Gulp!

I was supposed to refit the belt that drives the cutters on my ride-on mower yesterday so I could mow my grass before the rain started again today (which it has done) but couldn’t because I’d found that a bolt holding a pulley had sheared clean off. I tried to buy another locally without much expectation that I’d be able to and sure enough I couldn’t, so after I’d downloaded a parts list and ordered one on line that’ll take several days to arrive, I decided that I’d take the opportunity to go for a bike ride.

My first mistake was that I didn’t put my warm jacket on and soon regretted it because while I was out it became much cooler and more cloudy and the wind cut through the top I was wearing like a knife. But by then it was too late and I had to keep going, so lesson learned. On the road from my house leading to Fleurac I’d noticed a turn-off to the right that I’d gone down previously on my old e-bike but had then turned round on because it had become too steep down-hill and I hadn’t fancied the drag back up again. This time on my new bike with its much greater power, I thought I’d give it a go.

And what an experience it was! Like many such tracks, it led off-road into open country consisting of woodland and rough open spaces. These ‘chemins rurals’ are open to the public but are not supported by the local communes and are used by farmers, hunters, off-roaders and adventurous bikers, much like I was going to become although I didn’t know it. After descending a few hundred metres, quite steeply in places with heavy braking, I came to a cross-roads with signs indicating that if I continued straight ahead I’d eventually arrive in Plazac, but if I turned left, I’d get to Plazac via the ‘short route’.

So given how chilly it was already becoming, I decided to go left. The surface was mainly dry but it was fairly evident that when wet it had been used by heavy farm traffic and/or some serious off-roaders because it was fairly heavily rutted and some of the ruts had become hard set like concrete making riding a bit tricky to say the least. But this was only the start. For the first hundred metres or so after I’d turned left the surface was fairly level and it was just a matter of dodging from side to side to stay out of the main ruts. But then the track suddenly took a steep roller-coaster-like down-turn and I stopped, wondering whether it might be more prudent to turn back rather than continue as the surface continued to be heavily rutted.

Predominantly, there was light woodland on both sides so there wasn’t an option to leave the track on either side – I’d just have to press on and make the best of it. But what the heck, in for a penny, in for a pound, I decided to continue. And what an experience it became! In some places the track had been cut away by traffic to leave narrow platforms at the sides and these might have been a good option to take. However, most of the ruts were so deep that if you rode off the platform you’d fall into them, and in many places the height difference between the edge platform and the bottom of the adjacent rut was 30 or so centimetres, so not something you’d want to do.

And all the while by that time the track was going down and down and at that point I hit the wet part where there was still standing water and thick mud as well as the ruts. Obviously I wasn’t having to pedal at all and in fact the challenge was to stand up out of the saddle on the pedals. Luckily I was wearing my walking boots and I decided that the best way to overcome the mud was to do as I’d been doing in some of the heavily rutted parts, which was to hang my legs out to either side in case I started to fall in either direction and move ahead under power. This was OK on the less steep bits, but there were several very steep stretches in which I almost felt that I was taking my life in my hands!

But all things must end and as the track began to level off and I turned a bend a house appeared in the front of which there was the beginning of a road with a proper hard surface. It was also less steep and I was able to continue downhill in a far more controlled way just with modest continuous braking. There were several more houses on each side of the road, one or two quite new, and eventually I got to the bottom of the hill at a junction which I’d passed by hundreds of time on the road leading up from Plazac’s market area to Fleurac, and what an experience it had been.

But it wasn’t over because now I had to get back up to Fleurac. I could have just turned left and headed for home but despite the cold I decided not to. Instead I continued right into Plazac, turned left into the centre of the village and continued on to return home via Rouffignac. I didn’t take a note of the time or the distance but it was undoubtedly the longest ride that I’d done so far. And certainly the coldest. I’d been thinking about taking my new bike off road and had been wondering where would be suitable for the first time. I’d thought I’d take it fairly gently initially to get the feel of it and I certainly hadn’t thought that I’d be trying to do anything anywhere near as extreme as I just had done. But you’ve got to live a little, haven’t you. Life’s too short for pipe and slippers 😀