pictures at http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albuo96
I looked out of the window and it was snowing. I ask someone who lives nearer the trails and it’s snowing there too, quite a bit. What could I do? How could I resist it, so I left my work till the evening and headed out for a ride.
So onto the train I get. Now I’m on the train and looking out of the window and it still seems to be snowing pretty hard. When I get there, it’s still snowing but hasn’t really started settling yet. Anyway off I head through the vineyard (the furthest north vineyard in Europe - pity the wine is terrible) and up the hill, pausing to take a few pictures but not very long cos it’s blowing a gale and the snow is pretty damn cold. At the top of the hill the extra 200 metres of height seems to be making a difference, there’s a good couple of inches of snow fallen here in the last hour. It hasn’t been cold prior to the snow, so I have the particularly odd sensation of riding on snow which is on top of mud, two different types of slidyness combined and no way of telling where the mud is. Safe to say, I fall off a lot here.
Up to the road at Ranmore, I discover the snow is completely untouched, no-one can have driven up there recently, at this point my naughty pashley muni takes over and forces me to ride a self portrait of it and record this for posterity. Going onwards, I get out onto the open hillside, the wind up here is really pushing me around so I dive into the woods. Everything here is white and looking really pretty. Anyway off I go to the top of Dead Car Gully.
Now Dead Car Gully is a nice downhill that handily happens to be on the way between the train station at Dorking and to much of the good riding in that area. It’s usually treacherously muddy and has lots of little dropoffs and roots that make it pretty damn hard to ride down. So obviously I have to have a go. By the dead car, half way down I’ve fallen off five or six times and I can’t seem to keep my feet on the pedals. Some moments later I realise, it’s because the top of the pedals is covered in a big chunk of iced up snow. I’m glad I had a key to scrape it off else I’d have been really screwed then. The second half is less eventful, feels like a pootle in the park now I’ve cleared my pedals. I still fall off a couple of times though.
Next fun bit is the downhill with no name, called that cos I don’t know what it’s called. Whatever it is, it’s short but sweet, 100 metres vertical in 250 metres horizontal, but with a bit of a plateau at the top meaning that some sections are about 50% gradient and hard to walk up. There’s nothing technical about it, it’s just hard because of the steepness. It’s been snowing for all of the ride now, a good couple of hours and from the top this looks like a smooth wide road of snow and it’s not at all obvious which bit is the trail. Heading down I discover that the hillocks next to the trail are still there and I have some funny offs, the best thing about coming off on this hill in the snow is that you slide down it like a sledge until you stop yourself. Plentiful crashes later I’m at the bottom of the hill, it’s pitch dark now. With all the snow I’m getting a real starwars effect in my lights and can’t see very far anyway, so I decide to head back.
Coming back to the road at Ranmore, there’s quite a few cars along now, but can’t see anything either, so they’re going really really slowly, this is the first time I’ve ridden faster than cars on my Muni. Brief panic moment when I realise that I’m going along as fast as I can on the road and I feel my foot slipping on an icy pedal, pedal the next bit very very carefully and then stop when I get to the next trail and scrape off the ice again. Off down the hill to the station, this is a great big wide trail, quite steep, but nothing difficult, I’m riding as fast as possible here cos I’ve got a train to catch, getting the full on starwars effect, can’t see a thing. Discover that the snow is actually quite slidy here, have some fun almost crashes but manage to ride it out and then blast at full speed through the vineyard back to the train station, to many bemused looks from commuters returning late.
By the way, I’m very chuffed with my new camera
(sony DSC-U20), it’s really tiny - somewhat smaller than a mobile phone, solidly cased, takes pictures as soon as you open the lens cover and doesn’t take ages to take them and best of all, takes okay pictures. Everyone should have one. The only one I’ve found so far that’s really small enough to have out all the time while muni-ing rather than having to keep it in your bag.
