Brecon Beacon

[mlocke]

Hi Guys

A few guy from work are going here for the weekend on Friday

Do any of you guys know of some good trails or places where they can get some info on the area?

They are going mounain biking

Cheers

Locky

[George]

Afan's the place

[Dan_K]

I went road biking in the Beacons last month.

Tell them to stop at this shop and the guys there will give them all the mtb routes they need.
They're really knowledgeable and nice people. One of the guys was on Countryfile on the BBC leading a night mtb ride the other week.....

[url]http://mndcycles.co.uk/[/url]

The shop is on the left as you go through Abergavenny on the A40.

[Hal]

Gap Road

Sarn Helen

Good trails all around that area.

H

[Grahame]

Sorry about the hijack, but Hal's mention of the Gap, brought back a memory of my friend Russ, and a piece that another friend of mine, Al, wrote about him: It's a bit raw, and still brings tears to my eyes a good seven years later

[quote="Al"]I have a friend called Russ. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not some schoolyard pal or a soulmate whose take on life complements mine. He’s just a bloke I’ve been riding with, on and off, for the last eighteen months. He’s fast everywhere; uphill, downhill, over technical challenges and on the road. He’s passionate about our sport to the point of being a little intense. He’s a bike per genre kind of guy with a lightweight hardtail, a pimpy full-suss and a FR/DH bike. Sometimes he’s a bit condescending and his competitive gland is scarily overactive but all in all, he’s a generous, warm hearted, committed mountain biker.

Like I say I’ve got a friend called Russ. He’s lying in a hospital bed paralysed from the chest down. He wanted to be the perfect mountain biker, straining for the pinnacle of his sport and yet for all he has put in, the rest of his life stretches away in a chasm of paralysis that his wheelchair can never cross.

It’s a week since it happened but details are still sketchy. Whilst my downhill medium was snow and skis, a bunch of the usual suspects had taken advantage of the unseasonably dry weather to tackle the famed Tal-Y-Bont loop. Last year, I’d done the same and been blown away by the pace and the mountains. It was a pretty intimidating ride on all counts but Russ was in his element – fast and confident, excelling in his chosen sport. This time out, the world schismed and we’ll probably never know why. But on the descent from the Gap, Fate tipped the balance delivering a partial sacrifice to an uncaring God. It’s a brute of a descent – steep, scary and unforgiving at the top tending to stupidly fast whilst retaining it’s rocky backbone toward the bottom. I vividly recall Russ blowing by me last year –Gulfstream to Cessna – accelerating to Motocross speed with only a light plastic compound helmet as protection against a fall.

I’m working off eye witness accounts swayed by aftershock and grounded in guilt. ‘What else could we have done?’ his riding companions plaintively ask. Probably nothing but the spectre of passiveness in the face of nebulous evidence will haunt them for a long time. Maybe for ever. No one actually saw the accident but empirical evidence from the aftermath is compelling – the front wheel 50 yards behind the battered frame, itself lying beyond the trail boundary fence, equidistantly bisected by a permanently damaged and limp Russ, lying motionless on the unyielding rocks which broke his fall and broke his back.

His riding friends were magnificent. They kept him warm, took a GPS reading and urgently called an air ambulance. This in the light of Russ’ helmet being nothing more than polycarbonate shards and the man himself crying ‘I can’t feel my legs’. I just don’t know who to start feeling sorry for first.

Helicopters, hospitals, logistics and worrying ate up the next 6 hours as Heather (Russ’ wife) is driven from Didcot in Oxfordshire while his riding buddies crowd into the ward waiting for news. There wasn’t much and none of it was good – rumour and introspection are not happy bedfellows.

Fast forward a day. He’s due at the Spinal Injuries ward in Stoke Mandeville hospital. That’s good – it’s the premier institution in the UK for such injuries and it’s only five miles from my house. A friend of I go to see what’s happening. No Russ as yet but the ward is still terrifying – not the nurses who are kind and calm, but the distress of the patients and the signs on the wall accentuate the long term hell for anyone that passes through these doors on a trolley. It’s hard to look at a noticeboard displaying a rota for bladder training and not lose the plot completely.

A marker here – I hate hospitals. Irrational and stupid but I still do. I’m shaking as we leave and it gets worse. Outside the entrance to the spinal ward is a bloke our age in a wheelchair apparently paralysed from the neck down. He’s talking earnestly to his seven year old daughter who looks on with wide eyes and no understanding. The chair reminds me unpleasantly of Davros of Dr Who fame and I can’t shed the image of a restless body confined to 5% of the movement it was born with. This is real and it’s scary sh1t.

Click fast forward again. The MTB forums are aflame with questions, updates and messages of goodwill. They ring hollow in my head: “Get well soon and back on the bike Russ? Yeah right like that’s going to happen. I’m angry now, the piousness and hypocrisy is cloying – I know I should be touched by the core of their sentiments but I’m not. Later I chill out a bit – maybe the threads are a little naïve but they’re heartfelt and now I’m proud of our little community. We really care for our own.

It’s been a week. The tape wind forwards but not much changes. No visits except the family made up of Russ’s brother, wife and two kids both under 10. Heather is hanging in there by all accounts but what can she tell the kids? They’ve only known daddy as a sporty, athletic can-do-anything kind of guy and now they’re facing a major readjustment.

The prognosis is bad. Russ has been told his spinal cord is shattered – there is no cure – he’ll be paralysed for the rest of his life. He is 38 years old. But he’s a fighter with a positive mental approach yet I can’t help thinking this must be too much too soon for anyone. One minute in your prime, confident and successful supported by a loving family and the next WHAM, you’re a cripple, a dependant, fighting daily embitterment and questioning always questioning ‘WHY ME?’ to a world that has branded you different. You must think of all the things you used to be able to do but now you’re an object of pity or ridicule defined and imprisoned by your wheeled cage. Christ it’s keeping me awake so how is Russ coping surrounded by the sterile hospital environment, lying awake with a broken back and broken dreams? All the time in the world to think and no physical ability to do.

We went for a ride. Many of the guys who’d witnessed the accident were aghast at the prospect of getting back on a mountain bike. But we had demons to exorcise. It’s strange because I was sure we’d take it easy – maybe ponder the pointlessness of our sport or tell tall tales of our rides with Russ. But we didn’t. We nailed everything right on the razors edge pushing uncaring into the adrenal zone and loving the rush. Maybe that’s it – it’s a risk and reward gig and even with Russ lying in hospital, that’s still not enough to make us stop.

Mountain biking is sometimes an exercise in not thinking. It strips away the social conventions that drive you to ‘do the right thing’. It reduces life to simple pleasures and binary decisions; left or right, slow or fast, spin or race. It makes you love it – the lifestyle, the danger, the bullshit, the dopamine hit, the difference even when you think you’re hating it.

Don’t misunderstand me. Russ’s accident has shaken me to the core. I’m dreading walking into his hospital ward because I know he’ll see the truth in my eyes: ‘Sorry Mate, I’ll do whatever I can but THANK F*CK it’s you and not me’. I’m not proud of that neither am I alone in thinking it. And it scares me – our sport is a drug – yet I’ll never give it up until I’m too old, too scared or too damaged. And I know Russ would have done the same. He’s not a martyr and I’m not going to canonise him because we all embrace the danger and we have to live with the consequences. It’s not fair and it’s not right but it’s our choice. There is no middle ground.

Mountain Biking is in our blood. It’s like the Hotel California – you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. It’s early days but I’ve got a feeling he’ll come good. In two years time, we’ll be cheering on the Mall as he races past in his wheelchair, arms pumping and race face in place, against the other heroes who we applaud but will never quite understand. I hope it’s not wishful thinking but I just know in my heart he’ll be fine. And if he isn’t, he’s going to have a whole community of like minded people who will never stop helping him be all he can.

I’ve got a friend called Russ. I’m proud to be his mate.

[Sylv]

Blimey Grahame - did they actually publish that in Singletrack? Is he still in the same state now?

See also http://www.tarallanesroadtorecovery.com/

[Grahame]

No, Al felt it was a bit too raw to submit for publication.

Russ is still disabled from the chest down, and hasn't (yet) raced the London Marathon, but he rides a handcycle regularly, goes skiing each winter and has come to terms with his lot, it seems. He's still Russ, but in a different way.

Every penny of tips I've had for guiding in the Rockies has gone to the air ambulance funding charities.

[Sue R]

Try this site:
www.mtbbreconbeacons.co.uk/

they have links to some routes. and yes it is very rocky on some of the downhill bits. I had a little pootle about the easy-ish "blue" routes and some sections were a bit of a shiock but mostly ok.

[Dombo]

[quote="marco"]Cwmcarn as an intro and then main course at Afan. brecon is nice and wild but the riding experience is much more fun at those two trail centres.

[mlocke]

Thanks for the info guys

Passing this on now

Locky