Malvern Meandering

Went for a quick spin over the Malvern Hills today in Worcestershire. It's somewhere I've been intending to ride for years now, but every time I'm in the area I get caught up at Eastnor or just end up passing through.

My new dekerf, 'Olive', is urging me to ride though. I can hear it taunting me from the back of the car: "Let me out... let me out to do what I was built to do. Get off your lazy fat backside and justify the astronomical price you paid for all of these shiny new bike parts you flamin' idiot!"

With that kind of motivation, how could I resist! I had to drop some bits off at Back on Track bike shop in Malvern. I should also say a great big thank you to Paul at Back on Track for doing a fantastic job of building my new bike at short notice a couple of weeks ago. And for letting me take over the whole shop for the 2 hour discussion involving four people and three members of staff to figure out what forks and wheels I should have. I swear Posh Spice, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez could have picked an outfit for the Oscars quicker! But you have to get these things right, right? And it does look ace now! (Photos coming shortly by the way.)

So I parked in the car park just above the shop and asked Paul for some route advice, bought the waterproof Harveys map he sells and disappeared into the hills. It's fairly hard to get lost to be honest. The Malvern Hills is just one ridge line a few miles long encircled by roads - you can either traverse along the hill or climb up to the top, descend to the road, then climb back up another track and repeat. When you get bored, you just head back. Though it would be hard to get bored here. Even looking at the map there's a myriad of legal bridleways to be explored, and who knows how many unmapped trails!

A couple of hours playing on a wide variety of trails - gravel, stoney, grassy, rooty, muddy, steep, steady, technical, tight, wide and fast, the Malverns seem to have it all - and I decided to head home. Olive had done me proud again on her second outing and I'd had a blast riding new trails. Can't wait until I have another spare day to get back and explore some more. I think I have one in October sometime...