In the west of the Forest of Dean, there are a number of abandoned pill-boxes built during the second world war. A few of them are close to where the DIRT Magazine journo’s ride and build. So it’s not entirely surprising to find some enterprising rider, with balls the size of melons, has fused the two to create a hucking great jump to flat.

I don’t know how big it is, and I forgot to take a photo but it’s a monster. Proper ‘oh he’s not made it, someone fetch the spatula‘ dangerous and so far beyond my riding ability they may as well have built it on the moon.

At least then I’d have a proper excuse not to ever consider riding it. Instead I went with ‘fucking hell, that’s some kind of sick joke, yes?” Apparently not. This trail obstacle/assisted suicide represents the crux of a trail known simply as Bunker. Even getting that far without being splattered requires 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} concentration and commitment for those of us not replete with a box of trail skills honed for tall building leaping.

Dropping from the the ridge some 200 metres above the river, the trail unwinds in steep, off-camber sweeps peppered with jumps, drops, nastily pointy rocks and slightly more exposure than I’m comfortable with*. Section after section teeter on the limit of my good-day skills demanding an absolute commitment to a line, quick and decisive weight shifts and – for preference – a bloody good bike underneath you.

Don’t misunderstand me here; never in my riding history has any bike represented a high water mark in terms of ability. No a combination of squidgy brain stuff and a lack of bravery clamped the anchors way before any such theoretical limit was reached. But good bikes help enormously to compensate when the bloke on top lacks any discernible talent.

Today that was my ugly-stick 456 with the new fat fork out front. A combination that had already seen me conquer every jump on a trail that had last spat me out cracked ribbed a couple of months ago. I’d ridden a couple of rock gardens and tricky roll-ins never cleaned on the – intuitively – more talent compensating ST4 and, with some encouragement, safely made the first descent of a steep slab previously considered way beyond my ability.

Some of this is because the bike is pretty damn fab at such stuff. A little more was the good place my head happened to be today. And more than a nadge was watching 63 year old Fast-as-Fuck Ken blitz everything on a bike hardly suitable for such antics – especially accesorised, as it was, by a massive saddlebag.

This may be where Ken keeps his massive cahoonies, because I have absolutely no idea how such a mild mannered and pleasant pre-pensioner smoothly rides absolutely everything at a pace best described as ‘where the fuck did Ken go?‘

Mountain biking is a meritocracy of that there is no doubt. Based on my performance this week, I represent a point way distant from the middle of he bell curve. Maybe on an entirely different page.

But this bothers me not at all because most of Bunker passed under my wheels unaccompanied by feet walking the bike down. At least twice I distinctly remember closing my eyes. It’s more coping strategy** than trail technique, but there are times when raw, naked fear will do that to you.

Of course, Matt, Dave and Ken all rode more than me. And quite a bit faster. But these are bloody good riders and, compared to even a year ago, there’s more and more stuff ticked off which previously merited a big cross in the ‘viewed and refused‘ column. And by Christ it doesn’t half make you feel alive.

Today I definitely earned my post-ride beer. Seemed somehow to taste even better than normal.

* i.e. Any.

** If I can’t see that tree, it can’t hit me

An expression slightly more couth than “buzzing about like a blue arsed fly” which traditionally warrants a suffix in the form of ‘lend me a broom to stick up my arse and I’ll sweep the floor while I’m here’ . For those not mentally tuned to Radio Hedgehog, the paired down summary is that my life suddenly became extremely busy.

Which hasn’t entirely squeezed out a strong desire to throw new bikes down lavishly dusty trails – what with an upgrade to badger-lung, and the continuing seasonal confusion where Spring was loving a Summer upgrade for a couple of weeks. Somehow rides and days numbered the same for a total of five before sleep deprivation and lungy hangovers slumped me in front of late night TV instead.

Firstly Jess and I – along with around ten thousand other people* – had a dustful of the blue trail on Sunday morning with the only disappointment being a couple of cocks who failed to understand that a heavily trafficked easy trail isn’t their personal playground. They at least had the decency to sheepishly apologise for their antisocial trail behaviour when some middle aged bloke got all angsty. The cafe staff were more apologetic regarding the run on the ice cream fridge, which mattered not as we just had cake seconds instead.

Arriving home, many jobs of increasing tedium faced a man recently re-acquainted with reasonable oxygenation. Regular readers will be unsurprised to find excuses outstripped responsibility leading to a ‘quick blast’ on the Cross Bike which had me giggling like a Friday Night Stoner. Rooty trails are being increasingly sought out which faze me increasingly less, and the bike not at all.

Flushed with success, two desperate flits across the South Midlands fetched me up at first a Malvern and then a FoD night ride. Both times onto one of those spinning plates was handed my arse. Everyone is about 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} faster than I remember or I’m 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} slower. Both uphill and downhill to the point when a riding pal enquired if I was pleasuring myself on one particularly arduous climb. Oxygen being at a premium, my only available communication method was a mildly vigorous hand signal indicating that a) no I was not and b) if this hill doesn’t stop soon, can someone bury me here?

Since it was by then dark, he received nothing but ‘deformed rabbit‘ silhouetted in the bike lights. Arriving home quite badly broken it became clear that this was essentially nothing to do with a month off the bike, and a lung function somewhere close to 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of not much to start with. No it was a bike issue. And that’s easily sorted. Pass me the eBay login.

First up, a longer fork to better suit the frame. Out came the light, stiff and insanely expensive 5 inch prong to be replaced by a pre-loved crude approximation of a proper sprung end but – and here’s the important bit – an extra two inches of travel. Hammer-time over, I examined the igor-more-bodies like transformation with a mixture of satisfaction and mild concern.

Firstly it’s not exactly stealth black is it? It puts one in mind of a fat lass stuffed into six inch Essex stilettos. Secondly it’s a lump and a half adding over an old school pound to the front end. This thing has the gravitational mass of a small moon. One description may be ‘planted‘, another is ‘immovable‘. It’s certainly impossible for twelve stone** weakling like me to heft the front end over any obstacles – which is not such as issue since this spring behemoth shall easily roll over anything up to a two story building.

The back end tho, suspended only by my withered legs is likely to get quite a shock when said building transfers potential energy into arse reaming force. A quick ride suggests finding out might be quite a lot of fun until it all goes wrong and someone loses a colon. And again searching relentlessly for anything positive, the massive weight increase has been largely offset by the removal of a single headset spacer.

Anyway it’s done now and so am I . After two weeks of string bag/stick an octopus in there 12 hour days, absolutely nothing is of more importance to me right now than just going to sleep.

So for those short of time, here’s the pictorial summary of things that happened in the light. For night rides, please mentally insert ‘fish out of water’ rider desperately signally for something pint sized and medicinal.

Tomorrow we’ll take fat boy fat for a play in the Monmouth hills. A place hardtails rarely go. And even more rarely return. Luckily I’m equipped with a bravery-light/mince-heavy riding style which should see me through.

* Mainly – it has to be said – fat mountain bikers going quite slowly. Jess caught one up on a climb which made me grin a bit. I was still someway behind 😉

** I refuse to accept the existence of metric measurements. I was born before 1971 and the common market and can therefore only think in imperial.

… is a term of non endearment for any item favouring function over firm. Differently Beautiful is another. In Yorkshire we’d probably have gone with ‘throw a blanket over it ugly’*. But however tactful or otherwise any appraiser of my new bike is, they’ll be united on the premise that it’s not much of a looker.

Which means it had best fulfil the function part of the equation then, especially as my properly bo Cove Hummer went the other way. So with bits swapped over and a lung function within hacking distance of normal, off we went on a voyage filled with discovery.

Not content to be campaigning a new frame, the sun and promised dustiness of trail rolled out shiny summer shoes and packet fresh thinly lined gloved. My understandable worry over the predictable chaos risked with tweaking so many riding variables was mitigated by the simple fact that Nic had built the frame, and I’d not attempted to improve his good work through drunken spanner action.

This theme of ‘the new and exciting’ spanned kit, bike and now location. A quick spin from Ross had us gasping for summer-feeling air with a gradient last seem lurking in the Malvern Hills. Here lies a network of lavishly cheeky trails nestling secretly between two steep sided valleys, further honed by local trail pixies.

The first of which came after twenty minutes or so of climbing and an airy prefix that ‘you might want to watch out for some steps about half way down. Or a quarter. Well you’ll know when you get there”. I nearly didn’t get there at all with the first off camber corner drawing my eye to 200m of stumpy fall line for the inappropriately directioned.

Survived that with nothing like smoothness or calm before – 14 seconds into my off-road experience – a 10 set stepfest with matching handrails loomed front and centre in somewhat incongruous geography. Odd place to site those puppies I thought, before twigging the vertical drop they spanned. My run in was very much a might-run-over as David clipped a handrail leading to a second of the kind of excitement us older gentlemen really don’t need at that time of the morning.

My approach was a little straighter and the expected rear-end batterage** was nicely muted. Right then, steps not a problem let’s go try and some other trail obstacles. Off camber, dust – YES DUST IN APRIL – roots, logs, tree-gaps were all dispatched with as close to aplomb as my riding skill can get.

Finishing the descent had me wondering how the bike rode. And after some further cogitation, the surprising conclusion reached was ‘like a bike’. It’s stiff enough to reward climbing effort but gives enough that you’re not performing a St. Vitus after a couple of hours. It’s pumpy fun in the corners, stable at speed and pretty damn neutral if – as I couldn’t help myself but do – thrown off some medium/verging on the small jumps.

Matt and David liked it enough to be considering creating their own entries in the carbon tribe FoD crew. Based on the cacophony of echo through those fat hollow tubes, you’ll be able to hear the subsequent noise pollution from about Gloucester.

Apparently tho mine needs a bigger fork over which I’m ambivalent mainly for financial/fiscal rolling pin of doom reasons. It does need a seat dropper tho that shall require either approval or honed kitchen implement dodging skills before purchasing.

But riding is so much more than bikes, and pretty trinkets and even the bullshit that comes with it. It’s being out with your friends, choking on their dust and sweating in the sunshine. It’s sitting in the pub talking bike and bollocks. It’s coming home and blowing 600 l/m into a peak flow meter that two weeks saw less than half of that.

It’s so good I’m doing it again tomorrow. This time with Jess because whenever your kids ask to ride, you can only say yes. The bike is staying in the car because it’ll be an ideal companion for some dad/daughter blue trail/ice cream action.

Obviously I’ve thrown a blanket over it.

* or ‘looks like somebody set her on fire and then put her out with an axe’ as an old mate once memorably described a recent drunken conquest.

** I am talking going back to a hardtail after a few months. Not some kind of Deliverance style woods action. Just so we’re clear.

That’s it, right there. Documenting the maiden voyage of the good ship “pointless-niche” had me gloves off camera in hand. It was with great care the soul stealer was returned to its’ padded pouch, which may explain the lack of available ‘what the fuck have I left this time’ brain capacity to solve the difficult equation concerning a lack of hand shaped fabric and cold fingers.

I worked it out of course. Eventually. About a mile down the track. Which developed into a three mile round trip attacking the original location in some kind of frenzied pincer movement – as is the plight of the navigationally challenged man. Desperation even caused me to flick the GPS to ‘map‘ where all manner of symbols and lines randomly lit up the screen.

Moth like was I transfixed right up to the point where it became apparent I had absolutely not a single clue how this was going to help me. Or even what it might mean – “green probably trees/looks up/yep lots of those/white probably roads/looks down/nope none of those/excellent let’s go *rimmer red dwarf salute* THAT WAY”

Otherwise a successful outing measured by if you first do not succeed, redefine exactly what you mean by success. Which starts simply by stating that riding bikes on a school day* is always a good thing especially if your friends are torn between office window looks of longing, and the email ping of some smug bastard serially sending you photos of dry singletrack. If and when I’m sent down to hell, I’ll probably not bother to appeal.

The bike though was a tremendous success despite Halfords finest efforts to sabotage it with cunning incompetence. Take tyre pressures as an example each rated at 75 PSI which – if you have a special kind of mind – equals 150 for the pair to be metered out as you feel fit. Say why not 90 in the front, 60 in the back? The headset was almost tight enough to stop the fork falling out, but the threaded slack had been taken up by the brake callipers leaving both wheels shorn of any motion.

No matter, we were soon off to test the efficacy of the ride more/drive less ultimatum I delivered to myself about a week ago when crafting new buying bikes angles. First impressions were excellent, road bike stiff, adequately brisk on the road even with knobbly – if still terrifying thin – tyres and brakes that did something other than fire up your imagination of head on collisions. 15 minutes later we ‘had wood‘ where my guess at tyre pressures was exposed first by a wet root and then by some swearing.

A quick hiss and prod returned some grip to the strange experience of riding off-road on what looks like a road bike. It doesn’t feel like one tho, nor does it ape the characteristics of a mountain bike. The best way to describe it is – well – spaniel.

A bar width track carpeted in Winter’s colours of dead leaf and live mud must be investigated and RIGHT NOW. A choice of an easy line or some ambitious slick root complex is no choice at all. The bloody thing is possessed by an irrepressible spirit of fun, it’s going to get you into trouble and while you might come out bleeding, you’ll most likely be laughing all the way to the fracture clinic.

Going home isn’t as rewarding as going long so best just hang on for the ride, close your eyes when your inner accountant screams “I can’t get over that, I don’t have a£500 suspension fork”, open your mind to the possibility of direct simplicity. But don’t be fooled that fun is analogous to immortal.

Riding cross bikes on woody singletrack, hanging onto the drops, carving lines by thought alone and remembering to breathe is, of course, a splendid way to spend your time, but it’s also transient.

One ride doesn’t tell you much. But it’s a ride that wouldn’t have happened on any other bike. And for that, we’re already into the positives. Soon – oh God please let it be soon – Winter will be over and there will be sun-hardened singletrack ready for an early morning raid, a lunchtime skive or a post work blast.

A few more rides like that and we might have found ourselves a new Rog 🙂

* I am sort of on holiday this week. Which so far has seen me spend 17 hours working in London on Monday, and about the same here yesterday. This is because nice people want to pay me to work on my days off and I want to make sure the family are not rendered destitute. It’s a virtuous circle. Only not round. or very virtuous.