Last week I became a van driver for a couple of days delivering bikes to customers we sold at the Royal Three Counties Show at Malvern the previous weekend.
My third drop took me from Leominster into the heart of the Forest of Dean. The sat nav took me up Symonds Yat (awesome climb!) towards Coleford and all the memories of racing around there and mountain biking with my mates in the 90s came back. I think the Forest of Dean was the last time I rode an MTB in anger and cracked a rib off a jump. Must be 25 years ago
The last race I did there my team mate hit a sheep at 30mph+ downhill. He got carted off to hospital and when I got back to the HQ his bike was there with the front wheel nearly touching the down tube. Ouch! The sheep and he were both ok. The bike was a right off though.
Anyway, when I got home I decided to have a look at a route to see if I could get round on my gravel bike to tick it off the list. A quick bit of googling found a route from a gravel event last year called Fire and Brimstone. No idea why it’s called that but 67 km and 1400m of climbing was spot on. So the plan is to drive down early doors this Saturday and give it a bash. Its not all offroad like Scotland was, probably a 60/40 mix but there is plenty of climbing to keep me going.
I’ll start at Pedalabikeaway (parking + a cafe) and then lose myself in the woods for a few hours…and of course I will tell you all about it afterwards
Adios
