mountain bikes, woods and co

So out for a ride with my own horse and two others we are picking our wayalong the deer trail  through the newly scattered brash from the tree harvesting that has been going on in Ashton Hill Woods, the forestry above Gatcombe. There hard at work with a couple of spades are three young men. Mountain bikers they tell me, they are not 'we only do jumps'. This is apparently not the same as down hill. 'You simply don't understand, it's about the adrenalin rush. The jumps just give us such a rush. You wouldn't understand'.  Well he was speaking to one of the people who just might. I know that I am now old (in his terms) and cranky, but age doesn't allow you to forget the rush of riding fixed fences at speed, point to pointing, recovering from near falls, as Lorna Clarke puts it 'getting off' with some mad risk that one takes in the heat of competition.  No young man, No idea.

I put it to him that many people use the woods and its not for their exclusive use. He felt that there should be; give way to bikes, that walkers, riders of a slower form be they bikes or horses, pushers of prams and dogs should all fall back into the undergrowth to feed their desire for an adrenalin rush. Hmmm. I suggested that the accident in Still Woods above Long Ashton had led to there being closed as the person injured had been too difficult to get out. To my amazement one of them admitted that it had been him. That he had had a broken arm and that his friends had called the air ambulance to help him but that when it could not reach him he had wlked out. Why on earth hadn't he done that in the first place? I am a great believer that if you do a dangerous sport then you suffer the consequences, falls and injuries, with as much dignity and little hassle to those who have to look after you as possible. Long ago my horse bolted when a poacher fired a gun nearby while I was in the woods. The horse fell, trampled me when she got up and ran off leaving me with 2 broken ribs. So what do you do? Walk home, go looking. Last thing that you want to do, as collapse with many pain  killers and feel sorry for yourself is top of the agenda. Possible on a bike but not with a potentially injured animal who may also be causing a multiple pile up. We had a call from the police at 10.30pm she was near the motorway at Gordano. Get vet, stitch up leave with friend close by as too shocked and too late to move. Home 2am. Up 6 am fetch horse, work at 8.30 washed brushed and clean.  No excuse not to be at work. After all you could call the injury self inflicted! I am not alone, many of the people that I evented with appeared to have the same ideology. One comtemporary  rode round Burghley with a collar bone wired up. Fell off, broke the other one and completed the show jumping with both strapped. Now that I think is mad as with a fall you cannot be in the reckoning. But we admired the grit.

What a lot of softies some of these bikers must be. One had a fall the other day and just left his bike in the undergrowth no-one, neither him or his friends moved it for weeks. I believe that these bikes are quite expensive. But hey. He's hurt poor chap what does the bike matter.