Riding a bike is hardly rocket science, Tuesday night rides are essentially on a fixed format: ride around the woods in the dark for a couple of hours until we build up a thirst, then slake it in the pub (but then as the rest of life is complicated, it’s no bad things to keep things simple)
So to try and make this ride report a little more readable I’m going to resort to a list of statistics (thanks to having my gps thingy on – some of these are actually not made up!)
Number of riders – 30 (actually, probably more like 35, but everyone was milling around so difficult to count)
Number of groups – 3 Sociable, still Sociable but a bit quicker – and Masochists (any group with Chris Noble in – will involve suffering)
Number of riders in the Masochists group – 5 namely; Me, Tom, Chris N, Geraint and Simon (we were sent off first, so no idea how many in the other two groups)
Number of riders in the Masochists group at the top of the allotment – 4 (Geraint jumped ship to one of the other groups – traitor)
17.69 Miles. This is how far the masochists group went (from car park to pub). Difficult to say much about this, but those were 17.69 honest to goodness wiggly up and down miles with hardly a moments pause, and it is a world record beater (well – it’s further than the 5472ft 9in that Ashrita Furman managed to travel with a pool cue balanced on his chin)
1781ft – amount of height gain. It would make sense that we also did the same amount of descending, but given I spent all of those 1781ft trying to keep up with Chris & Tom, I was in oxygen debt for all of the downhill bits so couldn’t say for sure
4 seconds – Average life expectancy of an enemy soldier in Chuck Norris Films (isn’t the internet a wonder full thing). I can now add to this “number of second’s mortals can keep up with Chris & Tom before your heart tries to escape out of your mouth” (a theme is emerging…)
891 – according to my gps thingy, this is the number of calories I used up (no idea how it knows these things)
For comparison if I’d of decided to not go riding and spend 120mins doing the following I’d of burnt…Baking 314, airplane repair 378, knitting 166, hugging 126 or just watching the tv 120
440 – the number of calories I replaced with 2 pints of cider in the pub (which lets face it – is half the reason I bother with the riding bit).
Well, I always moan about having to endure a 10 mile journey to my closest trails, so I thought I would dust off the trusty OS map and see what I could discover. I sketched out a rough route over breakfast, prepped the bike and ventured off into the (relative) unknown…
It took all my determination to get out of the door, it had been threatening to rain for the past few hours and I am highly allergic to rain! However, I am glad I did, stumbling across some hidden trails that I shall definitely be re-visiting in the near future.
So with the OS in my pocket and “Don’t worry be happy” on repeat I trudged along the 1/2 mile section of road to reach The Bell Inn where the trail begins.
There is a path that extends from the pub and joins the local woods, where most of the ‘local youths’ can be found on any given evening. After sliding along the tunnel-like dirt track, the trail opened up, with several directional options I chose to to head up-hill towards the Chalk Quarry. Due to large amounts of precipitation that seemed to have been falling for the past 7 days I was pleasantly surprised (and slightly perplexed) to find bone dry, dusty trails beneath the relative shelter of the trees above. Perhaps these new trails have a micro-climate all of their own?
My mind was soon drawn to other things as the track became narrow, rocky and very steep. This is exactly what I was hoping I would find. The climb continued for several punishing minutes, reaching a clearing at the top gave me a perfect excuse to have a much needed drink and check the map.
After confirming that I wasn’t lost (yet) I continued along the ridge line, scoping out lots potential tracks off the steep slope to the left. After eyeing up one particular track I decided to give it ago, it wasn’t in the route plan but the whole idea of this outing was exploration. I am glad I did. berms, jumps, off-camber, high speed, Heaven. I Got a bit over excited and ended up heading towards a particularly large tree, however my head was acting as an effective break so no damage, only pride!
A short, steep push up and I was back en-route.
I then emerged onto a gravel double track path which ran parallel to the Westbury Chalk Quarry. This is quite a sight, seeing such a large space of the Earth missing seemed like quite a shame when you consider the rolling landscape that Westbury is nestled in. Another road section followed, stretching from the White Horse to Eddington, where the next trail was located.
This is where things began to unravel somewhat, I had accidentally ended up on a footpath, which lead in the opposite direction to the bridleway I was originally aiming for. There was a steep, grass track climb to reach the the summit. It was at this point I had realised I was more than likely in the wrong place. There were several hints:
It could be the lack of any visible tracks
It could be the gunfire which echoed across the plains
Or it could be the large “Military Firing Range KEEP OUT!” and red flags whistling in the high winds that swept across the vast space before me
Whatever the reason, I now had to rely on orienteering skills which I hadn’t used since completing Duke of Edinburgh 5 years previously. They were shoddy, At best. However, Technology soon came to the rescue as for some strange reason i had WiFi connectivity? Taking this as some kind of gift from the gods, I pulled out my phone and plotted a some points. I had no choice but to trust the directions it was giving me, as time was not on my side (I had to be in work within 90 minutes). For the first time ever, it took me to the destination i wanted to reach! This meant I was securely back on ground i could ride over without running the risk of finding an unexploded land mine or becoming a training exercise target.
All was well, I put my foot down mindful that the clock was ticking, re tracing my footsteps and revisiting the trails I had found only hours previously. They were fast and loose, and definitely made the steep climbs and risk of being “neutralized” by the T.A worth it. It was quite an adventure, I can no longer moan that nothing exciting ever happens, and to top it off I made it to work on time. Bonus.
SSUK11. An acronym for The Singlespeed UK Championships, 2011. Don’t be fooled, though, it’s not as grand as it may sound as the photo above possibly indicates. It’s really a singlespeeder’s get-together in a field with a bike ‘race’ in inverted commas. And quite a lot of beer.
Part of the home-made charm of this event is that it’s two-fingers-up to BC*, the UCI, multi-national bike manufacturers who like to sponsor major mountainbike events, and, possibly more importantly, the mighty Mr Shimano himself. The emphasis is most definitely on having fun and much less on any actual competition that may inadvertently arise from the ‘race’.
Every year someone will take on the responsibility of hosting the Singlespeed Champs. How this is decided is a mystery, though the organiser and venue is always new and different. This year’s event was in Pippingford Park on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Chris Noble and I signed-up early for this one. This was to be my third SSUK and Chris’ first. As ever, places were limited and heavily over-subscribed.
We had fully intended on arriving Friday afternoon in good time to pre-ride the course, but we got there much later than expected and barely had time to pitch our tents and sign-on before night fell. Still, we milled around the bar area and then pre-walked part of the course in the dark with torches. Densely wooded, hard-packed, dry, technical singletrack. This looked promising. The weather was good – in fact it had been a dry, and clear afternoon and evening. Fingers-crossed it would stay dry.
Personalised numberboards for that nice, personal, homemade touch.
Race day arrived and the forecast was for scattered showers. We both elected to squeeze in a lap before the race started at 11am. Unfortunately my enormous breakfast proved too lengthy for this to be possible so Chris – mindful of a potential podium finish – went to ride the course solo. As he set off there was a 30-minute shower of simply BIBLICAL proportions which left me cowering in my tent and bravely finishing off my third bacon roll.
About an hour later Chris returned to the campsite mud-spattered and wet through. “Best put on your mud tyres, mate”, were his words as I popped my head out of my tent, wiping away the ketchup.
There's a drivetrain in there somewhere.
One hasty tyre-change later (one that Jenson’s pit-crew themselves would be proud of) and with minutes to spare, we were on the startline. There is always a Le Mans-type start at SSUK, whereby the riders place their bikes on the course and then retire 100m or so back down the course. And then – out of sight – the organisers and marshalls move the bikes from where they were left by the owners. They shuffle them, if you like. Some are piled into sculptures of the same brand, while others are colour-coded into piles. Some are lost deep in the bracken, some are hung in trees. Some even callously zip-tied together. This only helps remove any trace of serious competition from the ‘race’ and makes the start more of a level playing field for the more inept among us.
Our intrepid heroes, post-race.
Originally this ‘race’ today had been planned to be four laps of a four-mile course, but the very recent downpour had pretty-much doubled the difficulty of an already challenging circuit, so this was wisely reduced to just the three laps, and also one particularly lethal descent was by-passed.
After the pre-race rider briefing which involved a great deal of heckling, a starting-pistol fired and 200 singlespeeders of all shapes, sizes, abilities and fancy-dress costumes were off running, trying not to twist their ankles on the bumpy grass of the start/finish area. When we got to the bikes there was the usual melée of swearing, panting, laughing and thrashing around aimlessly in undergrowth looking for your bike.
A steady stream of riders eventually entered the course-proper. And what a course it was. The soil type in the area is clay and chalk and what was dry and hard two hours ago was now slippery, sticky mud. And there was lots of it. Four miles of technical singletrack with a few wider sections, a million roots, a fast-and-flowing bermy section (which they used the next day for a chainless race), four or five dangerously steep rocky/muddy descents, chicken-runs, a few draggy climbs, much off-camber-ness and a stream crossing. Oh, and a beer stop. It’s like a water stop, only with beer. Kegs of it. Every rider was handed a half-pint of ale as they passed by on every lap and was cajoled into stopping racing. Some didn’t pass at all and stayed there for the duration. Very wise. Very good ale it was, too.
Eventually, my three laps of mud-plugging and fighting to stay upright came to an end and I crossed the finish line to rapturous cheering and applause as did everyone else. Chris had finished about 15 minutes ahead of me (he says) and had suffered a broken rear-brake lever in a minor spill right the start of the race. He claims to have had two beer stops, but I know he’s more of a lager-man and turns his nose up at ‘muddy ale’ as he calls it, so I doubt he even sipped it (if he stopped at all, that is…)
Body-strewn finish area.
Officially (in this very unofficial ‘race’) there is only 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th placings. That’s to say if you don’t get on the podium, then you finish in Equal-4th along with everyone else who didn’t finish in the top three. That said, Chris did manage to finish (unofficially) in 9th place. We are certain, however, that had it not been for the course turning to mush and his broken brake, he would have been much higher up the placings.
I’ve absolutely no idea where I finished (probably Equal-4th), but I did comfortably beat the Women’s winner, a zebra, a Thunderbird (possibly Scott Tracy) a Mexican wrestler, Shaun the Sheep and a golfing couple. Quite proud of that, I am.
Following a clean-up and some food (and some beer), there was the prize-giving. Wooden trophies partly made with wood from a Glaswegian gay bar to the winners, and a shiny new singlespeed frame to the Dave or Simon who could down a pint the fastest. A Dave won. Or was it a Simon. Various other goodies were handed out to those ‘competitors’ who’d had the worst crash, worst wardrobe-fail, put in the most effort for the least reward, or done something else really stupid while racing.
Dave or Simon won the beer speed-drinking contest.
More beer, then the Rollapalooza started. I was drawn against Chris in the qualifying stage, and he beat me by 0.82 of a second. No shame there, then. Chris went on to comfortably beat his opponent in the Second Round, but lost by a whisker to the eventual winner in the Quarter-finals. Excellent stuff from the boy Noble.
If you look closely, you can see the pain leaving Chris' body.
More beer. Back to the tents and our two-man fire made from fallen wood collected from the nearby forest edge. Perfect for keeping the September night-chill away, toasting tea-cakes and, as I discovered later, even melting wellies. The eight-strong contingent from the Dorset Rough Riders who had pitched-up nearby invited us over to share in their (much bigger and more impressive) fire and made us very welcome. Talk of exchange visits ensued, and a good time was had by all until weary limbs and wits forced us all to retire.
Dorest Rough Riders' forest-fire, and glow-stick encrusted bike.
Another great Singlespeed UK Championship over. Tick. Where will it be held next year? It’ll remain a mystery until about five or six months before it’s held. Chris has already decided he’s going.
Competitive, Chris? You’ve got the wrong race, mate.
(*Although alarmingly, this year the event was listed on BC’s website and there was even a BC Commissaire in attendance…)
A hastily improvised mug for Chris' nocturnal tea. Camping preparation isn't one of his strong points…
Great turnout last Tuesday night. No idea as to the head-count but there were definitely four (and sometimes five) in the ‘Anti-social’ group. Also 12 in the middle ‘Social’ group. I’m afraid the Super-social group were an unknown quantity to me. Anyone?
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Simon was road-testing (off-road testing, surely?) some of the wiiiiiiiiidest bars we’d ever seen which must have led to some serious shed-door modifications. Clocking-in at a whopping 800-bigass-milimetres, and given that some of the more gnadgery tree-lined singletrack we regularly negotiate in the darkness causes (some) problems for anything over 660mm, these bad-boys were going to take some skillful calibration on his part…. Needless to say they caught him out (at least) twice on the ride, leaving to him pick a load of bracken out of his cables/front wheel on one occasion, and then having a bark/glove interface scenario later on. He proudly showed off his grazed little-finger-knuckles in the pub afterwards. Kudos, Simon.
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His impressive wingspan and colossal bar-width aside, he ably led the four-strong Anti-social group and we all quietly rejoiced that the Noble-ator hadn’t shown up for once. Perhaps this could be a nice, ‘steady’ Anti-social ride for a change. Alas this wasn’t to be as en-route to the Allotment, a rider appeared out of the dark heading towards us. It was Chris. Dang.
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Visitor and prospective BCC newbie Rob joined the Anti-social group in a try-before-you-buy capacity. He’d driven from Amesbury (!) just to ride with us so we elected to show him a fair few of the best bits. All was going well until we completely lost him at the end of Transistor. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, he’d taken a minor spill and lost sight of us. He’d turned left towards the road at the end instead of right down the hill. Then, spotting a small red light in the distance, he chased after it. It turned out to be a car… The rest of us retraced our steps and split up to find him. Just before we were about to go to ‘Brown Alert’, some lights came out of the darkness back from the road and we were a fivesome again. Phew.
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At some point on the return leg the Anti-socials bumped into the Socials and we blended-in seamlessly for a few minutes. I don’t think they even noticed we were there.
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General consensus back in the pub was that it had been a great ride, and that it really wasn’t as muddy as all that, and that I *may* have painted too bleak a picture re last Sunday’s ride. It was REALLY muddy, then, I promise.
So the Longleat trails have already returned to their default Winter setting: sandy, lumpy, custard. This didn’t deter a number of the Bath Wednesday Night group from visiting us last Sunday.
The Pub Bike Of Doom didn’t even make it to the bottom of the street, let alone Longleat. My shonky, Frankenbike, singlespeed which I’d fully intended to use that day had a worryingly old chain and I’d resolved to fit a new one that morning, purely for safety’s sake. Of course, the worn chainring, sprocket and tensioner couldn’t then cope with an un-worn chain and it was slipping all over the teeth as I attempted to make my way to East Woodlands to meet them.
I nipped back home cursing and retrieved my old steel hardtail from the shed. Geared, and with a modicum of working brakes and a suspension, it would have to do although I knew the bald Nevegals were not really going to be man-enough for a Longleat gloop-fest. No time to change them now, though.
With minutes to spare, I met with five members of the Bath Wednesday Nightriders and one BCC member. A few weeks ago the Bath lot enjoyed their evening visit so much they said they wanted to return soon for a Sunday, ride the trails in daylight and maybe see a bit more of the forest. So we fixed a date.
Weather was looking hopeful for the day; fairly mild with just a chance of a shower or two. I hadn’t ridden in the forest for a while but guessed from all the recent rain we’d had that the trails by now would not be at their best. This was indeed the case.
It was the second visit for several of their number, so I put together an almost entirely different loop incorporating all the best bits that they didn’t have time to ride a few weeks ago, and also revisited some trails backwards. Would they even realise? Nope.
Theme music for the day was Jurassic Park. Looking down from Heaven’s Gate, the safari park reminded Justin of the film and that was it. We were all whistling the damn theme tune for the rest of the ride. If only brains could be flushed.
Fortunately the weather mostly held, but there were a few brief showers, one of which had us bravely running for cover under a tree, ostensibly to take a snack-break.
Alarmingly, we all managed to stay upright despite the slippery conditions, apart from unlucky Jemma who toppled over sideways into deep mud after getting stuck in it. Aside from her soft landing, there were no accidents, mechanicals or punctures. Not a bad return for a 3hr ride.
Despite the conditions (the trails were at their bone-dry best for their last visit) it was a well-received ride and all went home happy, job done.
I went home intent on burning the Pub Bike Of Doom in some pagan ritual, but instead had Welsh Rarebit for lunch (only one kind of cheese in MY fridge, Will), caught up with the rugby and the Vuelta and promptly fell asleep, beer in hand.
The last few days have been particularly windy. I prefer to say ʻblusteryʼ which always reminds me of Winnie the Pooh. On Tuesday evening I set out towards East Woodlands for the weekly club Nightrider; Roads were damp, Cannimore was squidgy and full of puddles, evidence of other adventurous cyclists wiggling around ahead of me to avoid the worst. My lights were on from the start. It didnʼt feel like summer, a far cry from the dusty memories of two weeks ago.
Today things were much the same, except my knees ached. I stumbled out of bed at a spritely 6:30am, saw the veil of mist outside and semi-consciously wrote-off expectations of a ride. Again, mainly because of knee pain (they could do with a good rest) but also because I knew there was a solid day in the study to be had, pimping my CV. I say study, itʼs the room with a computer. And a tumble drier. But thatʼs beside the point.
That went really well so I decided a reward was in order, and bit of relaxation. Enter the bicycle. In the spirit of ʻtaking it easyʼ I opted for the cleaner of my two cycles; the fixed gear. Shoes on, helmet, iPod, and Charge Bikes T-shirt (essential fashion requirement). The roads were now mostly dry (about 4pm) thanks to the wind that made my jacket sound like a helicopter landing on my shoulders. The list of qualifications and employer references faded into the muddy banks on route to Centre Parcs, replaced by the happy notion that I wasnʼt going to get soaked. I took the scenic route up to Heavens Gate, using the wiggley drive up to longleat instead of the straight one and cutting across from the toll booths. Sometimes itʼs nice to listen to sounds around you in the forest; itʼs peaceful. Not today though, the wind covered almost everything including Jay-Z who made frequent appearances through my headphones.
There is a strip of tarmac that joins the Heavens Gate view point to the main Longleat entrance road, which I have decided to adopt as my fixie training ground. It ticks all the boxes: Flat – yes. Road – yes. Devoid of traffic – yes. Quite often there arenʼt many peoople around either which makes falling over and looking silly more enjoyable. My goal is to learn how to ride a bike backwards while sitting on the handlebars. Iʼm not sure if itʼs backwards or forwards; the bike is backwards, but Iʼm going forwards. Iʼm willing to compromise and just call it sideways; most of my practice runs go round in circles.
Itʼs nice to have a spot where one can focus and perfect ones art free from distraction. Just like the study for editing important documents. Like Heavens Gate for fun and trying alternative riding styles. Some day Iʼd like to ride home like that.
6pm. I sat on the bench and watched the rain float over from Frome. Time to put the kettle on. So I set off home again along my scenic route, knowing I probably would get soaked after all, but that wouldnʼt matter because Iʼd had a really good day and there were at least five types of cheese in the fridge.
