Three days of uncharacteristic summer down pours had left much of the Midlands very soggy. During a ride on Saturday with friends near Abergavenny I had reached that point where it is not possible to become any more wet and muddy trails soon became quagmires.
Sunday however dawned with blue skies and bright sunshine as I travelled up to the village of Suckley, nestling in beautiful Herefordshire countryside to the west of the Malvern Hills.
The Suckley MBO score was partnered with a Midlands Trailquest, Colin Palmer doing his best to try to bring these two organisations together since their split several years ago.
With the event proceeds going to Pakistan flood relief and a well organised event centre in Suckley village hall approx 70 happy riders lined up to get their start times in the morning sun.
As this was mainly a Midlands Trailquest event we unfortunately were back to pin punches. I spent a while deciding the best way to carry the control card before setting off, wearing it pinned to my arm, and grabbed the pre marked 1:25 thousand OS map.
As the area had a multitude of footpaths Colin had opted to show where we could ride with an over print rather than mark what we could not ride with OOBs symbols to keep the map clearer. This was also done to avoid confusion as he had negotiated access from some landowners to ride on some footpaths. I decided I would try and clear the course so headed out first into the more complex and hilly area to the South East of the map leaving the faster lanes to the West for the end. Unfortunately fairly quickly I discovered due to the detail on the 1:25000, two layers of plastic and the over printing I was struggling to read more than major road junctions whilst riding. I would normally expect only to stop the bike to read the map if I made an error. I made a couple of scraggy mistakes picking my way through the complex Bridleway network through the first few controls but then coming out of number 11 simply could not make the map fit what was on the ground and could not find the entrance to a bridleway to do an in and out on number 4. After about 5 mins I gave up looking and headed down the overgrown route to 15, but although I think I now know where the control was, left it after again not being able to fit the ground to the map and carried on.
At this point I realised there was no way I was going to clear them all and that a clockwise route going West first would have gained far more points so decided to just enjoy the riding.
I struggled a little to find some of the controls once I got to locations as they were hidden from view to avoid vandalism and the thick red circles did obscure some of the detail but this didn’t detract from the beautiful villages and some great skitty slippery descents off road.
As I curved north hovering up the controls playing cat and mouse with Jason Howell we started to encounter more and more mud. The route from 9 to 17 was absolutely minging with huge puddles of standing muddy water. I met a very large group of ramblers here. Expecting some grief as normal I slowed right down but for a change was met with cheerful comments, which was a nice surprise.
On the way to number 5 I went south and round rather than riding off the map and back on again as I always assume that you are only allowed to ride on the competition map, and this cost me a bit of time as others didn’t and cut across. After 5 I was on a mission to get in on time so started to ride faster managing to pick up a few but eventually binning number 14 due to time, before racing for home, getting in exactly on 3 hours.
So a bit of disappointment in the standard of the 1:25000 clarity but the area has fantastic potential going forward with a few map corrections. The variety of terrain and such a dense path network which, if Colin can continue to get permission for some of more of the footpaths, will be great, and would make a good adventure racing venue too.
No results available at present – they should be available soon at :
http://www.midlandtrailquests.co.uk/index.php and http://www.bmbo.org.uk/results/
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Without a bike on holiday in Brittany I wet off for a run around the coastal cliff path from our cottage. The trail barrelled up and down the various headlands with ocean views, golden sandy beaches and glorious blue skies reflected in the gentle waves far below. The track was very rocky in places and I tweaked my ankle several times, trying to keep up a good pace. Dotted all along the headlands were gun emplacements and bunkers, left over from the ‘Atlantic wall’ of WW2 together with the ruins of long forgotten grand houses.
into the ‘soft’ gorse to my left rather than hit the deck onto the rocky track. I made it, taking the fall on my forearms and hands and rolled over once before standing. For about 10 seconds I thought ‘that wasn’t too bad I thought gorse hurt more than that’ but then the tingling started as the hundreds of prickle holes plus salty sweat did there thing. I turned for home cutting it a little short pondering whether I would have been better falling on the rocky trail as my arms got sorer and more itchy. In fact in the two days since as I have squeezed out countless gorsey spines from red spots appearing all over my hands and lower arms I have wondered the same!
