So I set out with my saddle up, forks locked out and knobbly tyres buzzing on the tarmac.  Riding on the roads through town to get to the seafront path was miserable. I have no idea why anyone would choose to cycle alongside cars for fun, it’s awful and a significant minority of drivers are idiotic to the point of being dangerous to cyclists.

Dodgy geezers at Glyne Gap

Soon enough I was grabbing myself lungfuls of cold sea air, the sky was a carpet of grey and the odd flake of snow was fluttering about. I was very grateful that there was next to no wind to battle against. One interesting thing about riding your MTB on tarmac is that it exposes all the little problems with your bike. When you’re offroad you can blame creaks and groans and slipping chains on the trail or on mud and muck all over the moving parts. On a solid trail with a clean bike you can’t make these excuses. It looks like I’ve got a serious problem with my rear wheel and a few other bits too. More money…

I’m amazed at how little you get for £360,000. I’ve cycled along this route before it was a cycle path and there was a shingle path running alongside the railway line running from St Leonards to Glyne Gap. The pebbles were loose and it was hard going, but it was rideable.  I got there today expecting tarmac, but what’s there is more pebbles.  Ok it’s packed in tightly and held together with some sort of plastic mesh but it’s not the kind of trail you’d ride a road bike on.

In more clement weather I’m sure it’ll make a lovely place to ride with the kids, you’re never more than a stones throw from the sea and there are no cars.  Plenty of walkers who seem to be amazed and disgusted that someone is daring to endanger their dog/child/replacement hip by cycling on a cycle path near them. Bexhill Seafront is now cycle friendly too.  Gone are all the NO CYCLING signs that everyone used to ignore anyway. The news doesn’t seem to have been broken to the locals though, a couple of them were muttering “shouldn’t be cycling on here” as I rode past.

All in all it was a nice way to get a bit of fresh air (and a very, very cold nose) I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I not had to deal with irascible taxi drivers and inattentive idiots on the roads though.

Headed out to Friston forest for the first “grown up” ride of 2011 with the thermometer hovering around 1 degree above freezing. In truth it didn’t feel that cold. With three jerseys, running tights and two pairs of socks on it didn’t, anyway.  My toes were still cold though.

There’s been no rain for about a week so I kidded myself it might not be that slippery. Ha. To be fair, it was nowhere near as muddy as Bedgebury, however the chalk is way more slippery.  At some points I was going sideways like Jeremy Clarkson test-driving an Aston Martin.  Quite fun in a way, but not when there’s a tree looming at your shoulder.

View of the Downs including muddy, squeaky bike

We started from Jevington, parking near the Eight Bells pub and riding up to Friston Forest on the steep, rutted, chalky bridleway that leads almost straight to the start of the singletrack. The climb was hard, but a good warm up, at the top we headed down the long trail which leads all the way down to East Dean. This trail reminds me a little of some of the better blue route’s I’ve ridden in Scotland.  It flows and flows but there’s nothing particularly hairy or gnarly, it just gets more challenging the faster you ride it. Because of the mud and the fact that I’m fat, I wasn’t going that fast but it was still fun.

Like a muddy, sweaty salmon

Then it was a slog back up to the top again to take in some of the slightly more technical terrain. We found some dry trails which could be ridden fairly quickly, but some of the trails were ludicrously slippery where the chalk is close to the surface.  Lots of bum-clenching sideways drift and a chance for me to properly hurt my back preventing myself from wiping out. Shifting my weight quickly to catch my balance I got a sharp twang in my back and that sort of knocked a bit of the fun out of the rest of the day for me. Still, give it about 3 months and these trails will be dry and by then I should have shed half a stone and got a bit fitter…

Heading for home

Last descent of the day was a reverse of the first climb. If the trails in the forest were slippery then you’d need to invent a new word for this one.  Climbing up it in the granny ring is all very well but trying to hold the bike under 20mph coming down it was terrifying. With my tyres completely clagged with slippery mud and the surface feeling like ice underneath me I took it very gently indeed…

My back is now stiff as a board but I’m glad to have been out in the fresh air on a lovely winters day. The downs are just stunning, all year round.

Beer O’Clock I think…

Jess ripping up the singletrack on "Jurassic Park"

Jess hasn’t ridden for quite a while and hasn’t been offroad for months so it was good to see her getting back into it. Riding slowly behind her with my protective dad head on, it’s amazing how even the mildest of bumps and ruts can pose problems to a slightly wobbly rider on 16″ wheels. 29in wheels are making the headlines in MTB at the moment, mostly because their large size helps smooth out the roughness of offroad trails.  When you think about it, the dinky little wheels on kids bikes do the opposite.  They make roots and bumps we roll over without thinking into formidable obstacles.

Anyway, she gamely tackled the early stages of Bedgeburys red route, having fun and enjoying getting muddy like any normal 8 year old kid would. She was going really well, cornering quickly into the berms and even managed a little jump, probably her first ever! We had a slight problem riding over the bridge on Wanda’s trail though.  Jess has been slightly nervous of bridges for a while, but she has ridden this one several times before.  Having been off the bike for a while robbed her of a bit of confidence though and she tried to take it a little too slowly this time and ended up going over the edge and landing nastily on top of the bike.  It’s a drop of maybe two feet, enough to terrify the protective parent riding behind her.

Possibly the muddiest this little bike has ever been...

Luckily there was no major damage, nothing that a cuddle, a short rest and a drink of water couldn’t sort out.  We were soon back on the bikes again and slogging through the mud.  Not much of a work out for me, had to take everything at Jess’s pace, but it’s just great to be out in the fresh air enjoying cycling with my offspring.

Her little Kona is already starting to look a little small, this summer is probably the last time it’ll be ridden by her, but her younger sister will be riding it by 2013 no doubt. I need to work on my fitness to make sure I can keep up with the pair of them over the next 5 years…

Encased in a protective coating of shite.

It’s clean now, but I let the crap accumulate over the three rides I managed to fit in during december. Nice and clean now and ready to get covered in even more muck in January…

Looking back on 2011, I didn’t have a great year of riding, but I enjoyed what I was able to do, this is my favourite riding pic of the past 12 months:

Riding through the pines on a misty November afternoon

The weather was decent enough, no rain and a bit of a chill, the mud was thick and gloopy, plenty of other riders out and about, good to be out in the fresh air enjoying a bit of riding banter with one old riding buddy and one new riding buddy. I enjoyed the ride, came very close to making a real mess of myself on a bunch of roots though.  About halfway down “Sweetness” (I think it’s called now) I was cornering with a bit of enthusiasm and the front of the bike decided it preferred to go straight ahead.  Managed to get a leg out and steady myself, but thats probably the closest I’ve come to a nasty stack since I gashed my elbow open at Glentress last year.

Mud, plenty of it.

Towards the end of the ride there was much talk of trips to Wales, Swinley, Friston and Surrey in the new year, let’s hope they end up coming to fruition between now and Easter.

So that’s it for 2011, riding wise at least, plenty more drinking to be done before 2012, but no more mud. 2012 should hopefully include a weekend in Coed-Y-Brenin, ideally with a detour to Coed Llandegla as well, but we’ll see. I’d also like to add Swinley and Thetford to my list of trails visited.

Not sure if it was the weather or just an indication of how popular the place is getting, but I’ve never seen Holmbury Hill so busy. Bikers everywhere as this shot at Peaslake shows.

Roadies and MTB'rs mingle happily at Peaslake

So we took in the usual delights, Barry Knows Best, Parklife, Telegraph road, plus a few other bits I’ve only recently found on Pitch Hill and a couple of bits I don’t know the name of. No crashes, no mechanicals, plenty of mud, plenty of fun. Most of the trails are riding fairly well despite the mud. With the all the pine needles and sandy soil the ground at Surrey holds up very well over winter in most cases.

Unlike the trails, my body isn’t holding up under abuse all that well.  My knees are killing me, my back is stiff, I feel like I’ve been run over by a lorry. My fitness is almost non existant at the moment. Doesn’t help when you’re out riding with someone who commutes 120 miles a week by bike either. My riding buddy for the day had that smug “Hill, what hill?” look about him for most of the morning.

One thing that did strike me yesterday, there was a hell of a lot of non-singletrack riding to link up the good bits, never really thought of Holmbury/Pitch that way before, maybe that’s cause previously the fire-road bits have been a lot easier cause I wasn’t carrying 2 stone of turkey and booze around with me.

View from the hill

After weeks of malingering in the house with a bad back, I got the bike out today and had a ride at Bedgebury. Just a day short of midwinters day and, unsurprisingly, conditions at Bedgebury were almost exactly the same as they were on Midsummers eve. Muddy. To be fair it was a bit less muddy on Midsummers eve, but still, it’s kind of what you expect at Bedge.

Gimme an "M", gimmie a "U"...

Although there was a lot of mud, the weather today was beautiful, clear, sunny and crisp, could have gotten away with being a little colder for added freshness, but overall it was great. Why do people moan about the winter so much? You’re never cold if you’re active. Actually, my feet were bloody freezing today, but that was my fault for not wearing an extra pair of socks.

Most of the trails at Bedgebury were in reasonable condition considering the mud, plenty of sections that still roll well and ride nicely. The local bike club have also been out giving a lot of the sections named sign posts too which is a nice touch. I particularly like the fact they’ve called an utterly rubbish section “Pointless”. My favourite section still doesn’t have a name though so at the moment it’s still “That bit just before Bikea”. If it were up to me I’d call it “Make the most of it” because the trail is crap for a while afterwards.

The signpost doesn't make it any easier to ride up

One section that really rides nicely now is “Gloomy Woods” which is not gloomy or wooded at all. It’s a bunch of manmade berms and kickers set in a clearing that used to be heavily wooded. It used to be abysmal but now it’s got a very good surface it rides really nicely. A couple of sections after this have been heavily sanitised with a lot of the rutted, rooty bits replaced with something smoother and straighter. Shame really.

The bike was riding fairly well though I found the limits of grip on my front tyre several times. Managed to reign it back in but a couple of times it went for a wander when cornering.

Next up, Surrey Hills on the 28th December to sweat out some booze and turkey.

Misty woods (Helmet mould not pictured)

Very misty today and Bedgebury was very atmospheric and moody because out it.  The air was fresh, the trails were muddy, the bike was rolling pretty well and I still felt like crap.  Really didn’t have the energy to properly enjoy my ride and get the most out of it today, but still, I was out there.  In the real world.  Getting wet, getting muddy, riding a bike.

Better than all this sitting in doors nonsense any day…

Even though it wasn’t genuinely cold today I dug out my Nike lycra running tights and wore them for the first time.  Made me look like a homosexual roadie, but kept all the mud off my legs and were generally very comfortable.  They’ll be really handy in January and February.  One thing though, nightmare when you want a wee.  How do roadies take an emergency piss with all that lycra on?

IMBikeMag

I give it a big thumbs up.  I particularly like the page title “Go Big or Go Home”  by this they mean ride at 15mph towards a 6″ high kicker and get your bike a good 7.5in off the ground for 0.5 seconds of sheer terror before landing like a drugged hippo and grabbing your brakes as hard as you can.  That’s “going big” for me.

And for my next trick, I shall turn off my computer and actually go out for a f#%*ing ride for a change…

Lazy?  Nope.  Too squeamish about mud?  Nope.  To much of a wuss to cope with a chill in the air? Nope.

My back is killing me.  I’m walking around like I’m 81, not 41.  It’s grim and boring.  I might just go mental and go to Bedgebury tomorrow for the hell of it…

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