The 5010 is a lot dirtier than when you last saw it. Which means I must have at least ridden it. Look a little closer though and clues of carefully curated upgrades sharpen into focus. Bluntly, mistakes may have been made which – being me – we shall reframe as merely tiny missteps on the journey to the richly coloured pageant that is bicycle nirvana.
Okay full disclosure, my waffling mightily niche rationale for Californias’ favourite mullet may have touched on the weighty problem of modern bikes being pointlessly heavy. Especially those of us who grudgingly admit the videos of said bikes being aggressively jibbed over spleen splattering obstacles is a reality happening to far more talented riders.
More chance of me cracking a frame failing to secure it to the trailer than any actual trail action, other than a catastrophic composite reaction to an abrupt arboreal halt. Still such honesty is only enshrined as the best policy for those having not actually tried it. So while I didn’t ride this pretty much perfect bike through an expensive parts catalogue, everything I changed made it heavier.
First though I needed to make it stop. The kind of cretin* spec’ing crappy SRAM brakes, on a bike retailing perilously close to five figures, should pay penance by spending significant time being accelerated through their local geography with only these novelty bar trinkets to barely retard their progress.
Failing to locate anything fit for purpose at a price failing to pass the burning of the Yorkshire card, I found a solution by simply stripping the brakes off another bike. Spoiled for choice frankly. Then deeply invested in the parts bin, a pair of bigger rotors were added to the upgrade pile.
A pile already stacked high with sufficient tools and spares to suggest an expedition crossing seven continents rather than a couple of hours in our local woods. The cavernous in frame storage was a spacial challenge solved by stuffing various receptacles with a pantheon of shiny objects- the purpose of which are mostly a happy mystery to me.
Cherishing my ignorance I switched to an area where my expertise knows no bounds**- the rubber realm. Steady on there at the back, for Gods sake someone perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on that man, he appears to be having a seizure. After much research, consideration, prevarication and filling of wine glasses, I bravely replaced the worn tyres with exactly the same brand, type and compound.
Time well spent I’m sure we can all agree. Further ditheration saw a set of tyre inserts, er, inserted leaving me with no excuses to ride the bloody thing. Except an early crash- good to get that out of the way- reprogrammed the funky electronic gears into Shifting Sponsored by Fibonacci. The new brakes looked lovely but only one of them worked. Further small irritations propelled this bike from impulse purchase to problem child.
Matt sorted it, because that’s what Matt does. Even dealing with my learned helplessness when previously paired electronic shifters terminated their relationship with extreme sulkiness. Not ideal 20km into a ride where that 20km is pretty much a straight line back to where we started.
So it’s a bit heavier, seemingly more fragile and no longer wearing new bike glasses. Which must mean I’m deep into buyers remorse? Absolutely not, it’s a bloody wonderful thing. Aided and abetted by drying weather and early Autumn loam. 10 rides post splatterday, eight of which have been on a bike so fire engine red it should be accessorised with a ladder***
Loves a bit of tight and twisty, surprisingly confidence inspiring when the terrain suggests sending the arse rearwards. Yeti like supple off the top, and close to bottomless when hands-of-ham here drops it into something inappropriate. Great fun it is – perfect it ain’t.
Low bottom brackets = fantastic cornering apparently. Lesser know features include clattering low lying stumps and rocks. Making progress in dirt covered vegetation is proper pedal smashing Russian roulette. Shorter cranks are coming. They can’t come too soon. Also it’s not a mile munching long legged beast – that’s fine I have the Hugene for that. A long day in the Yat tho left me with nothing to offer society other than a long lie down.
Some of that is ramping up post healed collarbone activity. Gym, Swimming, bit of running, lots of riding. Physically I feel knackered most of the time, mentally I’d like to dial down the frenetic activity slicing the cerebral loaf. It’s getting better but features adjacent to the one where it all went wrong, are being managed through much chin stroking and guilty avoidance.
Still I console myself the bar was pretty low before the accident, so it shouldn’t take too long to get back up there. Best get that done as the most important upgrade right now is upping zero trips this year to three in 2026. Going to be working hard to get myself in the right shape to fit through a box confidently marked “that’ll go“.
If there was a point to this post, it is that doing something is always better than doing nothing. Striding off in the wrong direction represents a fine choice when the option is standing still. Chasing a dream, however pointless, beats staying awake staring at the ceiling.
And on that note:
My good mate H has bought himself a fat bike. Around five years after everyone else decided they were pretty much done. Especially if you live in a land locked county rarely covered in snow. None of that is relevant. He’s back out riding after a few months away and has a smile on his face (not here because I was pointing a phone at him).
There’s a joy to considering logic, rationale, even fiscal responsibility before gleefully setting fire to what’s considered normal behaviour, then dropping a single fingered ‘fuck it‘ into the driving seat. That’s pretty much where H and I are at.
Feels good.
*Should be an anagram of “product manager”
**Assuming it is bounded by “idiot” and “low boredom threshold”
Before we start, I suggest you locate a large sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil. Shit’s about to get real 🙂 The revolving door of the ShedofDreams(tm) is rotating at such speed it is a minor miracle it has not been torn from its hinges, and is now accelerating dangerously towards the western horizon.
While cataloguing the increasingly baffling ins, outs and some shaking it all about of the last few months feels important, firstly I feel the need to update my bike buying rationale. Long time readers of the hedgehog may remember one of the bedrocks of our marriage is I pretend to be executing a 4D chess bike curation strategy and Carol pretends to believe me.
Strip back niche chasing fads, shiny new toys and perceived gaps in an already stacked bike shed, it really comes down to nothing more than I like buying and riding bikes. This is not just rampant consumerism- I’m entirely uninterested in – for example – changing my five year old car. It does everything I need it to do without costing me much money in doing so*
Bikes tho, maybe it used to be chasing “the one” perfect frame. But I’m honest enough nowadays to peg the lowest common denominator as the ham-fisted baboon making a horses arse of riding anywhere near the limit of whatever is unfortunate enough to be the steed of the day.
There’s also a persuasive argument stating riding one bike all the time will make you faster and more confident. Well maybe, but I’m not chasing those metrics much either. Finally bike overlap appears to be a issue for those following the cult of the one true bike. Again, I don’t care- wake up, choose a bike, go riding. Not sure what the problem is.
However, even for a man spitballing nonsense on multiple bike ownership, owning three trail bikes with similar dimensions, travel and components is difficult to reconcile. Sober anyway. I always knew the Propain represented the trail bike hegemony leaving the RipMo and SB130LR as shed queens since April this year**
Both went on various selling sites with variable levels of interest and offers ranging between insulting and bizarre. Do I look like a man in need of a broken PS2 and a pair of axle stands? They both eventually sold each with it’s own slightly odd story.
The RipMo went to a lovely fella who was travelling to Morzine the very next day. He wanted a bike better suited to those trails in an attempt to keep his teenage sons in sight. The Yeti sold then rapidly unsold after a crack was discovered near the bottom bracket. Not smashed in my ownership, and I’d been riding it for 18 months!
After much back and forth, that sold at a price reflective of the cost of a full repair. And the Digger had already been shipped out before I smashed myself up. So N-3; hence the uneasy feeling on entering the shed that we’d been the victims of selective but invasive burglary.
Time to address that. Firstly came the gravel bike replacement. A steel framed, 140mm forked, lightly built backpacking hardtail. With XC tyres, it’s a hoot on easy trails and I expect it’ll be the ideal companion on planned 48 hour lightening raids crisscrossing Welsh mountains. All hail the beige adventurer.
So, and do try and keep up, we have the Cotic BFE (4 years old) hardcore winter hardtail and all round antidote to needing a full suss for most of my riding, Nordest Britango for blasts from the house and trips to the hills, the Hugene as my all round trail bike for most of my non winter riding, leaving only the never-to-be-sold Nukeproof Giga (also 4 years old) for when a big bike adventure awaits.
Done and dusty. Hard to cram anything else into some perceived micro niche. For most people anyway, which I am not. There’s a certain serendipity to the image at the top of this blog. I bought my second ever MTB from Stiff Mountain Bikes in Headingly. I remember debating the merits of a 110mm over a 120mm stem!
25 years on and sadly that shop is closing down for good. Leaving with a set of blow out deals that caught my roving eye. Specifically that ex-demo Santa Cruz 5010: yes it’s another sort of trail bike, no it’s not that different to what I have other than a right-on-trend 27.5in rear wheel. Good for jibbers apparently. No idea what that is but assume there are tablets to help.
I bought it because it was cheap- relatively the RRP on these things is insane. Surely no one outside of Audi owning Surrey dentists ever pays full price. This was further discounted with it being an ex-demo model with a few scars from over enthusiastic testers. Nothing more than cosmetic tho and – most importantly – in the fastest colour available.
So what’s it like? Only ridden it once in a timeline of increasing dampness. And I’m only three rides post splatterday all clear. It was fun tho, lots of fun, fast turning in fun, involving trail chatter fun, soft off the top but grippy traction fun. No idea tho if this is just riding bikes, riding new bikes or riding bikes without worrying about injuries.
Whatever, it was great and I have zero regrets. The shed feels “about right” and I don’t expect the call of the shiny to be heard anytime soon.
It is me tho, so….
*nowadays that means: comfortable seats, decent aircon, reasonable stereo, not hard to park 😉
**My plan was to ride the RipMo on “Splatterday” but a quick lap of the farm track had me shunting it behind the Hugene. Not sure it’d have made any difference.
…mountain biking obviously. An axiom orignally coined by Harold Wilson referencing politics and who, were he were being quoted today, would likely reframe it as “World has gone to shit, gets worse every minute“.
Cheery stuff. Matched my mood last week where the intersection of mind and body Venn’d to “when did I forget how to ride?” or, if space were at a premium, then “fuck” pretty much covers it. There were mitigating circumstances but there always are when excuses are looking for a citation.
It had rained. Not much but for no.1 grumpy bastard who had missed a perfect summer, this felt both personal and biblical as angry dark clouds lashed barren straw hillsides. That summer was rapidly disappearing in a storm washed rear window leaving slick roots and muddy gullies.
I was sick. From what I’d confidently tagged as a bastard hangover after an enthusiastically beery pub quiz night. But that was nearly two days ago and the spin cycle stomach wasn’t powering anything in the leg department. I was also worried. 13 weeks post “splatterday” and a mere 24 hours before Hereford’s finest radiographers did the big reveal on my Autumnal riding plans.
None of this excuses the spectacle of me failing to see much further than a front wheel. It would have been quicker to dump the bike, fell a handy tree and portage the bike around whatever corner was retarding my already almost stationary progress. Riding any stiffer would have any qualified medical professional sadly calling for the embalmers.
I didn’t feel like a mountain biker anymore. I felt like a fraud. Two weeks before I’d convinced myself all was good in my world of dirt- albeit it with massive caution and no clear path to riding wth some level of manageable fear. Today was a beautiful day, the riding crew were fully stocked and while it was good to feel part of that, I felt apart. Fell apart really. Called it at lunchtime to struggle home with nothing in the legs and far too much going on in the head.
24 hours later and in a state of some mental discombobulation, my expectations of good outcomes at the fracture clinic were somewhere between zero and preparing for disappointment. Next thing I know, I’m ushered into the consultants room with me ignoring his “hello I am Mr so and so and we have your x-ray just here” because angled curious eyeballs had desperately craned around his sturdy frame to check out the old bag of bones.
I’ve learned a lot about those bones in the last few months. They have their own language, physiology and potential outcomes. So a single sneaked glance showed ossified bone growth cementing a previously open break. I then spent 2 minutes asking all the wrong questions “Can I ride*? ” and “What about the Gym?” before sufficient calm paused me long enough to ascertain “Is there anything I can’t do?
Apparently not. But build up gently he advised. And with a shoulder that gets sore 60 minutes into any ride, this is good advice. Which I ignored. Well not completely, because hidden in the core of all that self-pity was a nub of self preservation that had worked pretty damn hard to postpone easy wins instead posting hours of rehab on my Garmin where riding used to be plotted.
Eventually Saturday rolled around and I rolled out somewhere between nervous and excited. Take away the immediate consequences of crashing and everything becomes simpler. Familiar, like a favourite film but playing at half speed. And then a little more speed when I shoved my brain behind muscle memory- which is bloody good at piloting my awesome trail bike on awesome trails in awesome conditions.
One of my favourite quotes citing the value of higher education is “You’re not here to fill a bucket, you’re here to light a fire“** and riding mountain bikes should be like that. We are not completist, there should be no cataloguing of peaks or counting off trails. If it is anything then it is a combination of geography, physics, shared endeavour, athletic skills and some clarity of thought. It is sweeping between the trees, index fingers lightly touching but not feathering the brakes, the shift of an arm, the flick of a hip, the bend of a knee.
It is all of that and none of that. It’s lighting that fire and living in the moment. You don’t need a week, you just need a second. And for all that pretentious rambling, 90 minutes later I was making short work of a crumbly pasty having dispatched a classic steep, rocky trail that’d been off my riding radar for far too long.
(c) Trusty- having a well earned rest after 20 minutes climbing.
I’d love to say my new found confidence had me crushing the gnadgery no-flow top section flowing effortlessly behind Matt and Steve. Sadly not, I was way off the pace and at one point off the trail entirely. Dusted myself down, had a stern word with the fear gland and stayed just about within visual distance the rest of the way down.
And I felt part of it. Definitely felt the fire. Although might have been heartburn to be fair. This time tho, no quitting- back up the other side of the valley to pick and tick off some of my favourite trails. I’m miles away from where I was three months ago, but I’m a damn sight closer than last week.
I’ll take that. And the beers by the river. And this all feeling normal again. With a side order of just a little bit of “thank fuck for that, I can still do this“.
That first pic is a view denied to me all summer. It’s from Steve’s phone as I didn’t have the legs to climb the rock stack to get it. It was only 30 feet from where I was attempting to re-inflate my lungs. Last week it felt pretty much unattainable.
Right that’s me done. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk on “Stop bloody overthinking things“. Normal service shall be resumed next post. There has been sufficient “action” in the ShedofDreams(tm) I am suspecting burglary 🙂
*crash. Ride is a given. Retrieving yourself from some off trail shrubbery without a bone poking out of your shoulder is the bar we need to clear here.
**If you get a pub quiz question about this, the answer is not “WB Yeats” whatever the internet tells you 😉
Allegedly searching the Internet means you can find anything. Restrict that search* to all things mountain biking and it won’t take long to locate the existential bullshit re: cycling is a religion and this is my church. It’s lazy, derivative and nowhere near as clever as those self ordained priests of the fat tyre believe it to be.
So obviously I’m co-oping it for this post. Lazy, derivative and pretentious are pretty much watch words for the hedgehog. Also easy to categorise my first proper MTB ride for nearly twelve long weeks as the kind of epiphany so loved by US mega churches** zeroing in on those whose donations accord them special status.
But for the overthinking cohort of the population, that epiphany doesn’t come quite so easily. Exhibit A(l) at 8am this morning was attempting to uncross the streams worrying at the thread of is this still my world? Looking for excuses to drop out, fall into society approved age rated activities, wondering if being scared of something that hasn’t happened, is somehow better than getting out there and placing agency in the driving seat.
Welcome to being 58*** accessorised with a still not healed collar bone. Sidebar: Let’s pretend this next paragraph is relevant to that discussion.
On the left is Splatterday+6 weeks, the right an update a couple of weeks ago. You don’t need to look too closely as I’ve totally been there. Summary is there’s lots of lovely new bone pulling the break together, but it’s on the light side of hard. “Can I got mountain biking?” I asked the consultant keen to fob me off by offering not much beyond the ‘don’t sue us script‘ – Pause. Push glasses up nose. Refer to notes clearly checking age. “Well I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you ride you absolutely cannot crash”
Arse. Thanks. No streams being uncrossed here. Riding worried is way more bloody dangerous than the care free delusion you’re facing down complex 3D problems with the steely gaze of that grizzled rider you vaguely remember. Whereas stiff and careful is pretty much the crapest way to navigate any trail. Hard on the brakes, soft on the flow. Bouncing off obstacles barely deserving a glance when you’re on it. Catastrophising disaster where fun used to be.
This is bloody annoying. Hold that thought as last weekend I revisited the site of the crash looking for some kind of closure.
Looks like nothing. Was still a bugger to walk down without pitching myself arse over head into the next valley. Working back from where I splattered the collarbone, the evidence suggests – for reasons not even remotely close to obvious – I decided the bigger drop on the right was an excellent option for a man whos “downhill huck” ability would be charitably marked as “almost no existent but tries hard“. Not hard enough although the sun baked ground took up the slack on that noun.
Closure? Not really. Everything feels open and if I don’t ride now when conditions are perfect then will I ever? So I buried all that pointless angst, pointed the bike at the hills and got on with it. I was never was dragged to church as a child, so not qualified to compare that to rocking up on fantastic trails and riding them at about 50% of pre splatterbone pace. One thing I wondered tho was is this safety first protocol going to plunge me back into that angst.
Because when your prime directive is “I cannot crash” it pretty much ruins riding bikes. Too stiff, too tentative, too nervous and more likely to crash. Well I’m here to tell you that is 100% better than riding on the road. Double that for the turbo. As when you’re riding any trails at any speed, complexity morphs into single threaded muscle memory.
That’s a wonderful thing but it’s a lot more than that. Friends ahead pacing you because they know for you the whole hill is a no crash zone. A quorum of your riding pals happy to dispense with their favourite trails when their needy one -winged individual is stuck in slow mode. A beer, then another one and just one more lubricating our back catalogue of brilliant days out.
And we’re not done. I’m not done. I have had dark moments these last three months contemplating a Venn of age-trails-injury, then staring hard at the intersection. Stepping back and wondering if this is where the end starts. Stripping away ego and being honest about what I want to do. And what I want to ride.
Today tho, none of that mattered. The skies were blue, the trails were dusty and all of my favourite idiots were tuned into Radio Al. If there’s a church dedicated to riding then this would be it. But there isn’t, nor should they be. This was brilliantly familiar but there is no liturgy that can come close to how that feels. You can pray to false gods, but that is nothing to the joy of sharing a post ride beer with your friends.
At 8am this morning I worried that maybe I was done with all this. At 2pm, I couldn’t wait to get out again. Because this is what coming home feels like. Or maybe keeping the faith.
*because otherwise we’ll be here all year. And that will not be time well spent.
**I assume the collective noun is “cult” or “Ponzi Scheme”
***birthday yesterday. Disappointed to find irreconcilable evidence I am not still 35.
This is my friend Ali. She, like me, has been in MTB rehab for the last couple of months. Yesterday we swapped considered medical advice and playing the long game for playing outside.
This should not be confused for proper mountain biking – whatever that is. It isn’t this, a yomp of our local woods shunning entries of proper trails and staring jealously at their exits. Strictly green lanes interspersed with ribbons of sun dried dirt featuring no features at all.
And that’s just fine. After 11 weeks sweating on the thin edge of riding bikes, today I broke free from the stifling statelessness of cartoon graphics and static trainers to ride in some real landscape. Pedalling up a familiar hill*, it was obvious this was the right thing to do. After nearly three months of trusting the sage advice of confident medical professionals, it was time stop dithering and place my own agency firmly in the driving seat.
Zoom out from individual appointments at busy fracture clinics and performative consultants wearily spelling out advice that’s most Google Evo. And what you get is a multi sphered Venn diagram with lots of forthright opinions and not much shared best practice. It’s really not their fault, it’s mine for failing to remember I know my body best and what it can and can’t do.
What it couldn’t do for a couple of weeks was pretty much anything involving my left AC shoulder joint. No idea why but Gods it was painful. I imbibed a maximum dose of anti-inflammatories and backed off the Physio. As this coincided with an x-ray showing bone growing progress but no join, that driving seat was occupied by Mr Grumpy and his extensive selection of liquid self medication.
Left hand image: Splatterday. Right hand image: 7 weeks in. Good but not great
Original break on the left, 7 week x-ray on the right. What’s hard to see is the shadow between the break showing a healthy growth of new bone. Just not quick enough for Mr Impatient here. Not even close.
Riding was still verboten with a side order of finger wagging re: heavy lifting, shoulder loading and anything interesting you might want to be doing requiring mobility greater than picking up a book. This was somewhat at odds with a previous appointment which fully triggered my “fuck this” gland. Time to forge my own path.
Not some steep path dropping into a world of Gnar. I need this bone to heal because the alternative is metal and another 12 weeks. But it was time to tear up those scripts carefully narrated to tell you not very much at all, and move beyond nuanced advice frustratingly based on age not ability.
So riding then. The second outing of the “Beige Adventurer” after a loop of the FoD family trail. Which was both fine and deeply unsatisfying. Great to be out on a bike, but not riding stuff that makes riding bikes so bloody brilliant. Roll on a week and a Friday night meeting of the Bikeaholics had us plotting a loop heavy on bimble but light on fire roads.
Which is where we came in. Less than two hours later we were out- me with a slightly achy shoulder, Ali with a sore hand but both of us grinning like the idiots we are. I didn’t feel we’d been released from boring indoor rehab, more escaped into a world we’d previously taken entirely for granted.
Not today – I was 100% aware this was a stunning day to ride a bike. Trees heavy in summer leaf, vegetation bulked by endless sunshine**, seasonal smells reeking of desperate pollination. Solar burnished dirt stretching out endlessly between deep green boundaries. This is my world, and it’s best experienced on a mountain bike.
Even when the rider of that bike is biblically nervous. No knee pads, no attempts to be fast***, the whole hill is a no crash zone. My collarbone might be healed, it might not, but blunt force trauma at the site of the original injury will end in an outcome all those professionals can agree on and summarise with a patronising “I told you so“.
My new gravel bike. It’s like cheating up hill.
So go steady, lean on the brakes, lean into the turns, un-stiffen nervous limbs, look around, look up, put muscle memory in that driving seat, feel the tyres load up just a little bit and bloody well rejoice in how that feels. It isn’t much but it’s more than enough.
It’s only a short ride but my legs are wobbling when we’re done. It feels a long way from those 6okm/1200m+ days of May. I know some muscle strength has gone and hooked my cardio fitness on the way out. Thats okay – I can get those back, even if those three months of brilliant riding have gone for ever. Got to make my peace with that. And then there is something else.
I shared my dirty secret with Ali and Dave. I’ve not missed riding as much as I thought I would. Right up to the point when a flow-y trail pointed downhill and I found what I’d been missing. I don’t know exactly what that is. I wish I could bottle it, but right now I’ll settle for riding it instead.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but it was bloody great to be back in them. I’m still a recovering Bikeaholic. And that feels bloody fantastic.
Not sure I earned this beer, but I very much enjoyed it anyway 🙂
*but not on a familiar bike. That’s a whole post waiting to be written.
**I just need put on record the God level trolling this summer has been. It feels personal 😉
***no change there then. Well I have attempted it, but it’s rarely happened.
Nice bike that Mister. Shame if anything happened to it. Something has happened to it alright, it’s become a shed queen. Along with the other *ahem* trophies from my winning strategy of N+many.
Lately I’ve struggled to reconcile the number of bikes with the number of legs, but right now rideable ‘N” is zero. That’s a challenging theorem counting a room full of expensive bikes numerating no new stories. Unless adding dusty pages counts.
It doesn’t. It feels more like how the end starts. When important artefacts defining the thing you did instead become accusatory statues recording an imperfect history landscaped by a hinterland of the “further back you went, the better you were“.
That was pretty much my happy thoughts as I saluted the six* with a recovery cold beer after a hateful hour on the turbo. Prefect conditions to ride outside, terrible conditions in a hot and humid shed. Showing great restraint not to be adding a triple whiskey chaser as images of all my friends doing the stuff recently mostly my world pile in on the WhatsApp groups.
Well that’s just pitiful isn’t it? It’s not like I’ve lost a limb regardless of some pseudo bullshit that riding bikes for 30 years somehow makes them a recognised appendage. It’s a broken bone, annoying yes, life changing no. Longitudinal analysis suggests bullets dodged, reward crushing risk, limited ability punching way above its weight. Sure it’s okay to grieve for lost summer, but everyone is fucking bored of it now. Even me.
So let the eye of negativity roam a little wider to the institutional despair of the county hospital. An oasis of beige furnished by the lowest cost bidder. Short of almost everything including technology solutions with appointments arriving by text, post, app and barely rage suppressed phone calls. Often at the same time, leaving one Brownian motioned in the eye of an informational tornado.
Feels like it’s doing its best but probably not quite good enough. A reflection on the logistics, politics, funding and the sheer clusterfuck of complexity rather than the lovely people who battle on everyday with tired smiles attempting to shove massive square pegs into tiny round holes. Heroes without capes indeed.
But fuck me from a sample size of me, it’s bloody frustrating. Four weeks, four different medical professionals. One I paid for myself who charged me about 25 quid a minute selling a future I wasn’t sure I wanted. A whiff of the US system where everything is possible, but nothing is free. Ask yourself the question if a fix with a five figure price tag beats the weary chaos of the NHS.
Hint. It bloody doesn’t. But shit it’s not without mental effort to zero in on the intersections of a Venn from four white coated individuals all telling you slightly different things. Those things include “It’ll probably heal, but it might not“, “It’ll be as strong as it was but it may not be“, “It’ll be fixed in 12 weeks but also could be 12 months“, “We could operate on it, but then again we probably should not”
Practising medicine and all that. Not helped by my mate Simon suffering a similar injury a week later (must be a summer bug, go outside, catch the broken collarbone virus) only to be under the knife 7 days later. I’m not a medical man but on examining his x-ray I couldn’t help think “well that looks less shit than mine, I now have plate FOMO”
All of which has made me an absolute shitball to live with. I’ve done my best but again it’s not good enough. Not even close. As a bloke who is officially “not great” at doing nothing, apathy has become my strategy. My post crash plan had lots of aspirational stuff around doing things normal people do, see some stuff, do some stuff, don’t lament the stuff you can’t do. Not gone well. Bodes poorly for the future.
And then two days after my three week “splataversary“, I was summoned back to Gloucester Royal for what I expected to be a very disappointing consultation where being mostly ignored then vaguely patronised would outcome a “come back in four weeks if it’s not dropped off before then”
Enter Tim. A man of many words often impervious to raised hand questions, but nevertheless a script spoken by a man clearly knowing his shit. We had a fifteen minute conversation back and forthing over surgical interventions. A further five of prodding and whirling the previously sling bound arm on what felt like an organic roller coaster of free movement. An abrogation of NHS responsibility transferring those decision rights to a man chaffing at one armed disability.
“See you in two months, good luck” he said. “At which time I expect your multi-part collarbone couples counselling will see it again conjoined and we’ll all do a lap of I fucking told you so. If not, it’s full on Winter Soldier, but really do you want to go there? Are you a betting man?”
I am not and he didn’t say that. Well he may have, but my heart was already singing a little ditty named “I’ll take it from here“. Agency is quite the thing, dump the sling, drive my car, ride the turbo on the drops*** but better still in FOUR WEEKS I can ride a bike outside. Okay maybe not a proper bike and not proper outside, but that’s a target I’m going to smash though a month of sweaty Zwift sessions.
Because when I get back out there, I’m going to be in the best shape I can. And come the next Al-Tim meeting, I’ll be shoving him aside to get a damn good look at the new x-ray. If it’s not fused, at least I’ll have one good arm to punch him with 😉
I swaggered back into the big shed finger pistolling the bikes with a “we are so not done”. For a while there I forgot I was – and will probably always be – a mountain biker. It’s so fucking good to be back.
Too Early For A Beer. I think probably not.
*Too Early For A Beer? A semantic proxy when FFS is also a little to early in the morning.
**Amusingly I sold one exactly two days before “splatter-day”. It was only the gravel bike tho so it doesn’t really count
***Trust me this is A BIG thing. Ask my arse. Sitting up on the turbo feels pretty much like dropping the soap on your first day in D Wing 😉
Once the strapline for a breakfast cereal, now torturously re-appropriated for the bone splattering event following a sequence of events best summarised by “a skills deficiency discovered immediately prior to impact“.
That’s my left half of my collarbone. Or at least what’s left of it. Before we get into the how, it’s worth winding back to a recently much voiced aphorism and a quieter feeling of general unease occasionally veering towards anxiety.
“I’m not prepared to lose a summer” is my go-to maxim when making excuses atop a scary looking obstacle. The inner version of that goes something like “how many of those summers do I have left before riding it was even an option“. That’s one little death just 999 cuts short of giving up on the kind of riding that’s defined good chunks of my life for getting on 30 years.
There’s a cruel dichotomy hidden in plain sight. Amazing bikes and decades of experience opens up technical terrain fissured with lines with the potential to close off that exact type of riding for an extended period. Better to step back from the edge, citing age inspired rationale or retain an adrenaline fuelled appetite for risk? Somewhere in between is where most of us land. Until that landing is hard and consequential.
I’ve written about this before– but this year a combination of lacking confidence and that Damocles sword edging into almost every ride has me actively considering shuffling a little closer to the less risky side of that line. I know myself well enough to accept that choosing the harder path never comes easy. But I mostly keep doing it. For now.
Somewhat annoyingly the ride of bone snappage nearly didn’t happen at all. My friend Olli was due to fly from Germany in less than a week for 4 days of riding – hoping I could repay his hospitality from my trip earlier this year.
That, and having been away the previous weekend in Wales – where again I really wasn’t feeling it; like riding with crash anxiety stuffed in the Camelbak – plus having collected a recovering but very sick dog who’d spent 4 days in the Animal hospital in Bristol – had me questioning if another days riding was the wisest choice.
FOMO overrode vague foreboding though, preceded with a good talking too about – somewhat ironically in hindsight – coming home with my shield or on it. Less thinking, more commitment. Fewer excuses, more stuff ticked off. Remember what I love about this, try and forget what happens if it goes wrong.
Because it doesn’t often go wrong. Two hospitalisations in three decades. Uncountable lucky escapes or minor crashes that could have been so much worse. Many, many things ridden that felt on the edge or beyond my ability. And yet I just couldn’t shake the feeling something was a bit off. This is not back protection, it was surfaced more as apathy than anxiety, what it wasn’t is the excitement that’s always been locked in with the prospect of a great ride in perfect conditions.
So the ride. Got my first crash in early with a tree clipping apex sending me into a rotten stump retaining sufficient solidity to punt me off the side. No damage done- conversely it improved my confidence that crashing was fine especially as I was actually riding a bit better, and had just been caught out by things turning up a bit quicker than expected.
Easy trails up tho this point tho. That was about to change. We climbed up the other side of the valley with Steve suggesting a new trail he’d ridden the week before. Had a qualifier jump that was definitely not rollable, and a slab that “needs commitment“. I took a look at the jump, but not the slab.
Jump went well, definitely starting to feel good on the bike following Matt onto a tricky little rock section close to the edge of something you don’t want to fall into. Instead navigate that with careful positioning to align the bike onto the fall line. This must be the slab Steve’s talking about I thought as Matt accelerated away.
Further thoughts in my head went something like “questionable grip, stay off the brakes, that catch berm looks a bit small, might struggle to get it stopped once I’m off the slab, oh well we’re half way down so… oh fuck there’s a big hole on the slab exit, how am I going to clear that bastard….”
With a simple front wheel lift. Ably demonstrated by Matt and Steve. Not in my core skill set when heading downhill fast and timing is everything. Or in my case nothing which is exactly what I did dropping the front wheel into the hole at which point physics provided a practical demonstration of momentum transfer.
I wasn’t a passenger tho. As I’d already exited the vehicle. The classic collarbone break is the instinctive hand out to protect the head, that hand impacting the ground, transferring that energy up the arm where an unstoppable force meets a very much movable object. That being your clavicle. Now available as a two part unit.
That’s an accident I’ve been involved in**, but it wasn’t this one. Instead a full airborne 180 degree rotation before slamming into the unyielding ground on my back – where my back protector definitely saved further injury – and stopping almost instantly. That’s some blunt force trauma right there and even in my dazed state I knew damage had been done.
What I pretended hadn’t happened tho is what’s obvious on the x-ray. It really didn’t hurt that much (and still doesn’t). I was even able to get my shirt off so Matt could have a prod at the new suspicious lump I’d acquired***. It wasn’t until later the full extent of the injury – and the consequences of that – became fully apparent.
That’s for another time. Short version is I’ve definitely lost the summer and maybe quite a lot more. There’s decisions to be made, but not in haste. I spent the first two days in pointless “what if” and “why didn’t I” wish fulfilment. Since then I’ve made my peace with it. Ride the stuff we do for long enough and you’re going to catch a big one. It’s absolutely worth it, even when the only bike I’m riding for quite a long time is tethered to my turbo trainer.
I am SO BORED tho. I need to find a one handed hobby. No not that one, but thank you for your recommendations 😉
*this is a whole other post. Along with a minor house flood that came along about the same time. Maybe I should have seen the signs 😉
**in the x-ray you can see a bit of bone floating about from when that happened.
***Apart from offering dodgy medical advice (“that’ll be fine“), Steve and Matt were proper mates- Steve pushing my bike up the hill and buying me a pint while Matt fetched the “Vanbulance” to take me to A&E.
Bike Packing. Something I wanted to like and do more of. Neither of those things has come to pass. Reasons for which may soon become apparent. Read on for the thrilling narrative of why it’s not me, it’s the bike.
However, I’m making probably dangerous assumptions about the level of interest that whinging interspersed with facile route observations* can sustain, but hey if nothing else there are plenty of pictures.
Because as soon as Guy “Beeeeaaauuutiful” Kestevan uploaded his YT tour of this route, I was in.Even tho my only previous bike packing experience was the Lon Las Cymru back in July 2019.
I do look quite a lot younger there. And a bit thinner 🙂
Having sacked off the King Alfreds Way about three times due to illness, injury and inclement weather, the planets finally aligned for this trip. Sadly my LLC buddy Adam could only make one day, but happily first reserve Nige stepped up. He doesn’t have a gravel bike so ‘adapted‘ his Santa Cruz Hightower by adding a bit of air in the shock, some slightly less sticky tyres and the brilliant Tailfn rack.
I was on my 2022 NukeProof Digger- stock except for some wider Richey bars and an 11 speed mech that went up to 51. At no point was “camping” on anyones agenda**, so it was three excellent Hotel/Pubs on route, a kit list pared back to the encouraging forecast and absolutely no idea how things would go. Both Nige and I are pretty fit, do quite a lot of long rides but are more winter than spring chickens 😉
Also the longest ride I’d ever done on the digger was about 50km.
Yeah that’s a bit longer than 50km.
Still no point dying wondering eh?
Day 1: Knighton to Montgomery : 70km/1150m climbing.
I am clearly attempting to look fit and ready. But instead I just appear to be constipated 🙂
The route starts in Shrewsbury town centre. We didn’t because Knighton is way closer to home and I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be a ride of two halves. Or two hards as it turned out.
End April can be – and regularly is – banked gray cloud, 12 degrees, grim headwinds frequently punctuated with savage rainstorms. Not today, wall to wall blue skies and summer temps. A good way to start a route that is both brilliantly planned and brutally sadistic. Often at the same time. Let me furnish an example- first proper climb after 10km meandering up the valley on quiet lanes.
Doesn’t look like much, but loose gravel at 14% grade on loaded bikes is no gimmee. Definitely had to pause for thought half way up. Once up there though, there’s an ancient long ridge (“Kerry Ridgeway”) – somehow still puddle filled after weeks of dry weather – but easy mlles after I’d been forced to stab the front tyre with an anchovy. Not a great start for the “Road+” Senderos, but the repair held and amazingly this was the only mechanical we had the whole trip. Other than my knees and I don’t think they count.
Two tumps, many hills
There’s a lot of gravel on this part of the route. Most of it is perfect for the digger, but some was more rock than gravel with a few steepish descents. My 160mm rotors – previously fine – seemed to be struggling to slow me down as much as I’d have liked. Views were amazing tho.. this is at the ‘two tumps’ viewpoint.
Along with the views were many and varied steep climbs. I regularly saw 15% on the Garmin and up to 25% at one point! 40-51 loaded up is still a struggle up there – for me anyway. There’s also not a great deal of resupply on the route. We had a quick bar/bottle fill at Clun after the 2 mile descent off the ridge. After that not much until Newtown. We experienced Newtown as any experienced tourist would- straight through without stopping and onto the canal path 🙂
Leaving us just the joy of a steep road climb to Montgomery. Sure there’s the valley road but it’s fast and open and no fun on a bike. This is the joy/pain of the route, you absolutely attack every major town in some kind of hilltop pincer movement. Often finding yourself meandering up some random hill in apparently the wrong location. Pretty sure there are at least four Church Stretton’s in Shropshire for example.
Anyway got that done, I was feeling pretty good. Nige had it harder on the MTB on the road climbs, but he absolutely smashed the next two days, in the same way they smashed me up. We even had time for a mooch round Montgomery castle. Our first one of the tour. Very impressive it was too.
Once we’d run out of things to point phones at, it was down into the one horse town that Montgomery is (and the horse appears to have left!) and into the bar for a well earned beer.
Quite a tough day. It was blooming hot and there wasn’t much shade or cover. Would have been approx 100 times worse if it was wet as it had been only a few weeks ago when a friend rode it. Still we’d enjoyed the variety of the route across a good balance of trail types.
Tomorrow though was our hardest day, I’d always planned this to get the three biggies from here to far side of Church Stretton over the Stiperstones and Long Mynd done in one hit.
On reflection, possibly a bit ambitious.
Day 2: Montgomery to Upton Magna: 81km, 1815m of climbing
After an excellent stay in the Dragon Hotel, Thursday dawned hot and it was only going to get hotter. 25 degrees, maybe more. Couple of salient points here- firstly there is bog all cover on the hardest three climbs, which you spend longer on than expected because RideWithGPS uses spot heights and the Garmin uses, well, GPS (that’s my guess about RWGPS). So what I thought was a 1600m climbing day was over 10% more than that. And 1600m is hardly an easy day!
The three big climbs- Stiperstones, Mynd, Stretton were all properly steep in places, lots of grass, gravel and rock. Some tarmac but I’d have been happy with more 😉 1100m of climbing in less than 30km. I was nearly 100% on the hoods climbing up and on the drops going down. My lack of proper gravel riding was probably the reason by the end of the day my palms were blistering. The digger is quite short as well, it’s a fun bike but maybe not ideal for this type or route. Or I’m a wuss. That’s certainly a possibility;)
Nig on proper bars and proper gears!Are we.. no we’re not there yet
Photos never show the gradient! Tough climb, but amazing views and I live in the Wye valley so I’m used to big skies and rolling hills. This though was something else. Really hard to take your eyes off it, which when descending at my level of gravel bike skill came very close to consequential a few times!
Still not there. We’re somewhere but not at the top. And this is the first big climb of 3
Climb to the Stiperstones done- didn’t bother to go actually climb the stones, done that before, so instead dropped down in the next valley which I’ve ridden up on a MTB. It’s a pretty good surface and blooming fast off the brakes. Not sure my heart rate came down much after the climb.
Yes we’re definitely there at at last!Stiperstones in the distance.
That’s Nige pointing back with a “I’m bloody glad that’s over” expression. Sadly this was merely the aperitif. On that note time for a spot of lunch.
Stopped at The Bridges for an ice cold Lime and Soda and a generously filled bap. Too soon after we’re were back climbing, this time over the Long Mynd, a mere 375m above the pub.
Making use of the 32inch gear 🙂
First time pushing. That was a steep and loose climb and I really couldn’t be arsed. Nig got up it I think but Ads and I engaged the 32inch gear 🙂
The descent into Carding Mill Valley/Church Stretton was pretty full on. Pretty sure I’ve ridden it on a MTB and Nige dispatched the tech sections with aplomb. Ads and I walked down and there’s no shame in that- odd tho the only 1km section on the route needing either proper skills or a walk. Seemed very out of character with the other 99+%. Still did get to ride some lovely singletrack on the digger and it’s more than capable. I still kind of wanted my MTB at this point. In fact that was my feeling across the whole day.
It may not look much but it was bloody terrifying on drop bars!Not lost 🙂
Full fat Coke and double espresso in Church Stretton represented my desperate approach to refuelling. Ads – suffering from a painful neck injury from a previous ride – left us to find his way back to his van. That’s a whole other post in itself- fair to say it wasn’t straightforward! Nige and I had *only *450* metres to climb according to my route plan. But somehow spread across 50km. That didn’t seem right but neither was I at this point. Hot, bothered and a bit knackered.
Terminator Nige powered by cake headed up the absolute shit of a climb from Church Stretton which appeared to hump us up 150m only to drop us back on the flat road out of town. I was a bit grumpy at this point. About the only time when the dial cranked from Fun to Type-2 fun. If the weather was rubbish, it would have smashed against the “no fun at all” stop.
We’d mostly swapped gravel for dirt which would normally be absolutely fine. But hanging on for grim death had every bone from ankle to shoulder queuing up to write a strong letter of complaint about their treatment.
Misery not shown
Looks fab eh? And it was mostly except the roots, big dips and tractor ruts not shown. The final climb flipped tarmac for another – for me – impossible off road singletrack climb. Not so much a sting in the tail, more a hoof in the slats. Still having met a quite elderly gentleman riding the route on a 60lb fat bike festooned with sufficient kit to sustain him for, I dunno, maybe a nuclear winter, I felt significantly less heroic, so gave myself a talking to and just got on with it.
A navigational triumph had us route south of Shrewsbury, ignoring the official directions, instead loping 10km off an already long day heading fast into a weather front that had extreme wet and misery written all over it. Arriving at the very welcoming Haughmond Inn in Upper Magna, the lovely staff were keen to show us to our room. I countermanded that with a polite but firm priority involving their bar, their beer and my immediate requirements.
I even got to mutter my favourite pre-first-sup axiom “if I told you how much I needed this, I wouldn’t have time to drink it“. Thanks Zaphod.
Another tough day, properly tough. We regularly ride 60km/1200m+ on a summer MTB ride. But this felt so much harder. On the upside brilliant weather, great company, lots of laughs, stunning scenery that just keeps on rolling out amazing views and a post shower feed ensconced in a snug bar while the rain rattled the windows outside.
Pleased to have done it. Probably wouldn’t rush to do it again without a change of bike. Or knees.
Day 3: Upper Magna to Neeton. 60km, 1180m climbing.
A bridge too far?
Back in Jan when the route planning was mostly in my head, the idea was go hard first two days, then easy the second two. That’s exactly the opposite of the official route where you roll out of Shrewsbury on road and easy gravel, climbing easier gradients all while making good progress. I kind of get it as chucking people at the second half first up might be a bit dispiriting, but I’d still back my route over theirs.
It is a route of two halves. Now we were into more rolling countryside- switching between Wales, Shropshire and Herefordshire was barely noticeable other than road signs and speed limits. But this felt more like “home” to me.
Riding into a Turner painting 🙂
There was a lot of this kind of thing. Early on we met the fella prepping for the end of the world. He’d been caught high up in the rainstorm and had had quite the night setting up his tent in a storm. Still fairly sure he’d dispatched some local wildlife with whatever hidden weapons were in one of his many packs.
This was a day less of ancient landscapes lightly touched by humans to very obvious industrial heritage. Nowhere more obvious that Ironbridge where we marvelled for a while at 300 year old engineering, gave it a respectful nod and then headed off to eat some cake.
That cake lay heavy on the next climb. And the one after that.
The route now flicked between grass-up-the-middle tiny roads, old railroad tracks and rock hard dirt bridleways. Garlic and bluebells signposted the way and everything was pretty good in the world. Until we hit a bumpy field when all my yesterdays became very much todays problem. Still nice place to stop to take in the view while various body parts grudgingly shuffled back into recognisable human biomechanics order.
This definitely reminded me of the Wye Valley. It’s such a good way to cover distance – keeping the speed up but not road’y-ing on tarmac. Good fun on the gravel bike as well as it’s so quick to change direction and easy to loft over roots with a bit of speed. Sun was out, everyone we met seemed to be having a good day, no trail conflict, no grumpiness just the joy of riding your bike with no real purpose other than than a pint a bit later on.
Wild garlic and a pint a few hours away. Hard to beat that.
The last climb was a chewy 200m but I was wise to the elevation vagaries of the route now. It wasn’t especially steep so dispatched with a gear or so to spare. The rock hard descents were still taking names, mostly of my crumbling spine but still a bit of a rush with line choices treading the line between “brave” and “catastrophic”
Never go “full gravel” 🙂Last climb of the day is DONE!Very late lunch of champions 🙂
We arrived at our final night’s accommodation with 3 minutes to spare before it closed until 6pm. Our impeccable timing was rewarded with a room key and a couple of beers to enjoy the garden with. Beer, Shower, PowerNap, back in the bar for 6pm ready to order most things on the menu. Sometimes twice. We didn’t really do lunch, but by jove we certainly did dinner 🙂
One day to go and it was a bit of a cop out. For which there are reasons. Some of them possibly valid.
Coffee and Cake. With our reputation? 🙂
Day 4: Neeton to Wigpole. 37km, 715m climbing.
Somewhat belated but still relevant – there is so much history lightly buried on this route. Often not buried at all, remnants of castles, fortification and long lost towns act as crumbling waypoints and signifiers of long forgotten battles. It’s a rich and violent history with the Marcher Lords brutally suppressing anyone who defied them, or whom the King wasn’t very fond of. So mostly the Welsh.
Nowhere is this better rooted in the modern day than Ludlow with a good chunk of its castle still dominating the high ground. We had to get there first with a couple of minor obstacles in the shape of pointy hills blocking the way. Leaving the Pheasant pub (another recommendation, have the pie or the fish, or the cheese, or in our case all three!) we spent 10 minutes on a busy B road to reacquire the route. It was the kind of crap experience that puts sane people off cycling. It also highlighted how well the CtC route is planned, so we were grateful for that gravelling our way though some massive estate apparently all belonging to a single person. Maybe some history hangs around.
To complete the loop we needed to feed our legs into the hilly grinder of another 60km and 1200m of climbing, Was never going to happen. I’d planned the pick up as close to home as possible, and – having been at it for three days – didn’t feel the need to be a completist in terms of hills and kilometres. Even when my legs still felt pretty good and my back was given the day off as much of the route was road. Not sure if this was part of easing people in who started from Shrewsbury, or just a lack of bridleways.
We rolled into Ludlow after a couple of hours and paused for caffeine and a marvel at how busy everything was. Anyone would have thought it was a bank holiday weekend. Having seen almost no one for three days, it was quite the shock! As was the weather, which while still sunny, realised it was not high summer and reverted to late Spring with a chilly northerly cutting through not enough layers.
I signalled the retrieval vehicle promising a slap up lunch just in time for Nige and I to send those weary legs up one final sharp pull from Ludlow through Mortimer forest. I know there are loads of official and non official off road routes through here but the GPS resolutely pointed to the road and I was absolutely fine with that.
The climbing really never stops!We’re done. All downhill to the pub from here!Loads of great trails that way. But not for the gravel bike!
There are some great MTB trails up there***
All that was left was a fast road descent, where I properly scared myself with a butt clenching speed wobble and a final meander through windy country lanes to Wigmore when the day was called, and beer and medals were awarded.
Well done bicycles. You continue to be amazing.Worthy? Oh yes 🙂
So yeah a bit of a cop out. And I’m fine with that.
Scores on the doors: 3 1/2 days, 252km. 5025m of climbing. That’s the same climbing as my previous tour but in HALF the distance. Oof, it’s a hilly bugger all right.
Life behind bars
So would I recommend the route. Absolutely. Variety, views and vast amounts of elevation. Would I ride it again? Yep, now I know what’s coming I might have one less beer on day one 🙂 Same bike? Nope, I think I’m done with long gravel bike rides.****
A perfect bike for me for this route would be a lightweight steel hardtail – something like the Cotic Solaris – spec’d with a 120mm SID, dropper post, light wheels, XC type 2.2ish tyres. That would be way more fun down and better – for me – on the off road climbs.
It’d be less good on the road but a good trade off for me. Nige and I reckoned two days were better on the MTB, two on the gravel bike in terms of terrain. Even so, hardtail for me. Might need to go shopping 🙂
Kit wise, used everything except my rain jacket. Took way too much stuff last time out.
Next trip? Two day “Lightening” tours I think. Maybe a couple of train stations to make it more than an out of back. Pack super light, wait for good weather and just go. Camping tho? Absolutely not. Like I say, I’m not that kind of idiot.
Great experience tho. Packed with a whole load of fantastic memories.
*we climbed a hill. then another hill. Then another ****** hill.
**because while I accept I am an idiot, I’m not that type of idiot.
***We rode them last week. And yep, fantastic fun on the right bike.
****This has come to pass. Another blameless bike punted out of the ShedOfDreams. A post shall follow with what passes for a reason but more importantly how I intend to balance N from the current N-1 🙂
“I used to ride bicycles” lamented a wistful octogenarian braced heavily by a walking stick. She was regarding our modern mountain bikes with a combination of confusion and regret as we pulled them from their parking spots.
With already 30km ridden and 900 metres climbed, neither Steve nor I could pass for “young bucks”*, as lunch stiffened middle aged hips graunchily articulated over dropped saddles.
The difference though – defined by the age gap – is the size of your world. Shrinking rapidly as physical and mental facilities decline; many more memory outposts than new places to discover. Earlier that day we’d congratulated ourselves on sacking off screens on the inside for a vibrant landscape of ripening spring lushness. There’s a quote about a life being more about decisions you’ve made over the things you’ve achieved, and right then I hoped that old lady didn’t regret any of hers.
We certainly weren’t troubled by any feeling of self doubt. Which was a change after my first new bike ride back in the valley had not been incident free. When a rock strike decapitated a tubeless valve before its trajectory zeroed in on the mech-of-future-financial-peril.
Which spent the remainder of the ride so heavily concussed it was reduced to delivering gear ratios apparently bracketed by the Fibonacci sequence. It took a broken multi tool, a read of the manual and significant occupational therapy, in the safety of Matt’s garage, to return it to working operation. Apparently at least half of the issue could absolutely be placed sulkily at the door of the idiot who originally installed it. A door that shall remain closed and we shall not speak of it again.
Back in my shed, the £100 Invisiframe kit was very much firing the starting gun for an expensive divorce, but Carol is so much better at doing shit she doesn’t want to than, erm, someone else. As ever her work ethic and low tolerance for poor results played the lead role in four hours of my life we’ll never get back. My role was more that of occasional useful idiot. Still with frame protection and mudguard fitted, I no longer felt I was playing outside without any trousers.
Not a moment too soon as rock strikes were a recurring feature of our wildly ambitious plan to ride from deep in the Yat, over a big hill marked “The Kymin” round what is considered a decent all day loop, before climbing back over another big hill in time for tea and medals.
Firstly tho a lovely meander along the Wye riverbank into Monmouth. Apparently it’s rained but the dusty dirt suggests otherwise. Up over the Kymin which is always the kind of climb that 32-51 gear ratios are made for, before a blast down “Mini Molini” which was steep, crumbly dry and dispatched with nary a dab. An excellent start to the day and already nearly 400m of pointy bits bagged.
Bluebells and garlic are in bloom. Not quite fully awesome yet, but enough to stir the soul and gladden the heart 😉 Really tho, experiencing the visual and olfaction Forest in spring marks the unofficial start of prime riding season. Every year it makes me so bloody glad I don’t live in a city.
Riding the main loop out to Tintern we were confident in our navigational abilities as we’ve both ridden it many times**. Confidence not so much misplaced as properly lost without a phone signal and potentially in need of a helicopter rescue. Reframing our directional confusion as new route finding, we did stumble upon a cracking descent with a view of the Severn provided entirely by the high level of exposure.
This isn’t it. But a pic of the bike at the top of Beacon Hill is the law when riding the TIntern Loop 🙂
Back on track, two descents between us and a late lunch. Winter storms have channelled deep grooves and surfaced loose rock on both. One of which saw me fail to exit behind Steve instead slamming my “good” shoulder into, what can only be described as, a trench. Feel the force Luke. I certainly bloody did with that shoulder adding itself to my list of niggling injuries. Suggest it gets in the queue.
98% man, 2% sandstone. Smiling through the pain. Lunch was calling and were keen to answer its siren call.
Riding out of Tintern is where we came in. Criss crossing our inbound route is only a few kilometres away but plenty of climbing meters. Steve had set a target of 1500m total climbing which is frankly ridiculous. Anything over a thousand*** is considered a good day out, and in the last week I’ve already subjected my bitching legs to a 1225 and a 1300.
Hence the big hill on the way back. Up to our favourite Staunton haunts where a plethora of fantastic trails drop you back into the valley bottom. Need to get there first which involves a cheeky run down the Cleddon falls footpath. Late in the day and we meet no-one- it’s noticeably quiet a day before the Easter holidays so we easily secure a table at The Boat for a Recovery Pint.
Much needed as my legs are ready to walk off*** in disgust of potential further abuse. Other body parts aren’t far behind but 30 minutes of a non saddle sit, vitamin D and aforementioned complex carbs in liquid form and we’re good, well maybe average, to go.
It wasn’t that bad. I mean it wasn’t good and I’d been dreading the climb as it’s way too familiar. But thirty minutes later we ran out of hill with around 1350 climbed metres on the clock. Gruntingly gained, easily spent with a flat out run to the river which with a Beer-on-Board and happy new bike vibes being nothing short of fantastic.
Back over the bridge and in sight of rides end, a final dithering over much watched metrics had us winching up the steepest sodding climb on this side of the valley. 1500m was a climb too far, but we were only 50 short and that’s in my top 15 since doing the Strava thing back in 2013. Life in the old dog yet.
Upside of all that up was it opened up the last pitch of a favourite steep descent. You can probably see how relieved I was not to spin the body parts/ground roulette so close to the end of the ride.
58km, 1450m of climbing, mild abrasions and a stiff shoulder. These are the things we can measure. All the other stuff – the important stuff – we cannot and should not. That short lunchtime conversation has stayed with me. The regret of not being able to do something you love. Pretty much felt like the luckiest fella alive after that.
Oh and the first pic. Still got it, I tell myself. Even if I can’t remember where I put it most of the time 🙂
*old fucks? A far more accurate description 🙂
**and, in my case, forgotten almost everything about it.
***Known as a “Clang”. As in “we have Clanged, can we now please go to the pub?”
I know, those pedals. An absolute travesty suggesting punishment for such aesthetic criminality would involve a locked room plastered in Pantone colours with a terse sign explaining “there are colours and there are shades, learn the difference”.
Learning lessons is not one of my core strengths. As identified early in my academic career, a kind appraisal of ability was summarised thus: “slow but sure” as in slow to learn and sure to forget. This failing continues to manifest in ever more perplexing ways. Take for example the ShedOfDreams as of 11th April.
That snapshot of insanity has TWO bikes out of shot. One being another trail bike very similar to the all-types-of-green-machine in the foreground*. Had I forgotten, that in the thicket of bicycles, were a couple very much aligned in terms of geometry, suspension travel and intended use?
I had not. Nor can I blame increasingly cerebral confusion** for this stacking of expensive trinkets in an increasingly crowded space. I can however revert to type and blame someone else. That person is my old friend Olli who was part of a fantastic bunch of humans designing and building Gillette’s global wide area network back in the late 1990s. Pre-internet when plug and play was more incompatible junk and command line hacking. Good times and good friends who’ve stayed so long after the project was done.
But mostly virtually. So when Olli pinged me over Christmas wondering if I fancied catching up in the real world for a ride, I was all over that like a cheap suit hatching plans for four days of epic UK riding once the seasons ratcheted from cold and wet to warm and dusty.
As with all plans I’m involved with, things escalated quickly. Ending with a reciprocal ride visiting Olli and his family. Further escalation saw Carol and I embarking on a 1000 mile roadtrip across three countries.***
Meeting up at Olli’s place, we were introduced to his lovely family, and a box marked “Propain” that had the makings of a trail bike I’d been lusting after for many years. Brexit made that pretty much unaffordable, so I pivoted to a strategy best described as “some light smuggling“. Again time to move on.
Building the bike I was initially confused by the elven sorcery that is electronic shifting. Honestly, I fully expected a pointy eared survivor of Helms Deep to pop out of the box incanting appropriate spells. No such materialisation occurred- instead I was left with the thick wad of materials accompanying the bike. Obviously I ignored those and instead called in 2nd line support. Carol did an excellent job unfucking my ham fisted assembly attempts, and gently walked me away from the hammer. We were good to go.
Olli’s local trails are right behind his house. Sadly he lives shadow deep in the valley so it was a 300 metre climb to get us started. It didn’t stop me marvelling how light the new bike was, and how much fun was to be had randomly pressing non haptic pads and all sorts of mechanical stuff happening a metre away at the rear mech without a cable being involved.
First trail, cautious was the watchword. Rubbish would be another one. Way too much going on with new bike, new trails and Olli disappearing at quite the rapid rate. Regrouping at the fireroad, I had just enough breath left to wonder if this “blue” trail might be light red. Based on my ability to understand colour, probably not.
The trail network here is impressive. Superbly built and fantastically maintained by a community of like minded MTBers. We rode blues, red and blacks and I loved them all. Mostly tho not because of riding a new bike, more riding with an old mate under sunny skies. That never gets old.
There is even a restaurant at the top of the hill. Rammed at the weekends apparently, but mercifully quiet on a skive-y Wednesday. We headed back down the valley. on another superbly involving trail, where my confidence in the new bike outstripped my ability and it was touch and go whether I’d impact and stop, but somehow we wrestled things back under control. Lesson learned? Probably not.
Heading back up the other side of the valley we crested the 1000m of climbing and kept going. Absolutely worth it for another banging trail before heading home for beer, medals and a burger about the size of my head.
Next day the clouds clamped chilly conditions to ground level. We headed out 30 mins to another ride location that – after some funky chicken warming up on exiting the van – had adrenaline shots lined up on every feature. My legs weren’t keen but once we had gravity weighing in the backpacks, multi kilometre trails were hosting entirely inappropriate middle aged whooping.
That’s me rocking my standard “Hidden Badger, Naked Terror” stance. Bike was great tho. Different enough to the other ones to make me consider thinning out the herd some time this summer. There’s probably another 1000 words extolling the positives and ignoring the negatives of adding a copy of something I already have, but you’ve read that crap before. And it’s still the same bullshit.
Instead let’s talk about the value of friendships. The taking of chances. The grasping the nettle, the shunning of the ordinary. Sure riding bikes is always good, but renewing bonds stretched a little after 20 years was so much better. I only hope we can give Olli the same experience when he’s here in a couple of months.
That’s on us then. We have the trails, now making sacrifices to the weather gods.
Until then we’ll have good time memories. And a new bike. Not sure it gets much better than that.
*Can we move on from the pedals. It was a needs must situation which I very much regret especially after showcasing the new bike to the local ride crew. No quarter was given 🙂
**Really. Standing in front of things wondering what I’m doing there is now a daily occurrence.
***We had a whole bunch of fun. Shall be doing that again.
