Chipps gets to put together a menu of rides. Does he start bold? Or subtle and build to a crescendo?
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I had some riders in the village this week. Not friends or friends of friends as is often the way, but four Brits who’d looked on a map to find somewhere they’d not been before, found a rental house that seemed a short drive from good rides in all directions and pressed the ‘Book’ button. They then emailed a local B&B that happened to advertise ‘Mountain biking’ as one of the activities available, asking about route suggestions. This panicked the poor woman, who put them in touch with me.
Often, with a bit of notice, I can make myself available to ride with visitors to our village, but this lot appeared in the middle of magazine deadlines, so I was only able to get out for a ride at the end of their week. I did, however, get time to plot a few routes on the computer and fire over some GPXs.
How easy has technology made that kind of nonsense? In the analogue days, it would have, at the very least, involved a night in a pub, OS 1:25,000 spread over the pool table with highlighters and copious note-taking. Now I can WhatsApp a file to a friend’s phone – they wave it at their Garmin and the route is ready to follow as soon as they’ve finished their coffee.
But what routes to show them? And in what order? Do you start them with the ‘Stars on 45, mega-hit medley’? A ‘best of’ all of the great stuff? Like a trail-tasting menu? Or do you begin with a more mellow ‘big picture’ tour of the area when you know that there’s better stuff on offer? A sort of minestrone soup of fire roads…
Are the local favourites going to be top of the list, as you want these strangers to go home singing the praises of the area? Or do you want to keep those just for locals and special friends?
Some of my menu-making was made for me, as (again, coincidentally) this merry crew happened to arrive the day before the annual mountain bike randonnée/jamboree, with 40km of top trails already marked out for them to follow. But how to follow that?
I decided to go full in, full access, no secrets. After all, it’s not like these routes can’t be found by someone with a map and the internet, and I didn’t want them to struggle climbing up the good descents, only to descend down the fire roads. Putting myself in their position, how would I put together a perfect week riding from my house?
Obviously, they needed to ride something different every day and, ideally, the same trails wouldn’t be ridden twice, or at least not too far before jinking off in a different direction. I also decided to ignore the growing fatigue that a week of riding brings, reasoning that ‘holiday legs’ work far better than ‘home legs’ as you know that there’s a week of effort and good times ahead and you don’t mind going home broken, whereas you’d probably bunk off the final day of riding if you were just riding out of your front door.
I got to join them for their last day of riding and it seemed that their slavish following of my suggested routes was a success. The smiles were broad and the fives, high. The only issue now is that they’ll all want to come back again and I’ll have to remake my menu for their next visit. Some old favourites with a bit of new flavour? Or a completely new trail experience? I guess I’ll have to make sure I taste everything on the menu and make my own mind up before they come again.
