The shortest line between two points is a straight line; it’s something that’s drummed into you from an early age. Detours, wiggling and meandering are all as welcome at this party as a dose of crabs, which was probably not how they put it in maths classes when you were 10 but hell, if they’d put it like that then maybe we’d have paid more attention to the algebra. Anyway the point being is that if you want to get between place A, say in this instance your accommodation for the weekend, and place B, hypothetically speaking the top of a mountain for example, then the quickest route, is almost certainly climbing straight to the top and back down again. And just supposing that you haven’t set off until 11.30 and you’re faintly worried about being benighted on top of some enormous Lakeland fell then the same rule applies, only more so, possibly to the power of ‘n’ as they say in algebraic circles (like regular circles only with more beards). But whatever else mountain biking is (a religion, a disease, a way of life?) it certainly isn’t sums, adding or anything faintly logical. Which explains, roughly speaking, why, when the object of the exercise is to get to the top of Hellvellyn and back down again in something approaching one piece, we plan to climb several hundred metres to Grizedale Tarn then piss away all that lovely height gain by dropping down to Patterdale before beginning our assault on the mountain proper.

Hence we find ourselves inching slowly up the climb to the tarn. It starts as a perfectly rideable, if steep, piece of rocky doubletrack and carries on in this vein for a while before becoming a grass slope at some ridiculous angle. Here we discover yet another of life’s rules as the group of ramblers we’ve already overtaken passes us - if you are going to come out into the countryside for a nice stroll then lugging 30lb of fancy walking frame and kit along with you tends to be somewhat burdensome.

But as previously noted, when did mountain biking ever have anything to do with logic?So we struggle on, bikes slung over shoulders as the path narrows and turns into greasy flagstones heading towards the lake. The climb ends in a rocky col a hundred or so metres above the battleship grey lake, with a singletrack path wending its way down to the shore. This proves to be a fairly accurate taster of what’s to come: slippery rocks, running water and sharp drops making for a smiley-happy-skipping-through-the-meadows-with-the-little-lambs-type descent, combined with a gale howling across the mountains and a flat tyre just to annoy. So we find ourselves huddled behind a cairn waiting for people to finish fettling as the wind screams across the lake and whips up ice cream peaks on the dark water.

With the flat tyre mended we hurtle down the trail in the usual semi-controlled fashion. Bouncing and skittering off rocks and drops, lines are picked, swapped and explored, never sure quite how much friction those big rock slabs have (more than ice, less than meeting your in-laws) or what’s over the next rise. It’s a blank sheet of ripped up exercise book where two plus two can equal five if you want to give that line a go. Stopping only for a slight navigational error we dribble down the final part of the trail into Patterdale for tea and cakes at the world’s slowest café. If this was television calendars would flip forward, sunsets come and go and seasons change in doubletime. As it is we stand around waiting while, with all the speed of a glacier moving, the chap behind the counter makes a bacon sandwich or a cup of tea in a fashion that suggests he is still having trouble coming to terms with radical concepts like heat, light and kettles. Having frittered away some more precious daylight it’s time to make our summit bid. We creak painfully up a gravel trail of lung-bursting, leg-aching, stomach-churning unpleasantness. Bile catches at the back of your throat with every desperate gasping breath and a thousand dancing demons of pain drive nails through your muscles.

More climbing follows, it seems occasionally that it’s never going to end, and now, of course, we’ve gained sufficient height that we’re inside the clouds. Sounds fluffy and kinda cool doesn’t it? All wispyfloaty, meringue-like and lit by nice warm sunshine. Sweet. Nice. Nope, think cold, wet and generally miserable; an awful lot like Aberdeen in fact. In mathematical terms it’s the sort of 20th order quadratic equation that can’t actually do anything other than make your had hurt just by looking at it. In other words, it’s nowhere that you’d want to linger for any great length of time. Of course inevitably, we’re just dropping down towards a col ready for the final climb to the summit when the cry goes up: “Flat!” Bugger. Being good Samaritans two or three of us hang back to help out, and then slowly freeze as it turns out to be a proper repair that’s needed rather than a simple tube change. Huddled in the fog on an exposed col with the wind sweeping all the way from Siberia is perhaps the low point of the day. But, hey ho, at least we get toffees for our troubles and the final carry to the summit is more than enough to get the blood flowing again.

You can always tell during winter when the day is getting old - the sunshine stops being crisp and sharp and takes on a waxy, smudged effect. Everything is gently blurred at the edges and yellow-tinged, as though you were viewing the world through a filter. Sitting halfway down the descent we’re getting plenty of opportunity to look at the afternoon sky as another flat gets fixed. It’s been a rip-snorter of a descent so far - steep zig-zags down the hill on a surface that appears to want to follow you to the bottom.

With the flat tyre mended we hurtle down the trail in the usual semi-controlled fashion. Bouncing and skittering off rocks and drops, lines are picked, swapped and explored, never sure quite how much friction those big rock slabs have (more than ice, less than meeting your in-laws) or what’s over the next rise. It’s a blank sheet of ripped up exercise book where two plus two can equal five if you want to give that line a go. Stopping only for a slight navigational error we dribble down the final part of the trail into Patterdale for tea and cakes at the world’s slowest café. If this was television calendars would flip forward, sunsets come and go and seasons change in doubletime. As it is we stand around waiting while, with all the speed of a glacier moving, the chap behind the counter makes a bacon sandwich or a cup of tea in a fashion that suggests he is still having trouble coming to terms with radical concepts like heat, light and kettles.

Having frittered away some more precious daylight it’s time to make our summit bid. We creak painfully up a gravel trail of lung-bursting, leg-aching, stomach-churning unpleasantness. Bile catches at the back of your throat with every desperate gasping breath and a thousand dancing demons of pain drive nails through your muscles.

Eventually the trail flattens and you collapse gratefully to the floor, waiting until your head stops spinning before attempting to speak, drinking in the glorious view back over High Street complete with a rainbow hovering in the sky. Of course you could just get off and push, saving yourself the dubious pleasure of tasting blood, but where’s the fun in that?

Dom Perry

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