falling off bikes since 1975

We took the Tandem of Doom™ to Grizedale Forest today. It’s not been out for a while and we felt it was time to scare ourselves silly on it.

No long route for us today, our mission was more to ride just enought to justify a sausage sandwich or other suitably full-fat lunch. So, shivering away and dreaming of hot tomato and basil soup with crusty buttered bread we set off on the Moor Top route. Billed in the catalogue as a Moderate two star ride offering a passage through ancient oak woods, a great place to hear the forest bird life. Seeing as this was a waymarked route we mistakenly assumed that the purple markers on the ground related to the purple markers on the official map and ended up climbing a half mile further than we needed to. Doh!

The first few miles of the ride were, to be frank, dull. Grey fireroad climb followed by grey fireroad descent under grey skies with nothing to excite us except seeing what maximum speed we could achieve. Round about 28 mph the stoker started applying the kidney brakes so we topped out at just over 30mph. Even the bird life had apparently hidden itself away for winter and the only sound we could hear was the sound of silence and the gears crunching as I fumbled for granny gear as I was faced with yet another climb. Surely we would be rewarded with some downhill eventually.

We saw no-one else until we reached Moor Top where I dismounted and ran off into the scenery to try and capture the snow-capped peaks of the Lake District, leaving Kirsty minding the tandem. “Blimey, a bigger Turner than yours”, she overheard as a rather nice anodized DH Racer wallowed it’s way uphill past us.

According to the map we faced the prospect of more grey fireroad descending back to sausage sandwich heaven. But lo! What is this. We had just passed a group of impressionable young downhillers (”Woah, it’s a Turner!”), when we spotted a ‘No Pedestrians’ sign and likely looking track leading off to the left. Now, as a rule, we don’t look for nice rooty singletrack when we’re riding something with a wheelbase 7ft long and the turning circle of a 7.5-tonner. But we could fireroad no more.

As the sun started to break through we’d inadvertently stumbled across the last section of the North Face trail - a new 10 mile trail being built with input from Daffyd Davis, the man behind many a Welsh trail. How could we resist? We couldn’t.

It’s been a while since I’ve ridden singletrack on this beastie and it showed. Fortunately the Bontrager Jones we were trying out on the front turned out to be ideal, otherwise our start would have been even more wobbly.

I must confess that we chickened out of the North Shore sections. We were literally too long for them. I couldn’t even keep both wheels on the planks walking it! After a few hundred yards getting our act together and worrying about a bunch of kids catching us up and finding us struggling along we realised we needed to run a much lower gear in anticipation of all the obstacles. It was a revelation. We could suddenly tackle things with more confidence. Maybe too much confidence. Let’s just say that we need to check our timing rings are still straight after one set of steps. By the time we were halfway along we were fairly cruising.

Kirsty has asked me to point out that all the while I was staring fixedly ahead picking a line she could see absolutely nothing of what was coming. On one side she could see the hillside streaming past her eyes at speed. On the other side the ground cambered away in ‘the drop of certain death’. In front she could see the back of my head and hear my warning cries, “step”, “dip”, “pedal! pedal! pedal!”

Fortunately we managed the whole section without washing out and down the drop. We even managed the tight left hander into the car park without falling off or removing anyones bumper!

As we sat in the post-ride sunshine eating a well deserved BLT and congratulating ourselves on not dying, two kids came their parked up bikes. “Woaah, a downhill tandem. I’ve always wanted one of those”. Kirsty and me chuckled to each other as we bet he’d never even seen one until then. Dad tried to stop them being enthusiastic in front of us. Sadly it’s parents that teach kids to be embarassed. “Can we ride the North Face trail?” they continued. “No”, said dad, probably to save himself from being outridden.

It was a long way for not much riding (the miles are in single digits), but we did enjoy ourselves. I’m even thinking of planning a night-time mission to the North Face trail.