falling off bikes since 1975

For me it’s not a question of whether to shave, but when.

Normally I would shave my legs for the coming year round as part of the Spring Polaris washing ritual. Spend a weekend lost in the wilds of Britain’s backcountry. Get home. Drop muddy kit around the house. Get pleasantly drunk. Clean a weekend’s grime from my body in the bath and have the Spring Shave.

This year hasn’t quite worked out that way. I pulled out of Polaris due to previously mentioned heart trouble. That, combined with a busy period at work kinda put paid to cycling for a while. Apart from a Calderdale night ride back on March 24 I haven’t ridden now for two whole English months.

Anyway, the busy time at work was getting to me. My wife made me book a week off. It kept getting delayed as people kept booking important work events in my calendar. So sod it. I booked the week right after some customer testing* and marked it “OUT OF OFFICE’.

I had three choices for what to do.

1) Spend a week visiting friends across the UK riding somewhere new each day. Bit awkward with three horses to look after as well as the bikes to feed.

2) Spend a week visiting local friends, riding somewhere new each day.

3) TBD

I needed a goal. Something daft to do. One of the managers I work with had sown the seeds of an idea a year ago. This guy is an off-roader. Landie with snorkel, winch, fuel cans on the roof, the works. He’d pointed me at this website, wetroads.co.uk which aimed to list every ford in the UK, currently running at 1467. I came up with option 3…

3) cycle to and across every ford in Lancashire, using wetroads Lancashire page as my goals. I added one more ford I knew about that they hadn’t listed. Hey, they inspire me, in return I’ll ride there take a photo, and contribute to their website.

I worry about my fitness.

This morning the first day of my holiday arrived. The weekend had been spent supporting my wife eventing. That particular tale is on the web too, if you know where to look.

While my wife got ready for work I warned her that if she wanted me to drop her off she’d be late. I had a winter’s worth of hair to remove from my legs. It wouldn’t be pretty, and it wouldn’t be an easy task.

25 minutes later, on my second razor, and halfway up leg #2 my wife is panicking that she’s going to be late. Well, I DID warn her.

Slipping into my MTB shoes is like slipping into an old friend. Erm, maybe that could do with rephrasing. They’re jolly comfy anyway.

I then try shoving everything I want for the day into my Camelbak. Rather too much I think. Trying to shove an EOS digital with zoom lens in there is hardly ideal. I dig out the last issue of Singletrack, vaguely remembering some camera bag that could be karabinered to my D-rings. There it is. LowePro TLZ 1. I call the local camera shop who fail to answer three times. Wilkinson’s in town are a lot more helpful. Yep, they have one, in black (natch) and will put it to one side.

My next dilemma is choice of steed. I’m rather spoilt for choice here.

Short travel XC seems too extreme for what will mainly be road work.

The Pompino, while proven faster on road despite knobbly tyres is a no-no. It’s too long since I rode to contemplate trying to push 44-16 all day where I’m going.

My hardtail, a 1993 Rocky Mountain Hammer decked out in period vintage components - narrow bars, 8 speed block worked by 7 speed thumbies, and Tioga City Slickers - is sitting where it has been since my heart problem. Namely idle on the turbo trainer, ready for my next, far distant, interval session.

Choice #4, isn’t actually mine. My wife’s hardtail has languished since she found 12 grands worth of horse for sale at the knock down price of two grand. There was a reason for that which if I told would only make this tale even longer.

Back to the bike. It’s decked out ideal for this trip, running Specialized Fat Boys at super-high pressures. There’s some off-road to do and I contemplate swapping them for semi-slicks. But the orange sidewalls of my only pair would clash horribly with it’s ice-blue frame. Besides I have an open wound on my left foot after yesterday**. My revised aim is to ride to the fords and use any available bridges to cross. Last time I got an infection in my foot I was off work for 6 weeks and in hospital for liver scans.

So my wife’s hardtail it is. I quickly find some pedals, make sure the tyre pressure really is super high, and set off.

By the time I’ve ridden to Preston, bought the camera bag, bought some of those faux climber mini-karabiners and restuffed Camelbak and TLZ it’s half past eleven. I worry about my route.

The route out of town towards Abbey Village and my first ford takes me along my old commute home. Which is all very well and groovy and familiar except I know that it contains a three mile climb. My wife and I measured it riding home from work one evening. Instead I head across country, making the height gain easier by adding miles. As I climb the countryside gets prettier with altitude. I can look across the smog of the M6 motorway towards Preston, England’s newest City sitting like a wart on the landscape.

Not long after I set off on the A675. This is a great motorbiking road, unfortunately with it’s fair share of casualties. Great warning signs on it’s length read out dire figures of death in the preceding year. I needn’t worry about failing to take a corner myself, however the number of waste trucks heading for the nearby landfill site are of more concern. I’ve been riding nearly an hour and a half now, and I realise how the uninitiated must see the bicycle as an instrument of torture. My hands ache. My shoulders ache. My knees ache. And as for my arse…

Soon though I turn off, on a promising looking side road. There are no warning signs, instead the road is apparently a dead end. Across the valley I can see the road I know I’ll be taking on my way to the next ford. The net height gain isn’t so bad, it’s the depths of the valley between it and me that causes more disquiet.

The tarmac quickly deteriorates, then disappears eventually turning into hardpacked gravel as the track enters a gloriously pretty wood. It’s “interesting” on narrow slicks, especially in the corners where it’s a bit looser. I turn a corner to be greeted by the sight of the unlawfully pretty River Roddlesworth winding its way through the valley. I’m immediately disappointed to see that it is crossed by a bridge. Damn. I park the bike, take photos to prove I was there and then check the age of the bridge. It looks too old to have been built since the Wetroads website was put up. I walk past the bike and look round the corner.

I am greeted by the most pathetic ford ever. Still, I can tick off Tockholes, SD658208.

Yes, that does say Witton Weavers Way. And, yes, that is uncomfortably close to Houghton Weavers, especially geographically. My next target is Hoghton Bottoms. Uneasily I make a mental note to ride away very fast if I should encounter any real ale drinking folk singers in comfortable cardigans and shoes.

I mount up and ride through the ford. Even on skinny slick tyres it presents no difficulty and I barely get my feet wet. As I climb out of the valley through the woods innumerable small streams also make their way across the road. While none of them manages the, ahem, grandeur of the official ford many of them get my feet rather wetter.

Soon I am in granny gear with the slick tyres struggling to cope on the wet rocks. Eventually grip gives out before either my legs or lungs and I resort to walking. Still, it’s good practice for the Land Rover climb at the impending SSMM 2005.

The final section of track levels out and I remount. There seem to be plenty of cheeky little tracks heading out into the woods. I make a mental note to return some quiet summer evening for some cheeky exploring.

The next road section fully validates my choice of bike. I have gained plenty of altitude (by British standards), and the only way is down. Unfortunately there are no motorbikes to chase but I still manage to have a go at getting my knee down as I ride through Tockholes and on to Blackburn.

The outskirts of Blackburn are far more pleasing than the outskirts of Preston. As I ride through the aptly named Pleasington I am reminded of my school days. Here it was, more than 25 years ago, that I would take part in the torture of the “cross country run”. Still, it avoided the humiliation of being picked last for football/cricket or whatever team building sport went with the term, if not the weather.

I was woken from this reverie by a short sharp shock of a climb. The reward was a gravel downhill that had the hot and dusty front disk making the sort of noise more often associated with high powered rally cars on a Welsh forest stage. This was fun.

As I approached my destination, Hoghton Bottoms, SD627272, a collie lay in the track. He got up as I got closer and a friendly head appeared above the hedge. I could see the sides of a bridge and enquired if the ford was still there.

“Oh, yes”, he replied.

He assured me that it would be no more than six inches deep at present after a reasonable dry spell. A few yards further and I could see the Northern approach. A gentle slope led to a crossing of 40 or 50 feet. The water looked reasonably slow. Definitely do-able.

I called my wife at work as I debated what to do. “I’ve been told it’s only six inches deep”, I said.

“It can’t be that deep, it only comes halfway up the duck”, she laughed, in reply.

I discussed the option of taking my shoes and socks off, carrying everything across the ford on the bridge, then walking across.

“Don’t you drop my bike and have it floating downstream”, she remarked. Rather sharply I thought.

Then I rembered that the River Darwen at this point has already flowed through Blackburn, and, ahem, Darwen. That and my open wound made me chicken out. It’s definitely not unachieveable though as a pair of MTB treads could quite clearly be seen exiting the river. A quick recce at the Southern end revealed an approach that could only be tackled in a proper off-roader. And no, I don’t mean a BMW X5.

Hot sun was still beating down and my pink, unprotected skin, was starting to take on the shade of lobster. I’d been out three and a half hours and ticked off two fords that didn’t lend themselves to inclusion as part of some ‘tick them off quick’ list. So I headed for home.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to tomorrow - my legs really do hurt more than they should. Still, I’ve got the train times if I have to resort to cheating.

Miles Today: Don’t know. Don’t care.
Height Gain Today: Less than my legs are telling me.
Fords Today: 2
Total: 2
Remaining: 20

* I’m a geek really.

** Involving three-quarters ton of horse, a 1/2 inch stud, and a steel toe-capped boot.