Most of the time nose hair just seems unneccesary. People can probably tell by the wrinkled elephant eyes, fuse wired ears and increasingly grumpy 'one foot in the grave' behaviour that you're not really eligible for a Young Persons Railcard anymore. Sometimes though you're glad that there are a pair of roadsweepers brushes up your snout, and that's happened twice recently.
The other week it was 3 days of power sanding front room floorboards (now you know why it was quiet on here). Last month though it was realising just how much Welsh trail dust would have come straight off the wheel in front and into your septum after 200km of nose to tail riding!
We're already looking proper Panda eyed like 1950's motor racers when we pull up at Abergorlech to meet Carl and Ivy from
http://www.bikebrechfa.co.uk/. Carl from Komatsu has rejoined us from
Cwm Carn too so with a quick change of shorts (word of advice if you're roadtripping, NEVER sit in sweaty shorts while you're driving between rides unless you want to destroy your derriere double quick) and a squirt of lube on squeaky chains and we're off.
It's a long old climb to start and there's obviously a bit of fatigue starting to show after 50km, Ivy and Carl spin up alongside and fill us in on the local knowledge though. There's a new event coming up in July (
see the news pages) that uses all the best 'secret' trails as well as the official ones, and the new Black rated trail is due to open any minute too. The trail levels off slightly through the snaking singletrack and enchanted forest sections but Mike isn't letting up any, surging ahead on his singlespeed with the Carls, Alex and Leigh in hot pursuit.
Big vista's of Elan valley beauty open up across the first clearfell descent, but you won't want to take your eyes off the unique stump jump features and stacks of sweeping berms on the way down. A quick regroup on the fireroad and we're diving down through dark weaving singletrack and over a retina rattling roller coaster raft of logs at the bottom.
A quick bit of boulder bash fixing of Leigh's cassette and we're off again with another long fire road climb to gain height for the next descent. Some heads are starting to hang a bit low and most of us are grabbing a bite of food at every stop but the weather is still amazing as we start contouring and
carving around the big wooded hillsides of the next long Star Wars 'speeder bike' sections. Big berms and jump sections create a definitely more freeridey feel to the trail and the fly boys up front are loving every launch all the way down.
We're sweating rivers and sucking hard on Camelbaks on the final switchback climb and there's not much talking and a fair bit of spreading out as the group grind past the 60km done mark. The SIS gel supply is certainly taking a beating too as we try and gulp down energy as quickly as possible. Mechanically it's all going great though, and even on the mental final descent with its convoy of tabletops, giant berms and high speed ragged edge singletrack nobody crashes or cramps.
We regroup at the wall ride across the bridge and Neil is definitely eyeing it up until Ivy and Carl's offer of tea and cake from their van has us charging back to the car park.
It's all the more welcome as we're going to have to miss out our planned detour to
Coed Trallwm. We know how good the cakes and welcome are there, but there's no way we'll get the next two trails done tonight if we loop back into mid Wales. Unfortunately this is as far as Merida Mike and Komatsu Carl can come with us too.
We leave Ivy and Carl discussing the latest trail developments with a bunch of local riders and armed with the essential knowledge of where the nearest good fish and chip shop is we head off for Lampeter.
How far can a bunch of regular riders without any edurance training push the pace in a single day? Will
Summit scupper us, will we turn pumpkin at midnight on
Climachx or will we be halfway round the beast by dawn? Tune in to the next installment of our ultimate Welsh road trip next week.
Until then, have a great weekend and start of the next.
I'm off testing Scott's new bikes in Spain for a couple of days, so we'll see how the trails over there compare.