Month: June 2025

Sometime at the beginning of June I passed my annual riding target of 2,500km. As June comes to an end I’m on track to be nearing 3,000km. Last year in the same time period I’d ridden 140km and to further emphasise the difference, earlier this month in a ride out to Delamere Forest for coffee and a bacon barm, I did close to that distance in a single ride. I am lighter, fitter, and enjoying riding again.

The best bit is that I keep finding new trails like the gravel track in the photo above. In my earliest days getting out exploring on the bike, riding new bits, having those revelatory moments – ‘ah, this comes out here’ and ‘so I can use this to link up this and that’ – were always the highlights.

Right now that sense of adventure biking, complete with top tube mounted frame bag comes in the form of a Scott Addict Gravel bike. What a machine. Looking forward to the next 100km+ adventure at the weekend.

It’s Tuesday evening, after a final day for the foreseeable future spent in Oxford, I’ve taken the executive decision to break up the journey home with a tactical riding opportunity (T.R.O.). 45 minutes later, I’m just over half way around the red route at Cannock Chase and I’m contemplating the similarities of Thetford Forest and the Midlands.

No flint. Where have all these rounded stones and pebbles come from? Same abundance of ferns. Thankfully few nettles and brambles (compared to my local pinewoods). Most starkly, there is vertical variation. Ups and downs beyond bomb holes and gently undulating Breckland. Lots of trees and threaded trails. Very quiet with a sense of in the wild

It feels more built, with hunks of stone slab and rockgarden sections, even boardwalk but somewhere into the final third of the red, it just seems to come alive, great down hill trail sections, fast flowing Singletrack sections. The latter makes me think of Thetford, in particular the rollercoaster.

Bang on 9pm I roll up to the pay and display machine, wince at the extortionate parking fee for less than two hours, load up and carry on my journey home to north west coast. Plenty of time to reflect and review. That was a great ride. I should go back sometime. Maybe this hardtail business has run it’s course – wouldn’t it have been more fun on a cross country trail bike?