Bank holidaying.

Hollins Cross, half way or so?

A really mellow long Blank Holiday weekend starting with a Royal Wedding special circuit of Stoopid Loop with added Whinstone Lee Tor excursion - over Middle Moor and the Roych, along Rushup, Hollin Cross and its cousin, Hope. Ladybower via the deconstructed roller coaster, WLT then Cut Gate and a mellow roll back home.

Blurry hot at the top of WLT.

 Third time on Cut Gate in seven days, which is probably excessive, but it was in prime nick bar the head wind all the way across to Langsett. Pay back was a hurricane-force tailwind all the way back home for big ring smiles.

Cut Gate - the second crossing, out and back from the front door on Wednesday night.

And then things went secret singletrack, Cracken Edge twice, once alone, once with mates. Proper bonkers fun on shoulder-hugging singletrack with the odd steep drop to the left and a cracking, brain-out final flourish over series of, well, humps. A sort of dromedary, camel's back thing. Sigh.

Cracken Edge, secret squirrel singletrack with ace views and the odd drop and a camel-back finish.

 And with the cross ride thrown in the middle - BM's test Cotic >X< no less - I make that around 120 off-road miles in a mix of sun and wind and mellow. The reward? Fish finger sarnies in the making and a date with UK12 or whatever it's called, on Rags and with added picnic content, because I'm not fit or fast enough to race.

Hmmm... pause for thought.

And some bonus lambs...

The angriest bike in the world.

Is this one. A small, shiny bundle of bright-eyed attitude. Light without feeling in the least fragile. Frantic without feeling frenetic. Fierce but still friendly. Ace.

And in the interests of balance, here are some lambs...

Eccentric sheep...

Less complicated than an external eccentric bottom bracket...

A bit like spring.

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.

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...

Just a bit further...

 

Holme Moss, supposedly closed, but hey, how dangerous can sheep be in these conditions? Is the warning sign really necessary? Think it through though, sheep in snow = instant camo. They could be on you before you know it. Not a place to linger, so home the long way. Tuesday's plan realised.

Kicking back...

Kicking back at the end of family Christmas by proxy with my oldest friend, Keith, and his family in sunny North London. I'm missing the Peak, but it's no bad thing to remind yourself of how the southern half lives and I'm looking forward to seeing hills on all sides tomorrow. Just love the final stretch up from Chinley with Chinley Churn on one side of the road and Mount Famine on the other - feels like home.

A funny sort of day. I've single-speeded the Roadrat and fitted drops to it as well and it stowed away on the journey down. Imagine that. So this morning, there it was scratching at the front door like a febrile moggy. Or was that me?

At any rate, the ice has mostly melted, so I took off through the suburban wastelands, up to Barnet and beyond. Christmas reclaims London's roads for bikes, temporarily at least, and there's something lovely about humming past the seeping warmth of other people's Christmases. Brief glimpses through windows of people turned in on their families with just the odd runner breaking up the post-apocalyptic quiet. Cars hibernating quietly.

Running 32 semi-slicks and, compared to the 25s on Mog, you don't half feel the extra weight and drag on the ups. I think 42:16 with those tyres will kill my legs in the Peak. I'm just not that strong. But today it was just nice to skim along the lanes, take in the views and appreciate quiet roads.

I came back via the street I grew up in. Oddly familiar and oddly foreign at the same time. And somehow much, much smaller than I remember. How did it shrink so much? Familiar houses but with different people in and the one I grew up in looking slightly scruffy and unkempt, but with a shiny Merc sitting in the drive. Just odd, not sad, not nostalgic.

And then the cold water shock of total immersion in someone else's family Christmas. After four hours of solitary, reflective cycling.

Keith's parents are almost like surrogate family to me, I've known them my entire life. Grew up on the same street as him. Was born eight days before. Best man at his wedding. We're very different, but there's a comfort and ease and trust in familiarity that makes this an easy place to be right now.

Feels right.

Now lounging on the sofa of a sleeping house and channel-hopping sporadically in a forlorn quest to find something, anything, mindlessly watchable. It's easy to look down and spot the rubbish in the gutter, but look up and there are happy sheep in green fields.

Er, I think I need to go to bed.

Geese and Cows and Sheep and Chill

Started writing about the Kielder 100 and how I crashed and buried my race at 50 miles with a broken front brake and how flat and dispirited I felt and how it turns out that I cared quite a lot about finishing the event that I said I didn't give a stuff about. But it seems pointless. Took the road bike out yesterday and had a 90-minute tear up, hammered every climb, big-ringed the flats, screamed down every descent and came back with a smile on my face.

Still regret crashing, but I know it was my own fault for riding too fast in the wrong place, end of. So, I'll go back next year. Fitter. Faster. Brighter. And make up for it. So let's close that box. For now.

And then this evening took my tired legs and the Rat and span out along the Longdendale Trail, looking around at fields full of cows and geese. Which seemed odd. And sheep. And mirrored lorries on the water's surface. And crags I've climbed on. And crags I haven't. Then rolled home in grey, melancholic early evening light with just a hint of autumnal edge in the breeze.

And there was something comfortable and familiar about riding a bike in the chill. A distant echo of winter. And somewhere inside there was a little buzz of anticipation and faint memories of knobblies buzzing across frozen grit trails into a pool of focused bright. Yes please.