A Small Ball Of Grrrr....

I love my Ragley Ti, it's mad in a totally uncivilised way. It wants to go - up, down, round, straight off things, straight over stuff, it wants to go fast.

Normally that's fine. Normally that's the best thing in the world. But after four weeks of kicking myself senseless in a structured way, on a long, steady, chatty,  autumnal - June is the new autumn you know - Peak District semi-epic, it simply isn't.

Try to ride it steady and restrained and mellow and it sulks and grumps like a hung-over dad woken on a Sunday morning by bright-eyed kiddies who want to go play in the park before breakfast.

It grumbles.

It hates meandering along the sort of rocky trails it normally skims over in a blaze of shiny aggression. It blunders up short climbs it'd normally dismiss with a blur of pedals and a high-pitched whir of sun-lit, ecstatic, take-off ebullience.

It sulks.

It still looks after you. Even when you're slow and tired, that slack head angle makes steep downs a breeze. And every so often it hints at smooth, blurry, speed.

But mostly it just sulks.

Said sorry to it. Washed the grit off its shiny titanium tubes. Gave it a virtual hug and put it back in the bike cave where it undoubtedly spent the night grumbling to the other bikes: 'He wasn't trying, the useless git. Just sat there waiting for me to do the work. I need a new rider, a proper one...'

Until next time, when normal service will be resumed. Sorry Rags...

Haven't taken this pic for a while...

Something like winter. At last... Forget the wanky sheep cartoons with the mawkish summer bird. This is what it's all about. More please.

 

 

Soft Sunday

The trouble with living in a valley is that every road out of it seems to go up. And the trouble with living in the Peak District is that there are an awful lot of hills. Which is great. It's easy to ride hill after hill after hill, to sneak out for a gentle roll down the Longdendale Trail and end up honking back over Holme Moss three hours later with warm legs and sparkly eyes... But sometimes you just need to CTFO.

Which is how I came to chuck the Double Cross in the back of the car and drive over to Ladybower in a very mellow, slow sort of way. Then ride gently on mostly flat tarmac and easy trails around the reservoir looking at ducks and russet brown leaves and the sun glinting on the water and the strange misery of Sunday walkers, which is an odd contagion spread by frowning. 

And I was considerate and friendly and smiley. I said hello personally to every dog I passed because, unlike people, they seemed happy to be out in the sunshine. And to top it all off, I had a lavish picnic consisting of a PowerBar.

I didn't ride lots of miles. Or climb any hills. Or inch down desperately steep techy things. I just sort of trundled along in the odd October sunshine. Topped it down with tea and a flapjack and headed home for pastrami and gherkin pizza followed by melt in the middle chocolate sponge pud with chocolate ice cream.

The 100-mile road ride can wait for another day.

Chill The Feck Out.

Redemption

Comedy Friday, Indian summer style and I sneak out into the heat to meet a couple of friends and ride in the sunshine. It starts badly when Rich realises that the lateral movement in his rear end is around the same as the up and down motion and abandons all hope to scoot home.

I am grumpy. It's fashionable to like heat and dust and sunshine, but I don't. I like dry and cold and crisp. I like ice. And frozen Peak ground that grips and rips like coarse Velcro. Given sunshine I mostly want to stop and bask in it. Look at distant hills. Yawn and doze and sleep. I don't want to ride in it with sweat running into my eyes and soaking my clothes.

The wrong bike, skulking. As well it might. Nothing to do with the rider's shortcomings...

And, like Gromit, I have 'the wrong bike'. I have my RC405 which after a change of head angle and fork and return to the original shock feels slow and heavy and just wrong. I have no idea why I brought it. Well I do, a small, quiet bit of my brain thinks it might be 'necessary' for the not very legit', rocky, twisty trail we've earmarked.

God knows why. Why I think the Ragley might not be up to it, it's ripped down everything else round here with a sort of bright-eyed, disdainful, insouciance.

And I ride the trail incredibly badly. Part of it I don't ride at all, I ride round it, and the rest I sort of thump and graunch and haltingly fall down. It's really quite nasty. And meanwhile Emmy makes it look easy and graceful and smooth and streaks off into the distance grinning like a cat that's massacred a whole park's worth of pigeons.

The rest of the ride is similarly rubbish on my part. I feel guilty for being grumpy and cussed. I choose a really astonishingly bad route back out of Glossop and even a new to me, entertaining, twisty, grassy descent doesn't change things.

So on Saturday I break myself in the sun on the road bike. Savouring the oddness of furnace-like heat, bright sunshine and wafting gently down back lanes strewn with autumnal leaves. In temperatures of 25˚C or so. You can't help thinking that however pleasant it is, the world is somehow broken. This is October?

Sunday. Redemption day. Early day. Head out with Dave Next Door and ride a succession of bad things on a weekend linked with the odd legitimate trail.  This time I'm on the 'right bike', the Ragley. Fast, borderline psychotic, and lover of steep things.

And the right one. A tight bundle of aggressive, slack-steering confidence.

 This time we ride the grassy, twisty downhill thing without the bike sucking the life out of it. Then twist our way round, via a chance meeting with a local friend out on his rather nice new bike, to the top of 'the trail'. A rubbly, rocky mix of steps and turns and twists that corkscrews its way down the hillside. It's as good as anything I've ridden in Spain or France or Nepal or the Andes and this time, I ride it properly - neat and composed and smooth.

Feeling relaxed on the bike and just, well, together. And halfway down I start to grin like an idiot, because it's a brilliant trail. And the sun is shining. And the Ragley's ability to slow down time on the steeps and the trickies means I never feel remotely out of control.

It is the right bike. And just for ten minutes or so, I feel like the right rider.

Angry Bike

Raindrops against my window. A singlespeed. Ride over to the Fox with two tons of U-lock in my pack which I lock to a handy picnic table before hiding under a handy roofed thing with non-operative wood-burner. Meet people. Ride for two hours badly through gritty slurry and semi-liquid cow pats. Final descent on path composed entirely of the latter. Yuk. Get back to pub. Drink beer. Eat curry. Talk too much about rubbish. Unlock bike. Ride home over Lantern Pike with resurgent curry. Surprised that legs feel good. Brake pads evaporate. Home. Order sintered pads on line. Next morning wake to this... Just like old times :-)

Access All Feckin' Areas? Feck right off.

I like the current rights of way legislation as they relate to mountain biking. The mountain bike press love to make a ridiculously complex meal out of it, endless articles by experts and instant experts advocating wider access for bikes, same laws as Scotland, same rights as walkers and so on.

They need to get a grip. It's simple, really simple. The current rights of way legislation in England and Wales is comical. It's based on random historic accident and has nothing to do with suitability for purpose. Tracks which are sustainable for all-weather bike use are classified as footpaths, trails which run over delicate, friable peat or rare psychedelic lichens can easily be designated as bridleways. It's rubbish.

But here's the thing. Here in the real world where we actually ride, you can ride footpaths as long as you use a certain amount of discretion and, increasingly, even if you don't. Some of the best riding on this side of the Peak is technically illegal - I use the phrase 'illegal', but some magazine egghead will have different, more complicated take on it, so let's just say, it's on footpaths - and it's ridden a fair bit.

Meanwhile, the popular main routes in the Peak, the ones which are repeatedly reproduced by mtb journos and guidebook writers with minor tweaks so they can claim to be 'original' are over-run by mountain bike tourists - slow, fat, talentless weekend wannabes who buy the book or magazine and ride the routes.

Yep, the routes in the mags and the guide books. The ones which are strictly legal because they can't afford not to be. Now imagine a world where rights of way are thrown open. Imagine the updated guidebooks, the magazine articles - 'Ride The New Peak - we show you five great unridden trails' etc. Imagine hordes of riders descending on your favourite local trails in all weathers, because the bulk of mountain bike tourists have the environmental sensitivity of a Texan oil baron, and trashing them.

Mincing down the technical stuff, doing that grim-faced 'we're extreme sports people' face they pull for walkers, chewing the feck out the trails.

Stuff that. I like the rights of way legislation just the way it is. The guidebook writers and the mountain bike journos can go on rehashing the same old, same old. The bulk of riders can carry on riding those legal routes. And the rest can stay just the way it is, thanks.

And yes, that may be selfish. Or elitist. Or just plain unfair and wrong. But I really don't care. Thing is, there's nothing to stop you riding those trails right now except lack of initiative and laziness.

Summer - For One Day Only...

Summer was yesterday. Dry, hot, fast - seemed a shame to waste it, so I didn't. Great day.

Here and there.

My mate Mike stayed over on Tuesday night. He bought curry and covered the front room in lightweight kit before spending hours wrestling with a GPS / lap-top nexus and finally getting up at 5.30 am and dragging a bloody great bike box to Glossop station en route for Manchester Airport.

He's off to ride the Divide, which is ace. And he's kind of scared and excited and wearing ridiculous old clothes to throw away in Banff and watching him filtering ride kit and backpacking kit and kit kit reminded me of packing for a big mountain climbing trip.

And I have to admit I was a little envious. But at the same time, very, very glad I wasn't off to ride endless American hardpack for days on end.

I like stopping and looking at places. The best thing about extended traveling is being able to stop and take in the good bits at will, not rush past them and through them and over them. And I can see why people like the feeling of movement, of passing through, of motion. But sometimes stopping works too.

And then later, when Mike was somewhere over the Atlantic, I snuck out for a ride with my mid-week riding bud, a twice-postponed mission in search of local tech and we found it. Awesomely lovely rocky downhill singletrack with enough flow to keep it fluid and enough rock to make it consistently interesting.

Bloody ace and ten minutes from my front door.

Sigh. Best thing I've ridden for ages and good company too. And with added cake.

Sometimes the best things are nearer than you think.

Secret Squirrel...

Rode two new and potentially brilliant trails the other night, one I've been eyeing for ages, but never actually made the effort to try - obvious line, one slightly sick bit, mostly good fun with added washboard on the latter stages, thank ewe sheep.

And the other one that I had not the faintest idea existed. A storming mix of rhodi-lined ridge-contouring scenic smile territory - 40% attention on the trail and the rest on the views - diving into distinctly un-Peaky, woodsy singletrack, mulch and root and the odd rocky step to keep you thinking and, whoa, nice.

Just brilliant. And amusingly just 20 minutes easy ride from my front door.

You've got to love the way local trails can still surprise you. It's all lovely and familiar and mellow, then bam, right out of the blue. A bit like discovering your long-term partner has a secret sideline as a trampolening fire-eater or the local Indian has a 'secret menu' with loads of interesting new stuff you've never tried before. Not sure that ever happens though...

Don't get me wrong. I like riding new trails in new areas as much as anyone, but there's something properly lovely about rummaging through your local area and coming up trumps.

So where is it? Ah, that'd be telling.

Sunday.

 

Dusty.

Rode Cut Gate out and back last night from the front door. On the Pace. Wondering why on earth I'd set the bars up quite so high. I think the Ragley's got to me. Anyway, cracking evening, dry, loose, dusty. Funny riding suspension again, but a bonus in the flat half-light when rocks look like shadows and shadows look like drops and drops don't really look like anything till you launch off them. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and slowed down. I'm starting to realise now that I'm not that quick at night. Maybe because I can't see anything. Mind you, the dust made it worse. But I'm not complaining about that.

Dirty, filthy, titanium, road speed...

An ace weekend. Saturday out with my mate Steevo for one of those even-paced Peak trundles that just seem to be just right - took the Pace, so Rags could bang his headset against the bike cave door and was all the more mellow for it.

Traditional 10 o'clock start from Hope, a steady roll along the Roman Road, up the concrete switchbacks and down a water-ravaged Lockerbrook with new steps and plenty looseness. Tea and ducks at Fairholmes, then over WLT the long way up and the short way down. Riding appallingly badly, with a cracking inability to adjust to the faster steering of the Pace, but it didn't really seem to matter.

Then back to Hope via the Roller Coaster and back down the Roman Road and a fleecing at the Woodbine. Dear God that place has got stupidly expensive. Nice to catch up with a not seen enough mate and good to ride and not feel completely broken afterwards...

.... so took Mog out on Sunday for one of those ever-expanding road trundles and felt, well, not quite good, but okay. Wore, erm, shorts and a jersey and NO windproof. Five hours, some biggish climbs, some nice views and a horrendous squeal and pulsing from the rear brake that the drop into the back of Castleton finally killed. Whew...

HRV fine this morning, weather good, clocks forward. And suddenly, this evening, it all clicked into place. At last. With 90 minutes of dirty, filthy, titanium road speed. One of those rides where there seems to be a tailwind even when there isn't one, when you just fly up climbs and every flat is blur of big-ring speed. Finished over Monk's with a big grin and a soap-time view down into Glossop.

 Hello legs, welcome back.

The best sounds in the world...

There are two really good noises in the world, yes, only two. One is the distinctive thunk that an ice tool makes when the placement is spot on, solid, right, in good ice. And the other is the strange hollow, crunching hum of mountain bike tyres running fast and loose over dry, hard, singletrack.

Given that Kinder Downfall thawed at least a month ago and even when it was in, looked worryingly think and brittle, no prizes for guessing that this evening's dying of the light soundtrack was the second.

But actually, what made it a really lovely ride was the company, a climby mate who doesn't ride mountain bikes much, but with a mildly broken foot ain't going anywhere fast without wheels.

It's lovely riding your local trails and seeing them, just a little through someone else's eyes. And when they're drying and fast and framed in golden late afternoon light and punctuated with incendiary grins at the bottom of every descent and hyperventilation at the top of every climb, it's just ace.

And at the end, when Danny said thanks for the ride and the loan of the bike and I said no, really, thank you for dragging me out, it was special, I really meant it. Bikes are great, but after all, they're just bikes. It's people that really matter.

The Things You Find...

At the top of Chunal no less. I have no idea why anyone would decide that the junction of the Monks Road and Chunal would be an appropriate place to site an advert for a Barbie pink, Playboy Hummer, but there it was - with a rainbow behind it no less. So if you need transport to the works Christmas do, here's the answer...

Meanwhile, in a slightly different, parallel universe, had a spectacular perfect arctic day on Kinder with my mate Dave and Zak, the crazed springer spaniel. Just lovely, bring back the snow, please.

 

 

Trails Hello! style

This week BadlyWiredDog and his glamorous Pace RC405 invited Hello! to sample the delights of their sumptuous local trails. Or something like that...

Anyway, took a London-based colleague and mate and a couple of his Sheffield-dwelling mates for a work-day rumble around some local trails for local people. After a bit of a kitchen kerfuffle over tyres - no, Aspens are not a good idea in the Peak at this time of year. And oops, tubeless Wolverines and DT Swish rims really don't get on unless you have a crowbar handy. And why don't you just borrow these Minion DHF,s eh? - we headed out on a blissfully sunny, chilly and crisp early winter's day.

Tsssk.... you really shouldn't be here.

Just the process of deciding where to go makes you rethink your local trails. Trying to decide which ones are worth the time and the effort and which doors need to be kept firmly closed.So we headed over to Charlesworth on suicide lane - 'I'll just overtake on this blind bend shall I then?' - and up from there along Coombes Edge, or whatever it's called, then down and across the Shooting Cabin in reverse.

Gotta love that climb and you have to love the views of Kinder at the end of it, looking across at the edge sprawled out across the skyline with the fold of the Downfall creasing the edge of the world. And hey, it's a quiet weekday and, well, you've got to show guests the best bits, so it was off round the corner along traversey singletrack to 'that' clough.

Perfect, nicely damped singletrack with the odd rock-step thrown in. Cruising along looking at the views while the other scream off into the picture perfect future. Smiles and laughter. Priceless.

More of the same follows - Hayfield sarnines and Eccles Cakes, then Chinley Churn in frosty sunlight and a final whooped hurrah down Coldwell Clough and a finish behind the campsite into Hayfield before a final, tired drag back over the hill to home with a sinking sun for company.

Brilliant day and nice to be reminded by others' grins and enthusiasm, just how good my local riding is. There's something quite lovely about sharing your trails and seeing them again through fresh eyes and memories, so thanks for that guys. Must do it again some time soon.

A patchwork quilt.

Two really ace rides this weekend. One with a group of friends, one that started with a group and sort of somehow ended up as a solo outing finishing at home.

And right in the middle of today's ride, I stopped just below the farm full of dogs above Hayfield and just took in the views.

It occurred to me that I knew the trails in every direction, could spot the Shooting Cabin to the left, the road up past the quarry onto Chinley Churn ahead, the track junction below the promentary near Kinder Low, knew where Kinder Reservoir nestles unseen and where the track from South Head that I'd just come down, runs. And Highgate Road. And 20 Trees. And more prosaically, the Sett Valley Trail. And loads more.

All tracks I've ridden over and over again. Laced with memories good and bad, old and not so old. And I thought about the process of getting to know an area, working out how tracks join together and link and overlap, those eureka moments when you grasp that the trail you rode yesterday is just a linking bridleway apart from today's route. Like doing a crossword. Or putting together a patchwork quilt. Not that I've ever done that.

And what I love about it, is that you stop thinking in terms of pre-formed routes and instead, just go. Mix things up as you ride depending on how you feel, how stuff's riding, where your mates want to wander. Or not.

The perfect Bank Holiday Monday begins with a dawn start and no particular place to go, just a bike, some food and a blank canvas.

It might be a short day. It might not. Like the ride over to Edale for a group ride that turned into an epic loop over Cut Gate and home again in crisp, grippy snow. Or the one that was mostly about an hour or two basking in the sun below Hollins Cross and watching the world go by. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes with someone you love.

But all possible because in your head, it's all joined up together.

And some of the the best rides with friends, are when you find another patch for your quilt. A new bridleway. Or track. Or footpath. That fits neatly and logically into place. Fills in a hole. Sometimes with the blazingly obvious. Sometimes brilliantly not so.

And I don't think it'll ever be finished.

It's all about the sheep...

Faith in human nature and bikes roughly restored. And sheep too. So what is it with me, I go riding with mates in the best places and I come home with pictures of sheep. Again.

'If I act coy, will you love me? Will you?'

Not just any sheep mind, these were weird homing sheep that spotted us from the other side of the field, trotted over and stood there looking all clean and blow dried and 'your sandwiches wouldn't melt in our mouths' seductive.

'And now I'm playing hard to get...'

They were some sort of pedigree sheep I reckon. Show sheep. Pampered, prima-dona-ish, glitterati types, fed on prime, virgin alpine meadow grass, specially imported from Switzerland and shampooed daily at an exclusive local hair salon...

'Flutter...'

... in the Goyt Valley. So maybe not.

Anyway, a brilliant secret singletrack mission, some on tracks I knew already and some on new stuff. And all of it ace in a twisty, rocky, moor-ish - see what I did there. And see what I did there too, lazy or what - forbidden fruit, weekday morning sort of way.

'Can I eat it?' - either participant...

Made all the better by getting home in time to hear rolling thunder usher in an afternoon of blackest, darkest, Peak rain. Good trails, good company, good sheep. What more could you ask for?

I thought I was someone else. Someone bad.

Thank god for bikes. And friends. And ridiculous inquisitive lambs on perfect Peak summer days.

Scorchio...

Everything's gone dry. Trails that ten days ago were a mess of gritty mud have dried into rippled, rutted, fast-packed Peak ceramic. Shorts are a given and not an if. And you can almost ride and then put the bike away without washing it.

Almost but not quite because the perma-mud along the track below Derwent Edge is still fighting a valiant rearguard action against sun and drying winds. Which in a funny way just makes the rest of it even better.

A lovely ride of halves in the sun today. Started alone on familar trails unvisited for a while, tip-toeing along delicate lines, remembering how the Pace feels on hard, dry, grippy ground, consciously relaxing and letting the bike have its head down a rubble-filled toboggan run. Then gawping foolishly at the views across to Kinder before heading up again, tyres drumming on rock, legs hurting in a good way.

Then, by chance, meeting friends high above Hope and tagging along for a chattery, mellow, hour or two. Round to Ladybower for tea and cake then up the slabby climb, along and down my favourite climb. Compromised. Skimming through rock gardens and digging old lines from deep inside the reptilian, mountain biking bit of my brain.

Before saying goodbyes and winching back, slowly onto the high ground again. Enjoying the peace and the views and the sunshine. No hurry. No racing. Just a gentle roll back to the car. A happy day.

Not a number...

Very entertained by gamboling number- and colour-coded lambs on the way down from Kinder yesterday. Ewes match their lambs, colour and number. What does the colour mean? Search me, maybe they just ran out of paint. Good grief, it'll be baaa codes next. I'll get my coat...