My first mountain bike event, horse riders and Epping Forest

So I did my first Mountain Bike event this weekend. Not a race as such but an orienteering type thing, set up by Garmin to promote their bike GPS gadgets. Pretty cool in fact, bit hard to read in the sun or rattling along the trail but once you get the hang of the moving map and the very simple keys, its pretty good. I must confess I think my time (1hr 51m) would have been faster if I had been using a paper OS map but one must move with the times. Orienteering is mostly a head game, with a lot of navigation thrown in to make it interesting. The Garmin unit does the nav and you just have to use your brain.

I didn’t do enough planning, just set out for the nearest check point with a decent points tally. This meant I ended up having the cycle over two valleys’ to collect the last 3 CP’s worth only 10, 20 and 30 points respectively. Out of a total of 360 available.

I have a Garmin 705 strapped to my hybrid which I use to cycle to work and for general trolling about on and off the road around Chilmark and it is great. Thanks Mark for the loan, not certain I want to give it back.

The Cadence and HR data, along with the GPS info can be analysed in the Garmin Training Centre software. This shows time, distance, speed, height gained and lost, and can be transferred back and forth to the bike unit from a laptop. Its is possible to set alarms and waypoints to see if you are getting fitter or in my case just chart ones decline into middle aged spread.

The event was fun as I had borrowed a proper full suspension bike from mate Chopper Dave. My first problem was that the seat post was fused into the seat pillar and being a combination of carbon fibre and aluminium was not going to move even with half a can of Carbon Flo (WD40 for carbon fiber). The very nice men in Stonehenge Cycles put their chances at no better than 50:50 at getting it to move or shatter the post. Not good odds with only 24 hrs to the off. What’s an inch and a half amongst mates, bloody masses in my view. I couldn’t get a full leg stroke on the uphill sections, which is very off-putting. I did a couple of short rides around local tracks to get used to the feel but the Daviator rides with flatties which feel weird after years with riding with eggbeaters, so they were changed. Peddling is a lot simpler with ones feet clipped into the peddles, rather than sitting on top. A bit of fettling improved the indexing and I was off to Queen Elizabeth Country Park for my first decent crack off-road on a proper bike in years. I had had a couple of big days in the Brecon Beacons over the May Bank holiday but that was a spine jarring experience on my hard tailed hybrid.

My first mountain bike (25 years ago) was a Peugeot Crazy Horse, only 10 gears, no indexing and a cast iron frame. I brought it with the intention of it being a great way to get me and my gear to the crags in style, without walking. My first attempt was at Swanage on the Dorest coast with panniers loaded up with ropes and my crag bag on the rack, I spent an entertaining hour falling off every 10 metres trying to get to the top of Boulder Ruckle. It normally took 30 minutes on foot.

I left the bike in the shed after that but kept the cycling to my local trails which at that point were in Epping Forest. Mountain bikers are now in serious conflict with walkers and horse riders in the forest. I think myself and two of my colleagues would have been the only mountain bike rider in 8,000 acres back in 1985/6. The conflict today is a silly one really, lots of intolerance of changing recreation patterns and few bikers being selfish. It’s not unusual that selfishness, dressed up as rights for the masses, is the cause of lots of local difficulty. I went back to Epping Forest to work for a cope of years recently. I had mountain bikers using a trail at the back of my house almost every day. As a family we never had a problem, they called ahead on the poor visibility bits of the downhill and slowed down when ever they saw us, normally out with the kids (then aged 3 & 5). We stood back and allowed them to pass, everybody got on fine.

I don’t doubt that there were incidents when bikers disturbed peoples picnic and walkers stubbornly refused to allow bikes past on narrow paths. I bit of given and take, along with calm discussion without adjectives, is the best way forward. I am sure the entrenched are busy digging in deeper but bikes are not going away. In fact I would suggest the number of people cycling for pleasure is growing. That’s great in my book.

The issue with horse riders is an interesting one. I can understand that bikes can spook the horses. One of the most enjoyable things I had to do during my time there was ride. I arrived as a rusty novice and left a lot better. We had lots is discussion about the issues with horse riders and I must confess to taking quite a hard line on this one. Horse riding is never going to be “safe”, there will always be risks. One of the horses I had to ride in Epping didn’t like white vans and would shy away if she saw one coming her way. This was a very regular occurrence as Epping Forest is in Essex, the home of the white van! I knew this about my mount and rode accordingly. There were riders in the forest who would expect all other users to stand still as they came past in case the horse spooked. One actually told me that her horse was scared of branches, whilst riding in a forest! I understand the risks of riding a bike and horse, and accept them. I understand that I have to mange my own mount and its behaviour. That I could be injured by the actions of another. I expect them to behaviour in a sensible way but I do not expect then to put my needs exclusively before their own and I certainly do not believe it is the responsibility of the land owning authority to de-risk my recreation space. Many of the horse riders in Epping Forest believe the forest authorities should provide an inherently safe place for them to ride. This position is made worse by the generally poor standard of horsemanship exhibited by the majority of riders in the forest. the shining example of good horsemanship came from the forest authorities own mounted staff. Sadly they are being disbanded and retuned to foot and van patrols.

Mountain bikers do need to take extra care around horses but equally the riders need to be aware of the other users and school their mounts to expect cyclists. walkers, white vans and trees. From observation I think the riders are more concerned than the horses and this spooks the animals more than the cyclist, etc.

Back to the present, Chopper has a very nice Trek Epic M5 with lots of XT, XTR and Fox Float front and back. I bit short in the cockpit for me. The front wheel was coming up on most strokes on the big rings and on some of the down hill bits I was very close to acrobatics at times. It’s a large frame and even though we are both the same height I think I could do with an XL.

No idea how long my route ended up being but there were 8 check points spread around QECP and I found them all. The Oregon unit worked well even under the tree canopy. I did spend a while wandering around a nicely thinned stand of beech, swearing at the bloody thing as it insisted I was on top of the CP but it was nowhere to be seen. I found it about 50 meters away and 10 minutes later on the side of a track. Why of course all the other had been, so why would they put this one in the middle of a load of bramble and singers. There were no other tracks in or out so it was all my fault not the hardware’s.

I made it back in one piece, a bit scratched and drenched in sweat but loved it and will be adding a new iron horse to the stable ASAP. The next goal is to find a few equally daft mates and have a crack at Mountain Mayhem. The bike is on its way to the shop for some proper fettling as the indexing drove me mad. Couldn’t get any low gears gear under load, especially the bigger rings. Old blokes like me need lots of mechanical advantage to get up the steeper, longer hills. Dave says he hadn’t noticed as he doesn’t need the big rings. Its not that he is fitter he just gives up and walks sooner!

Baby P, adjectives and tribes

Do I need to saying anything about the latest chapter in the Baby P story? Yes but its quite simple. What happened to the child was appalling, I know enough, I do not need to know anymore about the suffering and the causes. I do not want to know anything more about the people that did these appalling things and equally I do not want to know anything about the people who failed to do something to stop it or didn’t notice when undertaking a diagnosis.

The media appear to think that we do want to know and to this end have worked hard to get all the names into the public domain, or rather in there individual organs, everything reported in the media over the last few days has been available online for months, also reported by the media. To this end their campaign has been a waste of time and money.

We, the tax payer, will now have to pick up the cost of protecting the 3 people whose ID has been revealed, once they get out. The Sun estimates £1.5 Million per annum. I assume this is a massive exaggeration but it will not be cheap and it will go on for a long time. The ability of the media to generate a self propagating story is amazing. The incidence of one feeding story being recycled to feed the next feels a lot like feeding dead cows back to healthy cows and creating mad cow disease, which then jumps species to people. In this case we are creating mad journo disease which is jumping across the gap to infect newspaper readers, radio listeners and TV viewers. Will we never learn.

I am assuming the law suits being brought by the various social workers, managers and medic about the criticism of them and subsequent dismissal will all end up in a huge cost being covered by the publics purse, that assumes they do not win anything but there will be huge costs. Please God tell me that the employers took some decent advice from the employment lawyers and followed due process.

A bad day for the public purse, all driven by a media that loves adjectives almost as much as circulation, BARB and RAJAR figures.

A bright hope is that TATA have found their own funding from commercial banks to get Land Rover Jaguar back on track. A big thank you to Peter Mandelson for not caving in to huge pressure to cough up £400 million in loan guarantees. The idea of active industrialism might actually work. I know the great white hope of Heseltine was a strong advocate of intervention before every meal but government staying out of industry and looking after people in need more directly may be a good idea.

I could do a very long blog on the problems of people sticking their oar in when they have nothing to add but it would be of little value to anyone especially me. I will say that I am constantly surprised at the ability of people to not hear the important things that are said to them and how easily some can take offence at the best intentioned action. We do appear to love to create tribes in our life. Tribes have many good things about them but one of the things they do bring with them is tribal conflict and better still intra tribal tension. A like working in teams of people, I try hard to build teams to deliver objectives, being a firm believer in the Chinese parliament style of decision making. Get a group of smart people and give everyone an equal say, all idea valid and everyone then develops a workable solution. It gets everyone on the same page, shares the risk and builds ownership. Why is it then that some folk will not play but the game goes on and they are asked to come on a half time. Then they have to change the game plan to the one they like or they provoke a pitch invasion too get their own way. No real winners then and lots of time wasted.

By the way, love the sunshine. Lots more please. My enthusiasm for sunshine not rain and cold must be something to do with getting old.

Baby P, adjectives and tribes

Do I need to saying anything about the latest chapter in the Baby P story? Yes but its quite simple. What happened to the child was appalling, I know enough, I do not need to know anymore about the suffering and the causes. I do not want to know anything more about the people that did these appalling things and equally I do not want to know anything about the people who failed to do something to stop it or didn’t notice when undertaking a diagnosis.

The media appear to think that we do want to know and to this end have worked hard to get all the names into the public domain, or rather in there individual organs, everything reported in the media over the last few days has been available online for months, also reported by the media. To this end their campaign has been a waste of time and money.

We, the tax payer, will now have to pick up the cost of protecting the 3 people whose ID has been revealed, once they get out. The Sun estimates £1.5 Million per annum. I assume this is a massive exaggeration but it will not be cheap and it will go on for a long time. The ability of the media to generate a self propagating story is amazing. The incidence of one feeding story being recycled to feed the next feels a lot like feeding dead cows back to healthy cows and creating mad cow disease, which then jumps species to people. In this case we are creating mad journo disease which is jumping across the gap to infect newspaper readers, radio listeners and TV viewers. Will we never learn.

I am assuming the law suits being brought by the various social workers, managers and medic about the criticism of them and subsequent dismissal will all end up in a huge cost being covered by the publics purse, that assumes they do not win anything but there will be huge costs. Please God tell me that the employers took some decent advice from the employment lawyers and followed due process.

A bad day for the public purse, all driven by a media that loves adjectives almost as much as circulation, BARB and RAJAR figures.

A bright hope is that TATA have found their own funding from commercial banks to get Land Rover Jaguar back on track. A big thank you to Peter Mandelson for not caving in to huge pressure to cough up £400 million in loan guarantees. The idea of active industrialism might actually work. I know the great white hope of Heseltine was a strong advocate of intervention before every meal but government staying out of industry and looking after people in need more directly may be a good idea.

I could do a very long blog on the problems of people sticking their oar in when they have nothing to add but it would be of little value to anyone especially me. I will say that I am constantly surprised at the ability of people to not hear the important things that are said to them and how easily some can take offence at the best intentioned action. We do appear to love to create tribes in our life. Tribes have many good things about them but one of the things they do bring with them is tribal conflict and better still intra tribal tension. A like working in teams of people, I try hard to build teams to deliver objectives, being a firm believer in the Chinese parliament style of decision making. Get a group of smart people and give everyone an equal say, all idea valid and everyone then develops a workable solution. It gets everyone on the same page, shares the risk and builds ownership. Why is it then that some folk will not play but the game goes on and they are asked to come on a half time. Then they have to change the game plan to the one they like or they provoke a pitch invasion too get their own way. No real winners then and lots of time wasted.

By the way, love the sunshine. Lots more please. My enthusiasm for sunshine not rain and cold must be something to do with getting old.