WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BARNEY MARSH
This isn’t how it usually works. If you’re a freelancer like wot I is (Barney Marsh, writer of rongs, that’s me), you usually find yourself pitching ideas like a desperate, capering gibbon to the dispassionate Singletrack suits with their blank faces and dark glasses, before one of them presses a button which either leads to a commission or (more often) a trapdoor to the metaphorical furnace room at the bottom of Singletrack Towers.
But Hannah – who essentially operates as the Metatron of Singletrack – told me she’d had an email from a young chap called Lew Price who actually suggested a ride in that there Hay-on-Wye. Lew emailed alluringly of stunning views, stiff climbs and sweet, sweet singletrack, and stuff – ooooooooh. So, like a keen little hamster – albeit one who owns a van – I trotted off, cheeks stuffed with bike gear, to the far northeastern bit of the Brecons to see what was what.