Category Archives: combe raiders

bikes, combe raiders, food, friends, GPS, MTB, UK

Christmas Rides

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It’s been a bit quiet on here recently – mainly because me riding pretty much every day for the last four weeks is not all that interesting for anyone but me (& the odd other bike nut).  I’ve upgraded the wheels on my Surly Ogre to Stans Arch rims & tyres to Nobby Nics – it’s a marked improvement in weight, grip, reassurance, acceleration, rolling resistance &, most of all, fun.  The following week there was a rather chilly night spent bikepacking out in the New Forest just north of Burley somewhere.

Then Christmas ride season began – first up with the biggest group of Combe Raiders I’ve ever seen:

This on the strangely misty Quantocks – & quite damp under wheel as well. Dave got stuck on a stick:

Much to my surprise, I won the hill climb (by getting the furtherest up a rather steep & technical ascent) – I was well pleased with my giant certificate (that’s a large & very good paperback on the left).

After not really earning it from a less than twenty kilometre ride, it was off to a nearby pub for the award ceremony & an awful lot of food.  Great time had by all – although I had to go for a harder ride the following day to get the most out of my two hundred mile round-trip.

This weekend past I managed two more Christmas rides – and associated meals of course.  The Vindaloo group of the local MTB club (which I ride with if I’m around every second Sunday – so hardly ever over the past two years) had their Christmas ride & curry planned very local to me on Friday night.  The bikes decorated with Christmas lights and wrapping paper and the costumes made the whole thing seem a lot more festive than the Combe Raiders event.  It was only a short local ride, but it was a nice warm, dry evening & there was plenty of good food.

For some reason I thought it a good idea to ride my single speed twenty-odd kilometres to the Christmas ride & dinner for the whole club – this after seeing a rather dismal looking weather forecast.  Anyway, it rained pretty much all day – but it wasn’t cold.  Annoyingly, my front brakes failed about thirty kilometres in – so I rode most of the day with rear brakes of dubious usefulness (just as well the Forest is almost entirely flat).  Somewhere out near Burley & Picket Post our fearless leaders started to get a little vague in our route – just as we got out of the trees onto the heathland in the driving rain.  Oh well – we made it back to the pub eventually for another huge meal.  It probably was just as well I had to ride all the way home – wasn’t really intending to do close on eighty singlespeed kilometres for the day, but I survived & really quite enjoyed it.

combe raiders, friends, GPS, MTB, national park, UK

Hound Tor return – in the sun

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John kindly proposing a big Combe Raiders ride was enough to get me to Somerset for what was otherwise a free weekend – I still need to get longer rides under the belt before the end of the month, while looking after my knees. With just three of us signed up for whatever ride it was going to be, it was going to be faster (fewer stops) than other CR rides.  With an all day pass from home, John was keen to head back to Dartmoor and ride a route I led eight of us on back in March – last time the weather was atrocious, so I could see some of the point in going back in nice weather at the tail end of summer.

After dropping into the bottom of the valley, there’s a big climb to get the legs & blood pumping.  It wasn’t long before I was wondering how I survived on a singlespeed last time – the larger group & cooler weather probably helped.  Dartmoor has a bit of a reputation for quickly turning into desolate isolation if the weather turns, so it was odd to see it on such a lovely day.  Oddly, within an hour of each other two of the three of us riding tubeless tyres got punctures that didn’t seal – I put a tube in, John just kept pumping his tyre up rather often.

We had to ride through a herd of these guys, thankfully they didn’t object

Grimspound

We eventually arrived at Hound Tor, which is a much bigger & impressive pile of rocks than the photos below show.  The Hound of the Basket Meals food van was back in the car park – this time we had more than tea.  One cheeseburger just served to remind me that I was actually hungry – so much to the others’ later envy, I had a second.


John & Hound Tor – after we avoided the man running after an escaped kite

Before long we were back at the van & with John phoning home to see if we might have another hour or so out & getting an affirmative – we tacked on a bit more trail that I’d loaded on to my GPS.  With a fair bit more climbing, a nice flowing bit of woodland trail and then an unexpectedly long hike-a-bike to more good views – this was the highlight of the day’s riding for me.

Just nice countryside

bikes, combe raiders, event, GPS, MTB

Just riding mostly

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It’s been a bit quiet on here for a while – mostly because the weather, somewhat unbelievably, has been really good for a while here in the south of England & I’ve been riding my bikes a lot.  However, I’ve stayed relatively close to home (within a couple of hundred miles anyway) and have been riding at places I’ve been to before, so there haven’t really been many stories to share or any new photos.

Consecutive weekends riding in Wales (a bit wet, with disappointingly short rides), Somerset (another short ride – but my biggest crash in years, nothing on a dislocated shoulder though) and the Isle of Wight (a small group from the local MTB club & actual heat) were leading nicely up to last weekend.  For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to enter a so-called MTB Marathon in Shropshire in the middle of summer – back on Long Mynd, where I rode at the end of May.  Mainly I think it was because I’ve been riding increasingly long distances to keep my riding interesting & challenging on the local terrain – but I find that I know few people around here with the free time or inclination to go out for long rides.  So signing up for a 75 km event seemed like a good idea – a ready made route & people to ride with/near.

Not being a bank holiday weekend, it only took four hours to get to Shropshire & I was setting up camp in the late afternoon – with twenty or so groups of campers.  By the time I got back from the dinner at the pub at the bottom of the hill, I was astounded by how much the field had filled with tents.  This event was clearly a lot more popular than I was expecting.  By half-seven Saturday morning, I was baking in the tent (I was pleased I’d impulse-bought a super thin & small sleeping bag for the summer) – but I managed to drag myself back down the hill for a Full English to fuel the first few hours’ riding.

Ten o’clock seemed to be a bit late to start such a long ride (there were shorter options – 25 & 45 km – that started at the same time) as it was already a scorcher.  Having ridden here recently, I knew the first climb was a long drag up a bit of seal & then forestry roads – so I was happy to start near the back & just spin.  That was a mistake, as I forgot I “just spin” on a 1×9 quite a bit faster than most.  The first descent was a little unnerving as I still don’t trust my bike completely after the crash two weeks ago – no sooner was that over, the second climb started with a real kicker & just kept going in the sun.  There’s always a lot of satisfaction to be had riding past most of the field walking up a hill.

On the long course there were three feed stations & they were fantastic.  Plenty of bananas, biscuits, energy drink, water & home-baking (mmmmm – Welsh cakes, & flapjacks).  The second was just past the halfway point after a really sweet few kilometres of forested singletrack that was off of Long Mynd & a joy to discover.  It was quite tiring, but nice to be out of the sun.  Things got a little easier through the third quarter & the climb back up on to Long Mynd & the highest point of the day was only about half of the gradient earlier in the day.  By now, I was just trying to get to the end & drink plenty of water.  Sunburn wasn’t really a problem as the sunscreen I applied beforehand was now covered in dust & I actually looked tanned – I say tanned, in the cold light of day I probably just looked dirty.

As we’d lost all the shorter distance riders, things were a bit more spread out & I got talking to a couple from just down the road in Poole – mostly because Rachel was wearing a New Zealand riding top & both she & Andy seem to get up to plenty of adventures.  Andy managed a puncture on the last descent off the mynd – I thought that was one of the best downhill sections of the day.  With a couple of kilometres to go, my leg tried to cramp – but not so much that I couldn’t ride through it.  I was pleased to ride off the camping-hill down to the finish line through some technical switchbacks in one piece & get home in less than five & a half hours with no signs of heatstroke.

So much for a post that said: “I went for a long ride up some hills & it was very hot”.

bikes, combe raiders, GPS, MTB, UK

Long Mynd & Shropshire riding

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Last time the Combe Raiders went to Shropshire to ride Long Mynd I was nearing the end of my time off the bike recovering from shoulder surgery & also, quite possibly, in New Zealand. Either way I didn’t make it to what was apparently a good riding weekend away. So when John sent out an invite for riding Long Mynd & perhaps more over the last May long weekend, I was tempted. After having worked out that Long Mynd is close to another place, Ironbridge, that I’ve been meaning to visit for some years it was easily to justify a solo drive in holiday weekend traffic & three nights away (thankfully airbnb kept the costs down yet again).

Somewhat unusually for a long weekend, the weather was beautiful on Saturday as we met at a local bike shop & campground – Rich had driven over from Oxfordshire that morning to join in the riding fun. Long Mynd basically means long mountain; while not much of a mountain really, more of a hill topping out at just over five hundred metres – it is comparatively long. We basically found different ways to ride to the top of the Mynd and took different routes down. I’d been advised to bring a bike with gears for a change – with some good climbs I was glad I had, even if the squealing brakes were somewhat annoying & I didn’t have complete faith in them.

We got some good miles in & with only three of the Combe Raiders (& some of the faster ones at that), there was a lot less stopping than with a larger group.  It was nice to be around hills & the scenery was superb – quite pastoral and green of course.  While not technically challenging, the downhills were long, fast & good fun.  Considering the long weekend & the surprising weather – we were lucky enough not to come across too many walkers as we blasted down the edge of the hill.  An impromptu lunch stop up on top turned into lazy basking in the sun sprawled over the heather.

All weekend I saw many vivid yellow fields.

John – also opted for ‘spensions & gears.

Before we headed up to the ridge for the last time we met John’s family and in-laws at Carding Mill Valley.  While the twins generally ran around in the sun, it was time for cake.  Unusually, there was not a single pub stop on either of the weekend’s rides – but I did manage to eat an inordinate amount of cake.  The last climb up was easily the worst – long & with little traction on the steep parts, there were multiple sections to be walked briefly.  An ace day topped off with entertaining the twins and a barbecue on the lawn of the big country house (of which the others were staying in an apartment of – not an empty country house that we’d found to have a barbecue at).

Just as I was about to leave after convincingly winning at cards (who says lunch times are wasted?), a plan to ride the next evening was hatched. So after a full Sunday, I was driving back to Hopesay where the plan was to ride around bridleways that John had picked off the map.

The only problem with picking random bridleways off OS maps is that you can’t really be sure if they are worth riding. The first few miles off road were a little difficult – route-finding was tricky & there were some overgrown paths. But we managed OK & the ride improved as the light disappeared – we didn’t set off until well after six o’clock.  It was still very pretty countryside (more yellow fields) and we got enough climbing and miles in to make it worthwhile.

After riding around Wenlock Edge (one of the the things about this place is the wonderful names: Much Wenlock, Homer, Mogg Forest, Monkhopton, Diddlebury, Ticklerton to name too many), we dipped down into the valley & up the other side.  We were supposed to bypass the summit, but for some time we’d been roughly circling an unidentified (to us) tower.  I couldn’t resist, so after a rather brutal climb we were at Flounders’ Folly.  Unfortunately we’d missed one of the few days it is open by five or so hours, so couldn’t get a slightly higher view of the surrounding countryside.  With one last downhill we headed for the road, donned lights & headed back to pie for dessert.

Flounders’ Folly – very difficult to fit in the frame if one is not inclined to fall off the edge of the hill.

Looking back to Wenlock Edge