Well, wasn’t the weather beautiful yesterday, when I couldn’t go out because I had to get ready for a wedding - thankfully not my own? So today, I was finally free to go for a ride. It was about 2:30 p.m.
On the way up the main road towards the forest, the light drizzle develops into heavy rain. I chuckle merrily as I realise that my waterproof top is hanging from the curtain rail at home. The sky is dark, very dark…
And I arrive at the car park to see a big sign saying, Prem1er Mountian Bike Race - access to forest tracks limited. A frown darkens my brow, marring my puckish good looks for a moment.
I get out of the car to find the rain has slowed to a downpour. I kit up quickly, then mount and set off across the car park, through the seating area outside the café… and I see red and white tape blocking my way. I take a detour across the grass, and reach the main section of “yeller brick” which is also taped off. I turn every which way, but I am stymied, trapped, bound up in red and white tape. The only difference between this and my job is the words “and white”.
I return to the car park, and follow arrows which say, “Cycle route”. These point along a dead straight, wide, uninteresting road through the forest. However, after a little while, I find that I have climbed a short distance and the land falls away to my right and rises to my left. There are pine trees on each side. It’s quite scenic in a slope-with-pine-trees sort of way. Then there is a clearing, and the track becomes a single rut, just wide enough to ride with concentration.
After this, the track widens and there is a long and tricky climb, with patches of sand and areas of gravel. My strategy is to avoid the worst of each, concentrating on the climb as a whole, but this takes considerable planning as I have to decide when to change direction, when to cross to the other side of the track, when to risk a short section of deep gravel. When I make it to the top, it is with a considerable sense of achievement.
I carry on in a more or less straight line for a mile or more, back on a wide track, then I turn to the right. It is still raining, but I am pleasantly warm, not too out of breath, and the new open face helmet is less of a prison than the full-facer I’ve worn for the last couple of MUni rides.
Left onto more yeller brick, and soon I am at the gate where I used to park the car until the day someone broke into it. Here, I dismount. I’ve probably done a couple of miles so far and this my first stop. I remount and ride the hundred metres or so to the next gate, where there is a white van parked. The family gathered around it issues theatrical but good-natured gasps of amazement as I ride past. The young lad sounds genuinely impressed.
This puts pressure on me as the next stage of the ride is a long and uneven climb up a forest road. It’s dead straight, and I will be in view for a long time. I get my head down and go for it. Sooner than expected, I am at the top and making the slightly tricky little climb up a muddy slope beneath beech trees. Then I cruise beneath and between the trees, the path not entirely clear. I try to avoid the deepest patches of mud and fallen leaves, and in doing so, I manage to pedal-strike a tree stump, for the first UPD of the day.
Next, a long and challenging ride, generally level or slightly down hill, beneath beech and chestnut trees. The track is wide enough for a Land Rover, and is rutted, and the surface has been ground into a black slimy paste of mud, water, leaves, beech masts and chestnut cases. I am keenly aware that a faceplant in this would be inadvisable and unpleasant.
At intervals across the path, there are logs. Most of these are only an inch or two in diameter, but some are rather thicker. I experiment with riding over these, sort of half-hopping and whole-grunting, and occasionally applying traumatic percussion to those parts of me nearest to the seat. I do better than I would have on the old Pashley, but I think Kris Holm can relax for a little while yet before my video comes out (Not Just One Tyred Guy - One Totally Knackered Guy). Of course the amusing play on words is less effective with the English spelling.
I do UPD a couple of times. Once is on the biggest log I’ve attempted. I count it as a moral victory because both the unicycle and I land on the far side of the log, so at least we crossed it! Once is on the simplest little mud slope, which I have to try four times before I manage it.
Next, the long slimy climb where I always fall off. The track is deeply rutted, the ground is wet and muddy, the obstacles are concealed by layers of fallen leaves, and all about there are logs (cunningly disguised as alligators) waiting to leap out and ensnare my wheel. Well, for the first time ever, I make it to the top without a UPD, and I cruise easily down the sand and gravel path on the other side of the hill.
Ahead of me, I see more red and white tape, and realise that I am straying back onto the territory of the mountainbikers. I see a few go past - high gear, low cadence, low speed, glumly gritted teeth. If that’s racing then, oh, something else that isn’t true either. I’ve done a lot of bicycling over the years, and I recognise dispirited and fatigued incompetence when I see it.
I duck under the tape, toy briefly with the idea of following my usual route, then decide to be a good boy and keep out of the racers’ way. I am rewarded with a previously unknown single track that snakes up a hill through the forest and pops me out opposite the downhill course. This is neither more nor less difficult than any other narrow track through the forest, but there are a few earthworks where those with sufficient kinetic energy might indulge themselves ballistically. I content myself with flowing over the obstacles, splashing through the mud, and grinning like a loon.
Then there is a tricky uphill, and at the top, two young lads on mountain bikes. As I approach, I expect comments, but they respectfully pull their bikes out of the way. I thank them and ride through. The next section I know well, and it’s a nasty one: deep hollows across the path, all full of muddy water. Each is a potential wheel trap and a sudden UPD waiting to happen. I hear the two lads following me, and bark an urgent warning for them to hang back in case I fall off and they run into me. One apologises, and I hear them back off.
One starts shouting to an unseeen friend, “Wait, wait, wait at the bottom of the hill, wait, you’ve got to see this, there’s something I want you to see, wait, you’ve gotta see this man on this, wait…” etc. He sounds genuinely excited.
Meanwhile the pressure’s on me not to UPD, and I grit my teeth and concentrate, and take special care not to relax after the last of the puddles. I swoop down the steep muddy slope and emerge onto the main track next to a dumbfounded youth, dutifully waiting as instructed by his vociferous friend.
I ride on, down to the BMX earthworks, and ride over each, taking more adventurous lines than usual, then ride back out to be greeted by the three lads. One of them asks me a question and I stop and we chat for a bit. They sound enthusiastic. Nice kids - and their faces are muddied like kids’ faces should be. They’ve probably been riding tricker routes than the adults in the mountainbike race - although, to be fair, not as far.
Almost back to the car now, but I have to pick my route carefully to avoid the race, and this sometimes means sneaking past marshalls as inconspicuously as I can manage on a unicycle. One marshall, sitting smugly in a LWB Land Rover looks like he won’t let me on his section of course, so I divert down a side track that I recognise, then turn down a steep slope where there are two gravelly wheel ruts. It is still raining, and water is flowing down the ruts, and it splashes up from my tyre, soaking my legs and backside.
I cross the next main track, and then I’m on slimy mud again. Down the hill, turn right, and on to what looks like the past proper climb of the day: not too steep, but very wet, very muddy, very… my oh my… I think I’ve invented the power slide! The uni goes one way, I go the other, and I land flat footed and almost upright, but with considerable forward momentum. My cycling shoes have flat soles with virtually no grip, and the mud is like buttered Teflon. I find myself skiing for a few seconds, arms windmilling, until I settle gracelessly onto my backside in the deepest bit of mud I can find.
All I can do is laugh. So I do that.
Back up on the uni, then up the hill, and find my way past the cycle race, and the advertsiing banners, and the tents selling go-faster stuff, and at last I am back at the car.
I drive home in brightening sunshine, my backside slightly chilly against the black rubber mat from the footwell that I’ve had to use to protect the driver’s seat.
I’ve never seen so many people on the hills. The downside to the nice weather however is that some of the tracks have become more difficult now the ground is so dry; the last time I was up there there was just enough moisture in the ground to hold it together, but now the surface is so loose that bits that were previously difficult but rideable are no longer…