Dom Perry
There comes a point on 99% of mountain bike holidays where the experience begins to feel a little like work. Well, not ‘work-work’, of course – none of us are sitting staring vacantly at computer screens desperately watching the hours tick slowly by – but there’s a certain crushing repetitiveness to the experience that occasionally feels horribly familiar. It’s not the riding, obviously, that’s spectacular, but it’s the in-between times that, by the fourth or fifth day, have an air of déjà vu about them. There is a daily grind of sorts: the alarm goes off at 7.00, tired legs swing out of bed, coffee is spooned into stove-top and cereal into self, uniform found and donned – still-damp shorts, jersey and socks – dust pounded out of unwashed knee pads, CamelBaks filled, papier-mâché removed from sodden shoes, and then it’s tikka-takka down the stairs, pull bike from cellar, wearily climb cobbled street, throw bike into trailer, repeat. And at the other end of the day, particularly in winter, routine also prevails as bikes and kit demand a level of attention simply to maintain a functional state.
OK, so our commute this week has been a gentle stroll up a cobbled street in a Spanish medieval town, public transport is a pair of minibuses, and lunch has been al fresco cheese and meat rather than the cardboard misery of a supermarket sandwich, but you get my drift.