<< Part one

The call of the cafe

Rhayader and an artery hardening lunch was allegedly not far away. Most of us chowed down anyway except for the one drying himself off and muttering darkly about his enforced line choice. Andy checked the route, pointed confidently at the obvious blacktop and led us up and away. The respite from trail obstacles was welcome but youthful exuberance saw Paul slow himself by ploughing needlessly into some unsuspecting shrubbery. Once he’d completed a personal de-weeding program and the rest of us had finally stopped laughing we headed off happy in the knowledge that lunch was a mere eight miles away.

It’s never that easy. The next four miles turned into a ninety minute nightmare when a navigational misjudgement saw us again shun the trail in favour of “Blighs Bluff”. This site of near mutiny was a barely visible track driving 200 feet straight up the side of the mountain. Andy laughed off our whinging as he scurried up the hillside like a mountain goat leaving the rest of us to shoulder bikes and scramble to the top. Of course that wasn’t the top or even close to the stop – separating us from this mystical summit was a climb that reduced all of us to walking pace. Or more accurately pushing pace. Except for Frank and Andy of course (who were so locked together in zero body fat and scandalous fitness I’d taken to calling the pair FrAn) who “enjoyed” the climb, staying on their bikes and presumably chatting about the lovely weather we were having.

Who’s navigating?

We reconvened at the top. It was not a happy group. Cramp, hunger and a lack of democracy all played their part. I’d asked someone to show me the map as it was clear the laws of physics were on the run and the route had been transformed into incessant uphill. Splendidly, what the map showed was a thousand foot descent through rock gardens linked by flinty doubletrack, a descent twice as long and twice as steep as the biggest and baddest we were used to back home.

Excited and apprehensive in equal amounts, we snicked big rings and headed off on a duplicitous gravel track. No sooner had it lulled me into a false sense of security than the first of the rock gardens came into view. Two different threats awaited the over-bold or under-committed. The first were monstrous rocks eroded into a series of rumble strips which spat you out fast and very loose into narrow shaley gullies where pedals bashed the flint walls. Just as we’d sorted that out, vertical drops ranging from 6in to 3 feet banged suspension against the stops as we careered in some parody of control between technical sections. This trail, created by millennia of natural erosion, dropped faster and steeper, each obstacle linking seamlessly with the next. I was riding too fast for my skill but too slowly to catch the fast boys at the front. This lack of distraction morphed sections together – from jumping off the rumble strips one second to fighting the suspension rebound the next as the bike arced through the gulleys and powered over rocks the size of mutant root vegetables. Still being upright at the halfway point relaxed me to the point of overconfidence – twice in successive seconds the front wheel rubbed the side of a rut threatening a terrifying high speed over the bars dismount onto unforgiving rocks. But I couldn’t slow down, the rush was too great and the rewards of throwing the bike off jumps and over rocks was a drug I couldn’t renounce even if I’d wanted to. And boy I didn’t want to.

Finally a shale S-bend, surely designed by nature to accentuate the beauty of a two wheel drift in front of your waiting mates, signalled the end of the rush and I joined the fast boys breathless and speechless. Their grins matched mine – they knew that ranked with the best descents we’d ever done but that didn’t stop me manically describing my version of events. Eventually I shut up long enough to ask Nick what he thought of the Inbred. Until this point, he’d complained of slack head angles, unnatural riding position and weighty components. Now he matched me gabble for gabble enthusing over the frame, the forks and the wheels designed for balls-out downhill fun. “The bike made me do it,” he crowed. “Every time I wanted to brake, it growled at me ‘faster, faster, do you want to live forever?’. It jumped, it bermed, it bloody creamed that full-suss [restless digit indicating forlorn FSR rider], just faster, faster, faster, bloody fantastic bike… Just bloody fantastic”. I think he liked it.

Nearly there…

Surfing into Rhayader on a wave of dopamine, our chins barely dropped on finding the site of the breakfast monster closed for the season. Instead we carried our muddy steeds through a rather salubrious café followed by astonished expressions but none of the middle class muttering associated with those East of the border. My lunch consisted of an entire pig, two GM chickens and the obligatory potato in lieu of the MTB staple of ham, egg and chips. Dave had found both us and a bike shop to repair his wheel and declared himself ready for a ride tomorrow. Mike decided that would work for him as well, clutching the Baton and declaring himself fit only for a few beers leaving just six of the original eight to “bring it home”.

Homeward bound

I envied him a little as we climbed back to the dam. The route was familiar and rekindled painful memories of a moist, exhausted slog last time around. The gestalt FrAn entity decided to head up over the mountain as we had before, while the ever dwindling remainder slogged up the road to the dam wondering how badly this was going to hurt. Well actually not bad at all, with the reunited flange of The Magnificent Seven separated by only a few hundred yards, the headlands seem to pass quicker and the climbs easier. Andy and I had a fantastically competitive freewheel competition which he won by dint of (a) cheating and (b) having better technique. Next time matey, next time.

Abandoning Andy (well, to be fair he abandoned us, heading off to find Frank who’d disappeared on some badger-skinning exercise or something) Nick and I raced over the flinty tracks with technique honed by a long day in the saddle and a second wind. I’m blaming the potato for that one. Not only did we splash straight through the stream, we climbed the sharp, loose, steep climb from the far bank. I knew then we had it nailed – not for me the exhaustion and desperation of the last time out, this time I chased Andy and Frank up and down the climbs taking aggressive lines and leaning dangerously to my hidden roadie dark side.

Large scale mountain biking

Back at the cottage, the true status of this epic was revealed. 43 miles. 5,000 feet of climbing. Andy, surrounded by the umbilical cords of disparate technologies, passed on these statistics whilst we huddled round his laptop laughing at the uploaded digital pictures. Interesting as this was, there was a “Death By Chilli” competition to be sorted out and we were the men to do it. Showers, beers, triple portions weighed us down and filled us up. Only real athletes honed by a sense of achievement could have hauled weary arses from comfortable chairs to wander stiff legged to the pub. That’ll be us then.

The whole potato thing got badly out of hand, the worst of which were limericks dedicated to the humble root vegetable.

When it’s all gone FUBAR
Get an earthy tuber
When all’s done and said
You can’t beat a king Ted

Hold the post open for the Poet Laureate…

Manufactured reality

At 7am Nick and I were awake again but nowhere near as enthusiastic as the previous day. “I may look like a corpse but in fact my body is a coiled spring” I explained to Nick. Very little physical evidence backed up my claim but amazingly by 9am, we’d cleaned the cottage, cooked the contents of the fridge and loaded the bikes. Today we were spurning maps and navigational aids to go large (or at least Small-Medium) at Coed y Brenin.

“45 Minutes to CyB,” they said. “It’s moved,” they then said as we passed the halfway marker 45 minutes later. Another 45 minutes after that we pulled into a tree lined car park dappled by early morning sunlight and populated by MTBs from hybrids to downhill rigs. We selected the MBR route and climbed, on aching legs, into the forest, ditching fleeces as the temperature climbed with us.

I had a wild time. Waymarked routes with easy climbing preceding big rocky descents supplanted by divine singletrack. Diffident at first, it soon became clear that technical as it was, the trail was designed for mountain bikes so the real skill was to work out what the trail builders were trying to create. Aside from an “it’s all gone dark” incident as we plunged into deep forest still wearing shades and a nose to tail descent through some slower riders, it was an incident free morning. We even saw riders on fully rigids and, whilst I applaud their tenacity to the roots of MTBing, suspension made the bike fly over rocks linking sections of forest singletrack. It’s just about the most fun you can have sitting down.

That’s why I love mountain biking. It’s small enough to be exclusive but large enough to create funding for places like CyB. I love not decorating at the weekend or filling my time washing cars and getting old. I love the classless society it creates and the people who inhabit it. I love being so lucky that we can get out on our bikes week in and week out, having the craic, pushing the margins and driving away the lamentable notion that with age comes total responsibility.

Coed y Brenin is great. But If I had to choose between this and terrain shaped by the land and bounded only by huge skies, then it wouldn’t be a choice at all. Don’t misunderstand me, the effort and money which has been invested in CyB, and its descendants, must be given both recognition and support. But fantastic as it is, it’s not what I came into the sport to do and my feeling is that I’ll be riding bridleways longer than I’ll be visiting these man-made attractions.

We just had enough energy to ride back to the excellent café. Their cake was the flour equivalent of Mike’s chilli, after which we couldn’t move. Nor did we really want to as the sun shone, the bullshit flowed and we watched in amazement as some special needs rider drilled all the grease from every bearing with the jet wash.

A flange of TM7 will be planning an all-out-assault on CyB later in the year with the prediction of at least one failed liver and one in-patient stay at the local hospital. Whatever, I’ll be there armed with a wallet full of beer vouchers and, ensconced safely in my Camelbak, my small and trusty root vegetable.