My Twenty Second Week Dossing About Pretending to be an Author

Us creative types have a particular penchant for vacationing. It allows us to free the mind from the shackles of the daily grind and liberate creative thought/musings. Or put more honestly; we’re lazy feckless ne’re-do-wells who will take any opportunity to put the noble art of work avoidance into practise. Thus, playing close to type I buggered off with the family for yet another week’s holiday, this time in Sardinia. To be fair I have the excuse that our neighbour, Clare, arranged everything in a moment of mad efficiency before getting to the “inform the Barter’s” element of her ticklist. However, who are we to complain when the neighbors bang on the door and tell you you’re off to Sardinia in May.

Clare had booked us into the Lemon House, a bed and breakfast conveniently located next to the wild Oglisatrian coastline and even more conveniently run by great friends of ours Peter and Annie.

When in a foreign country I feel it is important that you identify yourself as English. This allows one to quickly cross the language barrier and move straight into sign language. I achieved this on the first day by taking off my shirt in the blazing sunshine and going immediately red. Italians pointed sympathitically and muttered “Inglesi” under their breath whilst my compatriots were blinded by my chest and reached quickly for the suncream. I thought I had the consolation that at least the weather back home in England would be poor, until I found a wifi connection and took a look at the BBC website. It appeared that we had left behind a mini-heatwave.

So, unable to gloat, I got on with the week’s activities, which began with a kayak trip along the coast of Oglisatra but quickly morphed into an all day mountain bike ride with myself and Malcolm abandoning the families and heading out into the hills. I was riding the newly acquired full-suspension steed equipped with tubeless tyres, perfect for puncture avoidance. True to form my rear tyre went down immediately upon entering the first section of woodland. I countered with my tubeless tyre repair kit and confidently filled the hole whilst blathering on to Malc about how easy the repair would be. Within 500 metres it had gone down, so out came the repair kit and the faulty puncture repair was repaired, only to go down again after another couple of kilometres.

Malcolm’s calm exterior hid well his inner thoughts, his hands spoke encouragement but his eyes betrayed him, “For f**ks sake Dave put a tube in it”. So I inserted a tube and we rode down through forest onto the pristine beach of Cala Sisini. Well, “rode” really means cowered, skidded, bumped, smashed into trees and eventually walked the steep boulder strewn gully. Our host, Peter, reliably informs us that a bloke called “Elvis” can ride down the last section. “Love me Tender” came to mind after hearing of that fact.

But it was worth it, as we threw off our sweaty mountain bike gear, donned the budgie smugglers and cooled down in the deep blue Sardinian coastline. We lazed in the sunshine for a while before reluctantly re-clothing and setting off up the beach prepared for a long climb home. This section lasted approximately three minutes until we happened upon an open bar. Malcolm and I rehydrated as only mountain bikers know how.

As always, the holiday passed so fast. We walked through gorges down to perfect beaches, drove to small villages with perfect beaches and caught boats to perfect beaches. Being committed masochists, Malcolm and I decided to break the idyllic monotony of sand, snorkeling and sunshine with an evening mountain bike ride. Peter had advised us of a local trail that included a very technical descent and so we bravely set off to attack it. I loaded the trail to my GPS and we set off ..the wrong way.

We scratched our heads a little after a road climb at what seemed like a 20% gradient that seemed to go on for ever. This then faded into double track (same gradient) and eventually steep singletrack littered with rocks and drop offs. The two of us swore ourselves higher and higher, pushing our bikes up the trail and wondering when we would encounter the technical downhill bits. In fact the swearing was so bad that I can now grade mountain bike trails on what I am going to call the “For f**ks sake” quotient. We were in double figures after only 1000 feet.

1700 feet later the two of us admitted defeat. For the first time in my life I celebrated the arrival of some fire road which we traversed for a mile until finding a road leading back to the Lemon House. As the sun began to set we chased each other down the tarmac. Laughing at the irony of the mountain bikers who had pushed up the mountain and descended on the road.

Our midweek objective was the long walk down to the isolated cove of Golaritze. A simple enough objective until you add young children to the mix. The route down is long, rocky and taxing enough to elevate a simple moan into a long and protracted wail. I had done it before with two children and ear plugs, this time we had four. I needn’t have worried. The kids were model explorers, fighting their way down to the beach, throwing themselves off every available rock into the sea and then marching back up to the car. As they began to flag a little, we started telling mildly rude jokes which seemed to ease the pain in their legs. I wondered whether this technique could be applied to high altitude mountaineering and whether the next Everest summit team would consider taking Roy Chubby Brown along as a sherpa?

That evening we sat in the Lemon House kitchen completely shattered and listened to Annie’s stories of life as a holiday flat proprietor. These included the tale of a couple who had vacated her flat leaving it clean apart from the interior of cupboards, which were smeared with coffee. Further inspection found coffee on the ceiling, under chairs and in all sorts of strange places. Annie decided to inspect the gas hob, suspecting that a coffee pot had been allowed to boil over, she found the melted gas fender shown in the photo below.

The damage just doesn’t bear thinking about. What on earth had they done to cause such temperatures and melted a device that is designed to sit below a source of heat.

All week our host Peter had clearly been itching to go riding with Malcolm and I. Mainly to prevent us from riding any more of his routes the wrong way round. However, he had an ulterior motive. A few years previously I’d ridden off road with Peter to explore the local trails. He was pretty new to mountain biking, clearly exhibited by his fully rigid steed and the sandwich in a plastic bag cabled tied to the back of it. We’d climbed for a while and then come across a short descent where I filmed Peter going down..let’s say, quite slowly. Being the kind, encouraging person that I am, I uploaded the video to YouTube using the theme tune to “Steptoe and Son” as the backing track.

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However, Peter ignored his puerile friend, carried on riding, caught the bug and has worked hard in the intervening years to develop off-road routes in the area along with his own skills. We set out to tackle one of his rides that descended for 1000 metres worth of technical interest.

Annie kindly provided an uplift service and drove us above the village of Talana to the top of Peter’s showcase trail. The route started gently before diving down the mountain on harsh singletrack that viciously switched back as height was lost. These were loose, tight technical corners that required low speed bike maneuvering to negotiate.

Peter showed us how it was done at the top, and I must now replace his Steptoe and Son soundtrack with some death metal as he confidently swept round the first few bends. Malcolm and I minced a bit at the top, but after a while were dialed in to the terrain and starting the enjoy the challenge. Failed corners were repeated in a quest to improve and I’m pretty sure Peter punched the air a few times after getting round bends that had previously defeated him.

 At one corner he stopped and advised me to gather speed in order to make it round. I complied to the letter and immediately skidded off the bike, hit the deck and enjoyed a mouthful of the finest Sardinian grit. With a twinkle in his eye Peter modified his advice to include staying away from the loose bit of trail. However, I suspect the Steptoe and Son soundtrack had come back to haunt me for the final time.

We pushed each other further to ride down steep technical steps, 180 degree bends and all sorts of other tricky trail features. This was wild singletrack at its finest, devoid of obvious lines, berms, trail markers and sissy routes. I suspect that you could count the number of riders that have descended it on a couple of football team’s toes and fingers. I’d encourage any mountain biker to widen their horizons beyond the sanctuary of groomed trail centre singletrack and have a crack at something that really does have teeth.

The week ended with the kids rock climbing high above the port of Santa Maria Navaressa.

In the fading sunlight we reflected upon what had been an incredibly active week and our regret at having to end it. Airport queues and a delayed flight hammered this home further but the experiences are banked and I must now return to the mundane life of a cycling book author.

Dave

5th June 2011