Local Hero to the Rescue!

So when you’ve flooded your trail bike miles from anywhere, the chances of fixing it feel pretty remote. If only there was a guy with a bike shop nearby ..

At the end of January ten of us had planned a weekend trail ride to slough away the winter malaise and get the year started. I say we’d planned it, but in reality, it was our friend Chris that had done all the logistics – putting together the, booking up a village pub for the overnight stay and planning the appropriate fuel and food stops along the way to keep both riders and bikes suitably replenished. The only fly in the ointment was the appalling weather that had stuck around for most of the month, deluging the UK with daily rain and turning much of the low-lying rural areas into lakes rather than fields.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, we met up at a local café and mercifully the rain had taken some time off. We set out on what was a glorious morning of trail riding, the miles evenly split between muddy lanes and sinuous country roads, reaching our first fuel stop just before midday. Pressing on south, both the byways and the roads were becoming progressively wetter - villages had rivers running down the main street, and cascades of water flowed from the hedges and onto the winding roads. Luckily, riding dirt bikes with loads of ground clearance, we were largely unaffected, splashing through the floods with a smugness that could only be heading for a fall.