It’s bloody typical that outside is the October Indian summer that the weather forecasters have been cheerily predicting all week and I’m sitting here in Sheffield on Saturday morning feeling increasingly alone. On the other end of the phone all manner of tactical heat-seeking excuses are wheeled out to shoot down my high-flying enthusiasm: tales of weddings, parents visiting, DIY and shopping are relayed tinnilly down the phone handset. Damn. So I’m here, I’m ready and raring to go riding and I’m confronted with a stream of polite excuses and no-shows. Granted it’s not really a problem as I can head off on my own, but for some reason I’m always reluctant to ride solo. I can’t really explain why, there’s just something that doesn’t sit right with it in my head. Mainly, I think, because it gives me far too much time to look into my soul; bad head cinema, X-rated mind movies and video nasties of the imagination are floating around there. Not nice, not fir for human consumption, cert 18 only.
But, hell, I’ve driven all this way and my weekend is slowly slipping through my hands like so much fine sand (always going, always impossible to gather up and start again) so sod it, I’ll go and play with those whispering demons in the dark corners of my mind (“What happens if you fall off?” “Who’s going to come looking for you?”). I drag the reluctant kit on, as always wondering why it is that my gloves smell so bad despite being recently washed, wrestle my bike from the cellar (“Will it work?” “Don’t you need new brake pads?” whisper the voices) and scoot out the door. I meander through the park with its views over the Rivelin valley and the north of the city, still one of my favourite sights, and weave through ambling dog walkers and dodge the occasional stray football. And then I leave the rest of the world, disappearing down the allotments trail and zig-zagging down the loose dirt and broken glass (“Look at it glittering, looks sharp,” says someone) to the bottom road. There’s more demons waiting down here as I turn off the tarmac; a scene of multiple pile-ups and stacks, slide outs and tooth-rattling endos, broken bikes and bruised bodies: a trail with history. Mud, rocks, tree roots and water all looking to leap up and bite the unwary. But for some reason I’m riding well; cleaning all those tricky sections that normally have me flailing half-on, half-off the bike, less like poetry in motion more like the subject of a bad limerick.
Still, today it flows like honey from a spoon and I give a big mud-flecked grin as I ease past the nettles to rejoin the blacktop. Off through the kiddies playground with its collection of bored dads, all looking as though they’re gasping for a fag, and back onto the dirt, rattling down steps, skipping over roots and sweeping along the singletrack. It’s all reassuringly quiet as I head through the autumn-kissed woods – my bike seems to have healed itself, the rattles and creaks of the day before just a bad, malfunctioning dream. “Easy Going Trail” reads a signpost, “Who am I to disagree?” I think as I clean the steps and subsequent stream crossing which normally have me walking, bike in hands. There seems to be no-one around as I speed along a carpet of fallen leaves which scrunch under the wheels and whisk up reassuringly behind me like every cheesy car commercial you ever saw. I rejoin the A road and head up past Rivelin reservoir, glassily smooth in the October calm, to fight my way up the Race Track climb – some hang-over from the early days of NEMBA races, it’s actually called Wyming Brook – heading to the top car park. Even this seems strangely mellow as I creak and cough my way up under the flat grey sky; it’s normally a jarring, rock-covered, lung-bender where you battle the competing egos of your friends. “Something to this riding solo” I think cheerfully, the evil whispering voices silenced for now.
There’s not a breath of wind stirring the air as I pause by the mill pond of Redmires reservoir, silent figures dotting the heather clad hillside away in the distance and a grey blanket of cloud sucking the colour from the day. I turn my back on the reservoir and scoot along the flat conduit behind me until I reach the gate I want. There’s not a soul around as I slip through it and sneak onto a little used footpath, another Easy Going Trail, and spin off down the narrow moorland track. Little more than a foot wide in most places it twists and turns, swoops and dips, ducks, dives and winds it’s way downhill. I follow, sweeping through turns and fighting to keep the bike where I want it, all I can hear is the rush of wind in my ears, the harsh rasp of grit under the wheels as I turn sharply and the occasional yelp as yet another rock pounces from the dense bracken. It’s what all riding should be like, a big dollop of unrefined, unadulterated, free-from-artificial- colours-and-flavourings, just-like-mom-used-to-make, good ol’ fashioned fun. Of course just as I’m feeling all transcendental and wanting to hug the wildlife there’s an ominous chunka-chunka-chunka noise from the rear mech as half a mile of bracken threads its way round the cassette, jockey wheels and anything else it can find. “Hey Ho,” I think as I hop off the bike, “Soon have that out.” I press the shifter to twang the chain up a few cogs. ClickclickCLACK, it goes. “Oh,” I think, “It shouldn’t do that,” as I press the now worryingly limp shifter a few times in an increasingly despairing fashion. “Bugger,” I say. “Baaah,” says the sheep in the next field and as if on cue the first drops of rain begin to pitterpatter down from the sky.
Somewhere I can hear a voice laughing as I begin pushing through an unrideable section of marsh and contemplating the rest of the ride with my four remaining small gears. The unbearable lightness of being that I was suffering from earlier has now become a great beast of a millstone dangling around my neck. I sigh. I look around for assistance. I sigh some more. It stops raining. More or less without realising what I’m doing I begin to migrate towards the Stanedge climb (“You can’t climb it in that gear,” says a voice “You’ll never get round,” says another). Not going up it. Nope, definitely not. Going nowhere near it. So precisely what am I doing at the halfway gate peering back through the murk to look at Sheffield and Rotherham (even that looks presentable from this distance)? About an hour later I’m skimming down the Porter Clough descent desperately trying to find the line through the carpet of leaves that’s carefully masking all traces of a path and wondering precisely how I got here, whether I can find the energy to push back to the top again and wondering where it those voices have gone. There’s a war going on somewhere¦
author: Dom Perry
