A long break

Two months since I posted last...that's appalling and I'm truly sorry if you've missed me!

I've just come back from a week in Scotland - taking the air at Ayr (sorry...).

Recently I wrote an article for a magazine all about the good work that the Forestry Commission is doing up in Scotland to help support rural businesses and rural pursuits. In the last year the Scottish economy was boosted by around £9,000,000 as a result of the huge interest in mountain biking. Scotland is now one of the world's best places to go both mountain and downhill biking outside of North America - in particular the 7Stanes - seven Forestry Commission owned sites in Dumfries and Galloway.

So last week I had a crack at the blue route at Glentrool and it was quite easy, I'm pleased to say! In fact I did it twice and didn't get off and walk at any of the downhill tricky bits. All of this sufficiently buoyed up my confidence for me to believe I could have a go at the red route at Ae, also known as the Ae Line.

Foolish woman.

It says it's 25km, but the day we did it a large chunk of the route was blocked off as they're harvesting the trees. So they'd constructed an extra route in order to keep everyone 'entertained'. The first bit of this new route was a half mile hike up a wooded hillside.

Well, that's okay, you'd think...er....no. Hillside is perhaps a bit of an understatement....a mountainside covered by a carpet of pine needles would perhaps be a better description. The hike was almost vertical and certainly impossible to ride a bike up! It was also very dark in there as the fir trees produced a Hobbitesque atmosphere - sound deadened and only a weak yellow light made its way through the arboreal gloom.

The next section was a little more opened out but still deep in the forest. Fortunately this section was flat...well, if you can call a path littered with ancient trees and stumps flat. I could barely get a single bike wheel between the fallen trees yet clearly other more experienced (mad) and braver (barking) souls had skipped and jumped on their bikes from bough to bough.

I walked and lifted my bike over the hazards. I'm sure the ride is now around 30km - the Forestry Commission recommends anything from 1.5 - 3 hours.

It took me nearer to 5 hours.

5 hours of terror, pain, exhaustion, shredded nerves, excitement, exhilaration, adrenaline, crying, screaming, laughing and a large bruise on my backside caused when I had my one and only stack.

My fall from grace....

I've described the route as being like a roller coaster on two wheels...in a quarry with a side order of Lord of the Rings and an Ewok village. Scary stuff.

So, was my fall a huge stack taken on a table-top jump? A huge drop off? A steep bermed curve perhaps?

No. I was in the woods on a gentle bit of single track....I'd just had a short walk as my nerve had deserted me and one side of the track was a rather steep drop down the mountainside. I got on my bike and ever so slowly tipped to the right - the same side as the steep drop. I fell in a heap with my head much lower than the rest of me, my legs still entangled in the bike frame. I narrowly avoided sliding all the way down the grassy drop....how? My backside decided to fix itself to a large and very hard rock. The bruising is particularly nasty and not fit for photographic reproduction.

Once I sort through my photographs I may post some of the more challenging parts of the holiday!