attempts at cornering boldness immediately led to the kind of catastrophic oversteer where the front wheel ends pointing back at you. Or at least it would be, were you not now lying winded on a handy stump laughing your tits off. I dusted off the old cerebral CD cabinet and loaded up the forgotten “Chiltern Hills” riding skills to see if five years of falling off there would be in any way useful.

It was in a nudgy-nurdly approach to making progress. The fantastic ST4 was largely pointless as when it’s this wet – you’d be as quick on a shopping trolley. But that is not the point here; love the Malverns as I do for their all year riding, their steeps, their proper mountain-lite ness, woody singletrack still feels like home. And even when it’s under about four inches of mud, there’s still fun to be had switching drift for grip and sideways movement for speed.

90 minutes was all the time I had, which included a total of eight pot-holed road miles miles to reach the woods. Talking of totals, the scores on the now darkened doors were not terribly impressive. 13 Miles with a smidge over a 1000 feet of climbing. That distance in the Malverns, and you’re half way up Everest.

But it was brilliant fun, and entirely fitting in with my goal of doing something silly every day. Which may go some way to explain why tomorrow 5am will see me getting up to drive sixty miles to Birmingham in order to get a train to London. When ones leaves about the same time as the one from just up the road.

That’s not silly, that’s on the mentally unstable side of bonkers.

* None. Bought one of those fancy RaceGuard ones. But the clearance under the Reba fork arch is, well, Californian.

** Where the horses haven’t been. Clearly most horse riders are illiterate as the “Please Don’t Ride in these woods” are generally ignored.

Mud in your ice.

On February 21, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

As trail conditions go, a sprinkling of fresh white stuff covering a crunchy layer of corn snow atop a bed of mid winter mud doesn’t trigger an enthusiastic “Let’s Ride” response to a 7am Alarm call. Except today when two of your five tomorrows include 18 hour London Returns and a whole week of shitty looking weather.

We kept to the South side of the Malverns with the high ridges and peaks being properly deep in snow. This still didn’t make our passage easy as every climb had to be forced through the greasiness and energy sappin g slippiness of trail wide mud. Which you only found as tyres broke through a thin crust of snow on the fourth day of a freeze/unfreeze cycle.

I’m fairly bored of snow. Only our last descent was on the right side of conditions nirvana with hardpacked snow on firm trails. The rest of a rather weedy sounding 10k loop had to be hard earned with granny ring gurning, and significant pushing. Downhill was pretty exciting to be fair, with fantastic levels of grip being attained right up until the point when there wasn’t any. At all. I’ll be going straight on then regardless of the spiky vegetation blocking my way.

Momentum was truly your friend – my old mud riding memories surfaced from years of Chiltern Winter* allowing be to blaze a stinky trail over half frozen stutter bumps and endless draggy slush. It was more fun that is sounds, especially as we had the hills to ourselves and most of our tracks were the first ones.

A final climb up a quickly renamed “Mist-Summer” found us finally on harder tracks where pedalling brought a proper forwards, rather than sideways, reward. A brief stop at the top ratified our choice to stay away from the high places with wind driven snow making riding difficult and a bit dangerous. Off the top we went, carefully on the narrow, snowy tracks and then faster – sometimes unintentionally – through the steep, muddy tree section.

A comedically heroic snow spraying plunge back to Hollybush brought forth icy tears and big grins.

If I’m still loving riding so much in these conditions, what’s it going to be like when it’s dry, dusty, fast and warm? I’ll hardly be able to sleep 🙂

* And Spring. And Autumn. And Summer as well on too many occasions.

Long Term Weather Forecast.

On February 17, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

Four words to strike terror into the heart of any committed fair weather fairy/hardy mountain biker despite the heuristic proof that they are nothing more than Electronic Wizardry looking out of a virtual window, before making something up. So when, four days ago, a flutter of net pidginary cemented a Welsh trail centre rendezvous despite dire warnings of frozen fire and sleety brimstone, we rightly expected at worst cold and clear, and at best – well – Spring.

As usual, the prevailing weather conditions had nothing whatsoever to do with the Met Office’s finest lying machine, and everything to do with my utterance of the “S” word while being lightly warmed under sunny skies on a Devon beach some two days earlier. So it was a disappointment – if not a surprise – to find myself driving through a wall of snow some two valleys upstream from CwmCarn this morning. My riding Pal – who shared the last proper winter experience and the birth of the grim-o-meter – was running late, leaving me ample time to sulk in the car park as a volley of small arms fire was unleashed on the truck.

No way that was merely rain. Nothing as soft as H20 can create a racket quite that hard and so devastatingly depressing. Here we were then; in a never-ending winter, at ground zero of a rain event that can surely only end in flooding , and awaiting Nigel “the weather Jonah” Parker. As we’ve said so many times before “What could possibly go wrong?”

Not much actually. On the upside, waterproofs were exactly that, gears shifted, suspension reliably bonged up and down, tyres kept us in touch with the trail and brakes stopped us flying off it. On the downside, it was a bit wet and muddy. There is a rather snooty stance, generally dispensed bravely from behind an Internet keyboard, that trail centres are identikit scalextric tracks – the domain of the poseurs and poorly skilled, somehow unworthy of proper riders. And you know, under the pompous bullshit, there’s a nugget of truth there especially if you are surrounded with such helpful MTB geography as I am.

But not today, five minutes into the first climb we were both immersed in splashing through puddles and searching for grip. Experts in the former, rather less successful locating the latter leading both of us to wonder if today was “National Can’t Ride for Shit Day“. Really didn’t matter as all though as we crested the snowline and made fresh tracks for the summit. We’d be following five or six tyre indents since mud gave way to the white stuff, but come the first descent, fresh tracks were ours.

This was properly atmospheric riding, snow tamping down all noise except the hiss of our tyres, low lying trees brushing clothes and depositing freshies in your helmet*, and the trail lost under a carpet of late winter. Neither of us have ever ridden that descent quite so slowly nor been quite so close to a whole range of interesting accidents. Slowly it dawned on me, that your best UK rides are invariably undertaken in less than perfect conditions. And this is a good thing, because who would want dust and firm trails all year round eh?**

Something else began to nudge my hindbrain as well, and that was simply the ST4 is one brilliant bike. I’ve ridden CwmCarn on a range of MTB’s from short travel singlespeed through ever more exotic hardtails, and a slew of full suspension bikes. And one section in particular has always found them out – the exposed ridge hanging over the valley and made up of fast chutes, exposed turns and a whole bunch of pointy shaped rocks. Hardtails are hard work here as a few bits are pedally and all of it is pretty bouncy. Full Suss bikes don’t snap out of the bends, and feel a bit too magic carpet for the trail. Singlespeeds are just silly.

But the ST4 is not like any of those. It encourages pumping the trail**, taking more aggressive lines and being rather too brave carving through the turns. It’s differently great because you cease to think about the bike and what it can and you can’t do. You just ride and grin and ride and ride and grin some more until the world becomes a better place. You can’t explain why, but you don’t care much about that either. At the trails’ end, I was a little disappointed to see Nig only 50 yards behind on his hardtail. He did however have the decency to look proper bolloxed.

The homeward trail has been groomed and improved to deal with those who confuse braking with turning, and those of us who’ve *ahem* ridden off the edge after failing to bridge the gap between confidence and skill over the little jumps. Nig and I went at it line astern, fully dialled in to the level of grip and estatic in the knowledge that there is nothing but downhill hoonery between us and a huge mug of tea.

It didn’t last long enough, but it lasted long enough to validate why riding is always better than not riding. To reinforce the truth that is dicking about with your friends beats sitting around bemoaning the bloody British Weather. To make me wonder if it’ll always be like this, or whether one day I’ll accept middle age, living between the lines, lose the incredulation of my peers who pityingly ask whether it’s time to increase your medication, find stuff people find important is important to me, conform to social norms, stop breaking the washing machine, that kind of thing.

But laughing at Nig with his full body mud pack – the signature look for a Winter Mountain Biker – and having another head full of fantastic memories, I think it’s pretty sodding unlikely for a while yet.

Suits me.

* This is not rude. It was, however, exceptionally cold.

** Okay, okay fair enough but you’d need to share it with a bunch of Californians’. Hah, that’s shut you up.

*** No this isn’t rude either but it’s huge fun, and you can do it standing up so….

That was the weekend that was..

On February 9, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

… great, super, marvellous. All things which singularly and together fail to describe the undeniable shitness of the days following. Waiting for the snot to stop, most grumpy here was merely going to post a flickr link and a bookmark to a similar ride two years back.

Yet while many of the photos and some of the riders may look the same, a few hundred planetary rotations has changed quite a lot of other stuff. The trails for a start, a number are showing some real signs of wear and widening which can be attributed to a couple of shit summers, and some crappy riding mostly on the brakes. Certainly Sunday brought out many wheeled trail users and a bit of snow, whereas Saturday we had all to ourselves except for a wind that reduced expensive winter gear to dayglo marketing.

We were also lost significantly more often. I blame Nigel who made two bad decisions before we’d even begun; firstly he (was) volunteered to be Responsible Individual With The Map, before compounding that mistake by immediately installing me as his navigational second. His rationale was sound enough – no one else had ever been here before, but there are years of bloody history for yours truly exhibiting the map reading skills of a blind goldfish with a lemming complex.

Immediate geographical discord saw me head off one way while Nig made a confident start at 180 degrees to my track. Re-united after a spot of desperate “just our little joke fellas” mugging, legs still upset at being stripped of warm trousers, were instructed to turn endless circles to make progress along and then up Holford Coombe. Here it became apparent which masochistic bastards had been suffering trench-willy for the previous month, and which of our little riding flange had been somewhat more distracted by the pleasures of a sofa.

For all my gloating over early season form, the first crash still stapled itself to my leg as an optimistic stream line choice into resulted in a face-planting punt over the bars followed by a hard bash with sharp metally bike parts. Bleeding heroically from a calf wound, I wound up the steepening trail in sweaty hubris only to find myself largely alone, although this was due in some part by a head start triggered by five other blokes pissing themselves laughing.

The trail was a cheeky combination of mud, frozen mud and other assorted wetness. I was loving it, others less so especially Brian who unwisely introduced himself to a month of sloth and SPD’s at the same time. Still more height was gained – and occasionally lost when Nig failed to understand my checking the map and pointing confidently were in no way connected – until we’d banked enough for a guiltless withdrawal at the gravity machine. WeaCoombe always makes me smile, if only for the slight schoolboy humour of its’ name, although laughing was not the primary emotion once tyre swallowing divots threatened to buck me from my full suspension steed.

Talent compensators are all well and good assuming you have some talent to start with. Elliot – young lad, great bike handling skills, you know the sort, lovely blokes and yet damn annoying with their effortless riding, blew past riding a mate’s bike one size too small, while still having sufficient mental capacity to check if I was having some sort of problem. Certainly was, and it was entirely ego based so I set about chasing the young buck* which inevitably ended with a bunch of excellent excuses and a 20 second gap. Still there was climbing to be done now which was less gloaty than it should have been as “it’s easier to be fit that to be brave” as my younger self incessantly reminded me.

Next up Smiths. Not quite where I thought it was although I passed off being prematurely trailheaded with a lofty “yeah well for those that know this knarly flat bit is actually the start donchaknow?“. My reward was to be sent down second chasing Elliot in a manner best thought of as life threatening. Smiths is strange, it’s so fast and open at the top, you enter the trees off the brakes pretending not to remember what happens next. “Yeah there’s some rocks but hey they’re not that bad, we’ll keep the speed up and float over ’em Collective Style“. And that works for a while until you hit a section clearly composed of gravestones begat from the last silly buggers to try that.

I reviewed my options; braking on wet rock seemed to offer nothing but a close up view of something pointy, steering away was largely pointless as to my left, rock, to my right more rock, hanging on for grim death then? Yes? Okay, it’s worked many times before. And it worked again, although my squeeky shout to upcoming walkers spoke of a man having recently imbued a pint of adrenalin. Through the water splash though, the singeltrack is worth dying for, really even when a little muddy and soggy, it’s the perfect combination of flowing corners and lofty lumps. Yeah ace trail, shitty granny ring climb out although I attained my high water mark on this time round.

Still had to get off and push and a bit of inspired map reading condemned the accused (“You don’t like climbing much do you?“) to 20 minutes of strange uphillness that looked flat but felt vertical. Mutiny temporarily averted by a promise of stonking trail all downhill to a late pub lunch, thing were looking properly up, until the we got lost going down and found ourselves on a 200 yard wide grassy motorway at bugger all gradient and faced by a bastard head wind.

Nige and I reviewed the map only to realise we’d taken a wrong turn. Rather than admit to that, we waved the boys off towards what those filled with negative thoughts may have considered a cliff face and hoped for the best. And it was; the best that is dropping into fast contour hugging singletrack before steepening further through rocky switchbacks then firing us out onto a wooded, rooty trail high about the sunken trail we’d been heading for. Two trails became one with a proper root step to flat interfacing with an airy satisfying second of silence before great suspension hit rocky track. Perfect, let’s go to the pub.

We stayed there a while because the climb out of Bicknoller is not something any person with no history of mental health would leave a warm fire to toil up. But the cars were two valleys away and winter light is soon winter dark, so up we went in various states of groaning and thousand yards stares. It would be inappropriate for me to document exactly who was first up. By quite a few minutes. Or to discuss exactly how motivational “One day you’ll laugh about this climb, but today YOU ARE WEAK” actually is.

Some fine gurning later, we were off home via a quick traverse and some inspired map reading by Nig with absolutely no support from me. Sturt Coombe would also excite the schoolboy with its’ lush curves and hidden depths**, and excited us rather older gentlemen as well. A great way to finish and by this time I was absolutely sure that the ST4 was a bike that is going to take me to all sorts of interesting places. It’s not a blast through anything bike or a magic carpet ride suspension miracle, but it’s something way better than both of those. I’m can just catch sight of how bloody good it is with my riding peripheral vision. Get a decent rider on one of these and they’d fly. And then disappear.

As we had too after splashing through streams and dirtying cars with mud splattered clothing. The mud splattered grins lasted longer even after cleaning ourselves up and depopulating the local pubs of dark beer and sweet things. I even took the fellas to a cherished local’s pub where a fight was just breaking out. I think they enjoyed that.

Next day a mechanical, excuses and pressing engagements saw three of us getting lost ON THE WAY to the car park we were heading for. Admitting defeat I broke man-law and asked a nice lady for trail directions. Which ensured we rode some more frozen trails and had a mince on the downhill course. I love the Quantocks for serving up superb trails and stunning views in a really quite tiny package of land. It’s 100 miles door to door and that’s not far enough away to stop me coming back a few more times this year.

I love it for one more thing as well; the memories of some great mates and some brilliant riding. You know I suddenly don’t feel so bad anymore.

* no really. I meant to type that. It’s a family show.

** I lied about the family show bit.

Bottle it

On January 31, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

That’s what I’d like to do with that light. And then uncork a bit every time there is misery or unpleasantness. Because it would remind me of just what a brilliant weekend we had in the Quantocks.

Far too tired to write about it now, but it followed the well ridden path of navigational folly, not very motivational encouragement, ocean-emptying fish and chip portions, beer – natch – and some fantastic winter riding with a top crew of riding buddies.

I don’t know many things really, but I do know this. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow – I want to go out and ride my bike instead.

It is about the bike.

On January 21, 2010 By AlexIn Bikes, Photography, Road Riding2 Comments

Upping the ante is where it is at for 2010. My heroic couplets from last weekend are now cast into shadow, when compared to my attempted-death-by-commute this morning. If you were hunting for a set of circumstances to ensure a proper accident, it’s hard to think of anything more causal than these sick puppies.

Ice and Snow. 23c slick tyres and 100psi. New road bike and dubious battery lights. Zero visibility fog and, oh I don’t know let’s just go with bowel clenching terror should we? An hour earlier than Sunday, a further degree colder and a rider injured from a tripping incident involving a dark room and a black, slumbering mutt.

And in the same way we’ve had proper pre global-warming snow this last two weeks, the fog of this morn was of a type last seen when nefarious Jack was ripping through London. So thick you could chew on it, while waving a hopeful hand in front of a face merely panicked one into believing you’d been struck blind.

I risked catastrophic voltage collapse, with a clumsy grope to high beam, only to see it reflect back at 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} brightness and 0{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} improved visibility. And what I couldn’t see, I could hear with that horrible crunching sound of slush under tyre. The new mudguards were almost too efficient, with their low tyre rubbing profile delivering forty minutes of finger-on-blackboard aural stabbing.

The bike is fantastic though. Oh it properly is, light, stiff and flighty. Where the Kona would accelerate under spongy protest, the Boardman springs forward rewarding each pedal stroke with a surge onwards. When you hit any incline on the Jake, your options were a right hand ratchet and a long spin or a black-spotted, rivet-ridden, busted-lung sprint praying the gradient gave out before you legs did.

The Boardman isn’t like that. Because it weighs 8ks plus some commuting collateral, and has a BB junction forged from a pineapple hunk of carbon. I found myself shifting down the block and accelerating up hills. This is unheard of, and made me very proud I’d bested something similar last year.

Don’t get me wrong tho – this bike has the potential to hurt you. Because it is so rewarding to crank out maximum power to bring forth the horizon, then soon your aspirations are ruthlessly gaped by your fitness and ability. But even in sub zero temperatures, blinded by the fog and scared of the ice, I glimpsed that road riding might actually offer something other than non motorised commuting.

Lance was wrong. It’s all about the bike.

Saw the light ;) Well saw the mess of all my riding gear amd expensive parts, and then saw the…

Mudguards, after all the grief you gave me?

This is a really relatable piece. Its funny how attached we get to our bikes – like theyre more than…

Cheers Matt - lots to agree with there. I guess I'll find out more when I get back on the…

Ooof, feel for you Alex. Been there, done that twice so I know of what you speak. Bikes and experience…

I want my life back

Category: Photography