DEALT AN AWFUL HAND

If nothing else, lockdown has given us a greater sense of place and time. Days, weeks and months may have merged into a blur but I’m sure most of us have very clear ideas of the places we’re going to ride when we next can.

VIEWED FROM ABOVE, THE RANGE RESEMBLES THE FINGERS OF AN OUTSTRETCHED HAND

While there’s never been a better time to appreciate the riding on our collective doorsteps, the urge to travel further afield grows as time flashes by, or drags on. As someone whose main motivation for riding a mountain bike is to cross landscapes and to find new trails, preferably with friends, being constrained to an area limited by how far I can pedal from home in daylight hours shrinks options for exploration. So, more than ever, I’ve been revisiting my own adventures and borrowing other people’s to scratch the travel itch. Vicarious riding has always been part of mountain biking, whether that’s through magazines, websites, videos or social media. These all help to keep the dream alive and break us out of our temporarily narrowed view of the world. Google Maps and the Ordnance Survey app have been working overtime helping me