Long weekend in North Wales mountain biking with my friend Hammy. Saturday’s ride through beautiful Welsh mountains, fluffy clouds scudding across a pale-blue sky, is balanced by a hellish descent on Sunday morning. Brambles sprung from triffid stock lash us along the trail, and make the wet slate under our tyres invisible. On a bike, wet slate feels like ice (though I don’t think ice rinks usually come lined with thorny bushes).
Then the sun comes out, we huff and puff steeply up out of Betws and over into the Conway Valley, home in time for Tour crashes that make our bramble scabs look tame, and a foothill of cake.
Not much beats the tired-but-happy feeling of a long day’s mountain biking.
