Our breath rises in great clouds as we sit at the top of the climb, the headlights forming solid bars in the air as steam rises through their beams. Spread above us like dandruff on a dark suit, are millions of stars, occasionally interspersed with a plane’s flashing lights. There’s no sound all around us, no orange glow in the sky indicating the proximity of Britain’s fifth largest city, no nothing, just us and an awful lot of very dark countryside.
We pick a trail and set off into the darkness, accelerating quickly down the narrow corridor of light projected by our headlamps. The trail twists and turns under the wheels and rocks suddenly loom out of the darkness threatening to send you crashing to the floor. Event though we’ve ridden this trail hundreds of times before it suddenly seems different; some lines are beautifully picked out in sharp contrast by the powerful lights strapped to the handlebars, but where the path twists and turns no light penetrates, leaving you guessing as to what the next challenge will be or, indeed, where the track actually goes.
This is what night riding is about; turning every tired old trail into to something new and wonderful. It’s like riding a new piece of track for the first time, only it seems much, much faster. It’s hard to describe the buzz you get from all this, but part of the fun is being out on the trails with the sure knowledge that everyone else is safely tucked up in bed. It gives you both a sense of self-righteous pleasure and a carte blanche to ride every trail or footpath you want with very little chance of being caught or running into somebody.
Hence our current position somewhere to the west of Sheffield, happily haring down a footpath without a care in the world. Well, save for the fact that the footpath is a little bit too technical for riding at night. Of course the inevitable happens: trying to crest a steep set of roots I get the line hopelessly, horribly wrong and fly over the bars. Behind me the bike crashes groundwards and one of the headlights interfaces in a fairly dynamic fashion with the floor. Its lamp shatters and scatters glittering shards of glass across the trail where they lie twinkling like a string of fairy lights. Damn. When everyone has finished laughing and we’ve straightened the bike out we set off again, with me riding in that post-crash way that involves hitting virtually every obstacle on the trail and wobbling to a halt. Thankfully this is on the flat, but as soon as we head downhill again I’m in all sorts of trouble; as smooth as lumpy mash and as heavy handed as a home secretary I come scurfing around a corner and heading straight for a drop off. Now, drop offs at night are an interesting proposition, beyond the lip of the drop all is darkness, for all you know there could be anything there; rocks, roots, ruts and possibly even badgers. They really are a do or die manoeuvre, and so I do the do, so to speak, and choose the flying option. As I take off I can see nothing of the landing and the dark woods on either side become even more of a blur than before. I hope. I pray. Thankfully as soon as the back wheel touches back down I feel a little rush of relief as it lands on the hard surface of the track and not on a set of wheel-crisping boulders.
This single event gives me a dose of much needed confidence along with a booster jab of neat adrenaline and allows me to get down the rest of the descent in something approaching one piece. We rest at the bottom, lights extinguished, the ink-black night enveloping us like dark velvet.
Chatting about the descent, leaning on the cross bars, putting off the time we have to haul ourselves up the next climb, wrenching lungs and limbs and coughing and spluttering like emphysemic pensioners climbing stairs.
It’s also putting off rejoining the real world and going back to our ‘normal’ lives.
Next day at work someone asks me what I did last night . Blank expressions and puzzled looks great my every word as I explain the rush of barrelling along a two foot wide trail in the pitch darkness. No one gets it, no one understands.
About a week later something makes us decide to go one step further.
No one could remember whose idea it was, but it stuck like a smear story to a politician. Before we know quite what we are doing we finnd ourselves stood in the mud of a Peak District car park changing and cobbling the bikes together in the feeble glow from the car’s interior lights.
We trundle off up the first climb; a rocky, washed-out piece of double track that climbs through a conifer plantation to the top of the hill. Normally there are cracking views over Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, but it’s a little dark for that now. Instead there’s a huge black hole where the hills are, faintly outlined by sodium orange from thousands of leaky streetlights in far away Glossop.
Despite the lack of anything to see as such, it’s impressive in a brooding, threatening way. Perhaps I’m being melodramatic here, but with an overcast sky and the wind howling through the trees, you get a palpable feeling of being somewhere that you shouldn’t and are clearly not welcomed. That or maybe I’m worried about the next descent that’s waiting for us around the corner.
In the daytime it’s a blast; bermed switchback turns with a handful of rocks like babies’ heads scattered liberally across the trail. Normally it’s a riot, a hoot and big barrel of fun all tossed together, but at night?
All our previous nightriding experience has been on the paths around Sheffield and whilst some are technical, there’s nothing that’s really prepared us for the full-on, balls-out madness that this descent promises. You get the added bonus of a nearby big city safety net too, just in case something does go wrong¦
Three of us hammer down the descent, following each other in a tight line through the berms. It’s quick, quick, quick down this one. Each corner flows into the next, bikes riding high through the turns before being spat out into washboard rocks.
Rogue stones are flicked up by the wheels and go scampering down the trail like hyperactive kittens as we zip by. There’s the familiar noise of rocks clattering on rocks and tyres grabbing at the gritty surface of the track, but apart from that the trail is totally different to its usual self.
You focus on a puddle of light two feet ahead of the front wheel and nothing else; trees and countryside sweep by in a blur as you concentrate on keeping everything smooth.
No matter how powerful your lights there’s always one rock that sneaks up on you like a stealth fighter and tries to dump you into the heather, so your reactions have to be twice as sharp as they are in the daylight as you skip around and over the rocks.
We get to the bottom of the descent and even in the darkness it’s obvious that we are all grinning like idiots: I am, so I know that by extension the others will be feeling exactly the same sense of elation that I am currently enjoying.
It’s a huge hit of adrenaline served with a side-order of euphoria. You get a feeling deep down inside that makes you want to shout and scream, a massive dollop of emotion that rushes out all at once. That’s what all this is really about, mountain biking in its most concentrated form, like all your birthdays at once. Only better, much, much better.
/dom
date: old
