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.

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.

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.

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?

Autumn

It's fantastic out right now. Enough recent rain to damp down dried-out loose trails and hold them together but not so much that things are draggy and sludgy. The Shooting Cabin is a primo ribbon of white, quarzite sandpaper dotted with currant bun gritstone boulders and improbably fast and grippy.

Crested the climb last night to see folded alp-style summits layered across the skyline in the last of the evening sun and just stood and gawped. No rushing, no hammering, just a steady, smooth cruise into the light then down the not quite legal narrow singletrack that clings to gorse-smothered hillside above Kinder Reservoir then dives down into William Clough with the light dying all the while.

Then lights on and up behind the quarry and onto Chinley Churn. Tired legs still spinning away with a life of their own. Picking through puddles and rocks, following familiar lines under the water, diving directly over the ever-changing rock step then. Stop. Gawp. Huge hanging moon filling the sky like a cartoon still. Breathtaking.

Chilly now with cold hands, colder for being dunked along with the rest of my body in a Jon-sized puddle on top of Middle Moor. Rail the descent, tip-toe through the walk-through garden, then the dive down Highgate Lane into Hayfield, fly in and don't touch the brakes on the narrow singletrack for rushing gorse-lined speed.

All that's left is the trundle back home, salivating tragically at the thought of fish and chips and tea. And the reality is at least as good as the imagining. Summer? It's over-rated...