UK Adventure: Flat Planet

This article first appeared in issue 84 of Singletrack Magazine. Subscribers have full access to all Singletrack articles past and present. Learn more from about our subscriptions offers:

Subscribe To Singletrack Magazine For More Amazing Content!

A ride in sunshine bathed wheat fields, poppy strewn meadows, with ice creams en route? Who cares if it’s flat or not; from this mud coated and leaden skies end of the year, it sounds heavenly. First published in issue 84.

UK Adventure: Flat Planet

Words and pictures by Chipps.

“Lincolnshire Wolds – NOT FLAT!” read the email from Singletrack reader, Ben Howards. It caught my eye in the same way as ‘The North Sea – NOT WET!’ might do. Of course Lincolnshire is flat, isn’t it? In all my visits to it… actually, there’s the catch. I couldn’t remember the last time I was actually in Lincolnshire. And I don’t remember ever mountain biking there. The seeds of doubt were sown – perhaps there really were mountains there…

No really. There are hills.
Ben seemed keen to promote his adopted home county and promised that, beyond that flat bit you can see as you whizz up and down the A1, there were hills. Moderately large, rolling hills. He stopped short of saying ‘big’ but he promised enough elevation change to give me some discernible climbs and descents – what mountain biker doesn’t love a descent? Some even love a climb too.

I picked a random Friday, some weeks in the future and we arranged to ride. Ben would find a couple of riders to share the day, and I’d promise to get there some time in the morning.

Our rendezvous was a little outside the small town of Market Rasen. I’d not heard of it before and, unless you’re a lover of the gee-gees, then it’s probably passed you by too. It reminded me a lot of the small Somerset town I grew up in, that also has a racecourse at the end of the high street. There were shops and a few pubs and takeaways and a café or two, but nothing particularly memorable and nothing I could see that would make you visit it, unless your granny lived there. I’m sure the kids growing up there shuffle around moaning about being bored, just as we did back in the day.

I rolled out of Market Rasen past the race course, which was holding a car boot sale, or a camping jamboree or something, and onward towards my goal: a large car park with a small café, the kind that leathered motorbikers stop at for a fag and a coffee, while people- wagons full of duvets and bored kids disgorge in search of a bacon roll and some tearaway space for the young ‘uns. And while there are trees all around it, I’d bet that very few people get past the picnic tables and the litter bins.

Gather the troops.
Ben was waiting for me, circling on his fluorescent pink Orange Five so that I’d spot him. As if I wouldn’t… He’d brought along another couple of riders: Richard and Dan. Dan instantly became ‘Dangerous Dan’ to me, purely for having the flash of youth in his step and a faceful of swarthy Johnny Depp stubble. He’s probably not that dangerous; he used to run a deli. He might be a demon with a fish slice though.

He works at local-ish shop Sherwood Pines Cycles (hey, it’s local for Lincolnshire it seems). He’d brought Richard, who was one of his customers (as is Ben). Bike shops always have ‘customers’ and ‘customates’. Richard and Ben both came under the latter. This group of customer has spent so much time, or money – but rarely both – in a particular bike shop that they know all the staff, they know where the kettle is and are authorised to use it. They hang out in the shop regardless of whether they actually need to buy or fix anything and usually dispense advice to newcomers based on extensive reading of magazines and internet forums. Bike shop owners rarely have time for that kind of thing, so these top-tier ‘customates’ fill in that gap between enthusiastic amateur and seasoned pro. Richard, meanwhile, also works out of the shop occasionally and teaches mountain bike skills for the police. He also teaches them unarmed combat; one look at his big arms and cheery smile and I had no doubt that he’d be very effective at talking pleasantly with a perp while holding a thumb or two in a vice-grip and getting them to do exactly what they were told.

Time was already passing, so we left our half-finished coffees for later and took off on the bikes. Ben had painstakingly put together a route for us that he thought would best show off the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds; something that anyone could follow if they would just open their minds to the landscape. The start, he admitted, was a bit, well, pancake flat, but that would all change soon enough.

Spinning out of the car park, we plunged straight into the sort of wide, gravelled forestry tracks seen the country over. But the day was warm, the sun was threatening to shine and we were riding bikes on a Friday, so it was all good. The pace was high from the start and I started to worry that we were on another ‘kill the journo’ ride, but Ben was simply trying to keep us moving as he had a lot to show us. The full route was just over 40 miles, so there was little room for dallying if we were to finish in a sensible time.

Forget the lure of hills, there was actual dust on these trails; baked hard by the previous couple of weeks of great weather, it was a delight to be rolling along at a good clip, with only the occasional frantic counter-steer through unexpected patches of sand.

Just when I thought it was going to be faceless fire roads for the day, we took a vaguely signposted turn and plunged through the ferns onto a suddenly engaging singletrack. Not-so-ancient earthworks on either side of the path showed that specimens of the genus Radness jumpuss once inhabited this part of the forest but the sight of a few shonky ramps and lumps didn’t lure us away from the far more engaging, wiggly trail that guided us through the middle of them all.

As we exited the woods and crossed one of the many minor roads of the day, there in the distance were actual hills. Like a looming tsunami of geology, rolling in from the North Sea; the gradual and rolling slopes of the Lincolnshire Wolds.

Pony Polaris.
We started to see groups of horse riders out on the trails, all with similar yellow tabards, on what appeared to be a long distance horse orienteering event. It looked like a fun day out on a horse and we were happy to chat as both groups wondered which of us was having more fun.

The sun was warming the day up and Ben’s neck was starting to steam in his collared riding shirt. He reckoned that he’d not found anything else as comfortable to ride in, although he was starting to consider looking for the same shirt, only with short sleeves. We did some background story swapping as the bridleways started their climb up the first foothills of the Wolds. Ben works for a company that makes jumbo supermarket distribution centres. It’s something that only needs access to a motorway network to be able to do, so he’s been delighted with his Lincolnshire living since moving from the terraces of Mansfield. Dan, as mentioned, used to run a deli and, like just about everyone I know in the bike industry, just woke up one day to discover that he’d swapped a life of sensible expectations and regular income for one where the hours are long, the pay rubbish, but hey look! Bikes! Richard meanwhile was trying to combine his love of mountain biking with his day job and campaigning to actually get mountain bike police officers riding decent and appropriate bikes, equipped with the skills to ride them to their potential.

Meanwhile, the slopes steepened and the others were all off and pushing at the first steep stretch. Stubbornness and a low bottom gear got me out of trouble with my hill-dweller’s face saved, but there was no time for celebration as the others were already off and onto the first descent of the ride.

The riding tilted back up again and allowed me to catch up as we rode round the edge of a barley field, then a wheat field and then onto something cabbage-y. For many riders who grew up away from (or before) trail centres, this type of riding made up much of our formative years; skirting assortments of cereal crops on our way to painstakingly hunted-down slivers of woodsy singletrack in little copses. It wasn’t epic climbs and gnarl-fest, mega rocky huck-and-hopers. It was riding bikes with your mates to that distant hill over there and getting lost in the countryside, returning home hours later, sun or windburnt, bonked but happy. It felt good to get back to a little of that.

In no time at all, we’d covered 20 miles and seen a change in the landscape from flat to very rolling. Valleys loomed below and gears were called upon. Ben suffered the butt of many over-biking jokes as his Orange Five was just ticking over on the occasional woodsy root or field-edge rut, but he pointed out that the Peaks were only an hour or so away and a bike that could handle the riding there, could handle anything local.
Where are the shops?
For some reason, we’d all kind of assumed that Ben had built in a lunchtime stop for us and so when we blew past the pub in Rothwell without slowing, there were slightly disappointed and even worried looks exchanged among us. Ben pressed on up another gradual road climb. There were many of these on the ride: slight road climbs, slight bridleway climbs and gradual traverses of fields. None of it was particularly taxing, but it all came at a slight cost to tiring legs.

The mountain biking that I’m used to is a world of sharp, but short climbs, where a bit of middle ring muscling can get you to the top in short order and there’s always a chat at the gate while everyone waits for everyone else. A ride with fewer summits has fewer summit chats; fewer stops, less faffing. Gradually that drip, drip, dripping of energy converting into forward motion starts to drain the tank. It’s less obvious that it’s happening; it’s not taking too much energy out of you in one go but at some point, all that energy will be gone. I’ve heard it described as like being beaten to death with a velvet slipper…

There were no slippers in sight just yet, but it seemed that we were heading for some more enthusiastically-folded landscape. This time a steep, free range field allowed a selection of good and terrible lines over and through hidden ruts and on to the next climb. This time we did regroup and there was a brief discussion about the upcoming trails – which was suddenly silenced by a large ‘thump’ in the copse ahead. A big tree had chosen that moment to eject one of its larger boughs, landing right next to the trail we would be riding. Careless talk can sometimes save lives, it seems.

We raced now through a perfectly cut slice of trail, the bare stripe of earth showing clearly through a vibrant field of green wheat. Richard’s squirrelly back wheel indicated a mystery puncture, so we stopped to do the traditional thing of standing around and watching while someone fixes their bike. Talk turned to motorbike racing. It seems that the Birchall brothers, Tom and Ben, a famous TT racing motorbike and sidecar team live reasonably locally and use Sherwood Pines to train on their mountain bikes. Guy Martin also lives in this corner of Lincolnshire and can often be seen out on his Orange Five too. I wonder how that fits into the boot of his V12 Aston Martin?

Tyre up, the march continued. This time we entered a big, grassy bowl. It was obvious that whichever route we took would take us up again. The velvet slipper was starting to make its presence felt and talk turned to food; specifically, to pork scratchings. Ben was happy enough with our progress that he relented and suggested we stop at the pub in Binbrook. After all, we were two-thirds of the way round the ride. It didn’t take long for some formation flying into the village to secure an outside table, a round of pints and some large packets of ‘just what we needed’ pork products.

Rich had begun fielding a series of texts from his girlfriend about the surprise party they were going to that evening. What time would he be finished? He needed to be there in time to jump out from behind the curtains to wish a surprise birthday for her brother. Unfortunately for him (and the surprise) we had now got ice creams on the mind, so a visit to the Binbrook Village Stores was inevitable.

Suitably refuelled, we took off again, slowed a little by ice cream. And beer. And crunchy pig skin.
Re-inflation with bacon.
Blue skies and warm sun added to our dulled senses and we were happy that nothing too technical was on the horizon. Reactions, slowed by beer and ice cream, wouldn’t be up to much for an hour or so – which was probably when Richard was meant to have been home by.

The rude awakening of more gentle slopes soon had us back to normal and the pace, downhill at least, was swift. None of us was particularly used to bombing flat-out on dry grass and a few corners were taken wider than the optimum line as dry straw didn’t seem to allow ideal traction for summer tyres.
There were still more fast descents to be had, although it was clear that we were approaching the final edge of the hills, where we’d be back to the flatlands once again. First, though, was a final ‘kick in the teeth’ climb, where it appeared that we’d finally broken our host. Luckily for him, only he knew the way to the final plummet, so we couldn’t leave him behind.

All too soon we were back on flat land, wending our way back through our original woodland trails, cooler and even darker now with the late afternoon sun. Driving home salvation came in the form of bacon and egg rolls from the still-open café. We munched on these while watching Richard explain to his increasingly irate girlfriend that he wasn’t, in fact, already on his way. It was good to see the big man squirm.

All in all, we’d ridden over 60km, which is the furthest I’ve done in a day for a long while. And were there hills? We’d done over 800m of climbing. Not an astounding total if you ride in the Lakes, but I’ve done the same climbing in half the distance on North Wales rides, so I figure that the slogan ‘Lincolnshire; near enough half as hilly as Snowdonia’ could really catch on.

Features like this are available in every issue of our magazine, and subscribers can access the entire digital archive whenever they like. If you’d like to read more of this kind of thing, head over to our subscriptions page, where digital-only subscriptions start at just £1.49.

Subscribe To Singletrack Magazine For More Amazing Content!