Discovering the joys, thrills and spills of real mountain biking on a weekend in England's Quantock Hills
My bicycling roots are definitely on the road. I went from general riding - pedalling out to country pubs, that sort of thing - to touring and then to racing. For almost a decade my main focus was on time-trials and training for time-trials. I’d been mountain-biking a few times, usually on holiday, but hadn’t done much more than trundle up and down fire-roads and canal towpaths.
I liked the lack of traffic and the chance to see new places without the hindrance of a car. But I wasn’t wowed by the heavy and seemingly clumsy bikes (cheap renters, mostly) and didn’t get much of an adrenalin rush from the riding I was doing. Truth to tell, I hardly knew what real mountain biking was about. Some sort of seed was sown when I saw some of the 1996 mountain bike race from the Atlanta Olympics - the first time the sport had featured on the Olympic program - but it didn’t germinate fully for a few more years.
Then I got the chance to sample a mountain biking weekend in the Quantock Hills in Somerset (on England’s south-western peninsula). This was run by a great little outfit called Fast Tracks MTB. In fact my partner and I went along together and with good hire bikes, great riding guided by Darren and Dave, and fabulous home cooking from Debs, it was a revelation.
Naturally I started off cautiously but with Darren’s gentle encouragement I was soon launching myself down descents I’d never have thought possible. I couldn’t quite face the rocky run-in to a famous downhill called The Chimney, though. Looking at the pictures recently, I’m sure I could manage it now. Oh, well, I’ll just have to go back some time soon.
The bug had bit and soon we were buying hardtails of our own and discovering that, though the Quantocks are great, we also had fantastic mountain biking virtually on our doorstep in areas like the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. And the rest, as they say, is history. Not only did I learn to love mountain biking, I believe it rekindled my passion for all facets of bicycling.
