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My first ride in three weeks felt so good. I’d immersed myself in a ‘Ride as much as Possible’ winter programme as a means of keeping fit, getting ready for the spring riding and generally making sure that I don’t waste my time during the dark winter nights. The purchase of some more lights meant that trail riding, interval training and longer endurance rides in the evenings were now all on the cards, 1700 lumins of power to light the way. In fact this was a deal worth mentioning. Planet X, the online bike shop were doing 700 lumin lights for £12.99, reduced from £25 and I couldn't resist. By putting these on my bars and my trusty Lezyne 1000 Lumin on my helmet, I was good to go. If the cheaper light lasts me a winter then thats money well spent. So far so good and I couldn't be more impressed. However, anything over and hour on full whack and i'd be sceptical as to whether the battery would last, but for what I've been doing it's perfect. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm no fitness fanatic, I just like to stay healthy. I've been mixing up my training with some HIT sessions on my Mountain Bike, with some skills too, but fourteen weeks in, a family funeral, a dog bite to my finger, and some really bad wet weather meant that the majority of my riding was on hold. The only bike time keeping me sane happens on a Friday evening when I drop my lad off to Football Training, throw on some Dance tunes on Radio 1, and I ride around a car park on my Dirt Jump bike, practicing manuals. I’d better take a moment to explain to those that don’t know, a manual is really a wheelie without pedaling or sitting down. It’s about finding the balance point, keeping one finger over the back brake to avoid looping out and ending up on your backside. A great skill to have when out on the trails, to overcome roots and ruts, and progressing with these has been my savior for many a cold Friday night. Back to the point. Storm Eunice was due to arrive on Friday 18th February with expected gusts in excess of 100mph and the South West of England was battening down the hatches and bracing for the impending battering. I’d almost given into yet another week gone of wet and wild weather, stuck indoors, and not even looking at my bike and it began to feel like every weekend was a wash out. Being so exposed in the Wild West of Cornwall, there are not that many places to hide. huge There is no woodland areas for trail riding, or sheltered bike parks, we are mostly baron moorland or coastal trails, with the odd bit of woodland tucked away here and there which is amazing for dog walking and bushcraft, but not suitable for riding Mountain Bikes. I'll do a post on an amazing piece of local woodland soon. Strangely leaving work last Thursday evening there was no wind, it was like the ‘Calm before the Storm’. No wind, and yet all day the media had been hyping up the storm but right then at 4.30pm there was nothing, all day we had watched clouds moving in with an eerie calmness and I was sure that rain was on its way too. I made the decision there and then to go riding that night and this was a window of opportunity to get out and ride, and get a few laps in of my local hill which happens to be about 1.5 miles from my house, and firmly at the heart of my local radius for outdoor fun. I’ll write more about this hill but for now I’ll say that it has become one of the most important places to be, and my relationship with this place is pretty special. Excited like a little kid, I ran into the house, informed my family I was going riding and within ten minutes I’d grabbed my kit, my bike and my lights, and was in my van and heading back out. Yes I could ride but, time is sometoimesof the essence and when a storm is brewing, the window was closing fast. It was actually still light when I got to the hill, and that was my annual realisation that a ride after work with no lights is now a possibility. What followed was a much needed injection of outdoor adrenaline. A 45 minute trail ridingenduro session. I tend to go as hard as I can, climbing up, racing down and then repeat. Getting my heart rate up on the climb and without pausing, find the right gear, drop the seat, take off the suspension lock and ride down as fast as I can, with as much control as possible and as smooth as I can. It was so peaceful that night, very calm and quite surreal, and as I watched the cloud slowly move in from the coast, the lights of Sennen a mile or so away, the building swell crashing into Longships Lighthouse and the Brisons surrounded by a mass of whitewater just off Cape Cornwall. Eunice was on her way for sure and I was smiling to myself, stoked to be riding bikes. I suppose the moral of this brief blog post is making the most of these quick forrays within our little radius. They take no time, and it would have been so easy to have gone home, put the kettle on, and taken the horizontal position on the sofa, put some Youtube video on of everyone else riding bikes and had some serious FOMO, but I actually gave myself a pat on the shoulder, an A+, and a 10/10 for effort. Getting outdoors is such a healthy medicine and should be prescribed. In fact I remember when it was once, it was called the ‘Green Gym’. Whatever happened to that campaign? Is it still going?
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In a series of blog posts I thought it might be a good idea to explain how different activities have had an impact on my life. Where the passions began and how I continue to chase them at every opportunity today. I reckon a good place to start is with pushbikes that have, and still do have a impact on my life. So firstly, in this first proper blog, not an introductory one, here's going way back to the late 1970's early 80's.....In the beginning. Me and Bikes. Ever since I was a young lad growing up in rural Sussex I spent my time outdoors but It was push bikes that really got me outside, giving me independence and freedom to roam within a Radius of about 1.5 miles. Maybe because back in those days I felt that being indoors was just plain boring, and to this day I still itch to get outdoors and play. At that time it was pre-computer games like Atari, I didn’t like them much then when they did arrive on the scene, and probably still as much at a loss to see how they impact so many lives now, including my own son. I’m not against them, I’ve just never really understood the attraction, but then again, I’m crap when I do try them, that dexterity of having fingers and thumbs working at the same time…Nah, not for me. Television back then was not like now, the only thing I seemed to be interested in was the World of Sport when the Motocross Grand Prix was on. The listing read something like 1.30pm Race 1, 3.30pm Race 2, with a bunch of random mainstream sports in between, maybe a bit of World Rally or RallyCross from Lydden Hill which was always a pretty cool watch. But as far as the Motocross, I remember being out in the morning riding our bikes that always seemed to have different sized wheels because that’s all our mate's older brother Steve Barker could get hold of when we ordered a ‘Tracker’ from him, and he then scoured the tips and skips. It was a bloody high end bike if you ended up with two 24” or 26” wheels and a pair of 'cowhorn' (now selling for £70) handlebars and a headset that didn’t actually hold anything tight. If we were really lucky then our mate Dan Beamish had a few pairs of old handlebars from his, or his older brothers Suzuki MX Bikes, and there was a bin of throw away bars we could have, but with the cross bar cut out so not for heavy use e.g motocross, we'd just put a piece of dowling in there to replace it. Anyway, we’d come home for race 1 of the MXGP, then head out again, and back again for Race 2. Inspired by what I’d seen, then go and jump something or people from makeshift ramps, hit the grass bank over the park, or head up our local little track up the end of the lane and race each other, always trying to avoid, or get past Clive Hopkins who had the widest cowhorns in history, or we'd surely ever seen. Clive will always be someone I remember from those days, and someone who many years later, bumped into in our local pub, he had a spare ticket to Pearl jam and along with his missis, they took me to London. As a personally amusing side note, that only a few will remember, Clive was also famous locally for nearly killing himself when he overcooked a turn, known as WaterWorks Bend, on his moped. He came off, went flying, and as I remember took a chunk out of a Chevron sign. Until that sign was replaced that gave us great amusement to see a hole in the top right corner, and we’d all say that was where Clive's head went! It was all about bikes when I was young, and with a Motocross track owned by my best mates Dad, just over the hill, our parents mostly knew where we would be on race day. We’d spend hours watching the racing when it was on, cheering for our mate Dan in the schoolboys or the senior racers like local rider Billy Aldridge when they were racing up there. At lunch break when the riders were resting we’d all rush onto the track with our bikes and hit the jumps, this was poor man's Motocross, waiting to see if someones frame would snap, a crank arm or pedal sheer off, or wheels buckle, or see who had some style as it was all about the ‘turn bar’ back then, emulating the Motocross riders. As soon as the racing started again the marshalls would clear us off the track, and we’d resume our position high on the hill within the natural amphitheatre of Golding Barn Raceway, with our burgers and drinks, the noise of the two stroke engines, the smell of fuel and your mates beside you, the racing would begin again. I used to love the start, as it sounded like a swarm of bees, and from our house, if the wind was blowing from the North, the noise would funnel out of the valley and across to our village, the council hated it but we loved it, and my Dad always commented saying something like ‘Racing has started son’; but it was usually practice and we’d head up for the racing. As soon as racing was over for the day, we'd charge down the lane, across the main road, down the bridle path past Shamrock Farm, known as the ‘Monkey Farm’, that happened to be an old quarantine facility for monkeys that were to be used in animal testing, and its always the focus of Animal Rights protests back then and thankfully closed in 2000. Our track was just below the Monkey Farm, at the end of a lane in a place we called the ‘The Brooks’. This was our outdoors, this was our motocross track with a few jumps, a bit of a start hill and a few mostly rutted turns. We’d ride until tea ime, or our bikes broke, and all this before BMX even entered our little world. This was the beginning, my love of riding bikes, my real love of a little adventure, not far from my house but another world that I loved so much. This is why forty plus years later, I'm still watching motocross and heading out on my bike with a passion of a big kid, hitting some jumps and trying to rail some turns. Happy Days indeed…. then and now, and as the years went by my radius for adventure grew, but that's another blog. Notes: Photo 1: Golding Barn Raceway, dramatically changed in this photo from what it used to be like. Our village of Upper Beeding (foreground) and Steyning in the background. You can see the natural amphitheatre of the Track and we'd sit high up with the best view. Photo 2: Protesters outside Shamrock Farm entrance blocking the road. Being young we'd often sit on that embankment and watch on our way home from the Racing. This was literally just over that hill from the Track. Our own little track was at the bottom corner of that golden/yellow corn field between Golding Barn and Upper Beeding. That flat area to the right we called 'The Brooks', but actually known as The Weald and Downland between the South and North Downs.   Welcome to 'The Radius', a blog from an old blogger, that's me.....Russ Pierre. I've blogged on and off for about 15 years, under various titles; Brightbox, which was my first venture into surf photography and moving to Cornwall was a sacrifice I was willing to take. I had some shots published, had a couple of exhibitions but it was tough to make ends meat. Next was Own Zone; a personal off-shoot of some coaching/mentoring work I was doing with sports people like BMX and Motocross Racers, Surfers including the English Junior Surf Team, and also Gymnasts. Then came Chunky Brother, the ramblings of a slightly overweight outdoor fanatic. Each episode taught me more about myself, never failing but moving forward to the next chapter with a new yearning to write about a broader range of activities and this is how, sitting down on a wet Saturday morning, began 'The Radius'. As an outdoors practitioner, a middle aged bloke who engages as much as possible with the Great Outdoors and someone thats never really grown up, time is spent mostly within a specific radius, West Penwith or the Wild West as it is often fondly known. It's here that I surf, ride bikes, walk, wild swim and spend time in the woods with my Kelly Kettle and whittling kit. Occasionally the dividers are widened on the map, and a course is plotted for a road trip and I'll grab the chance to explore or experience new places, ride somewhere else, and enjoy a little adventure. Outside the front door within a mile or five hundred, lie opportunities to enjoy but it's possible I have found my contentment close to home, but always a niggle to travel further. As a seasoned surfer, some might say 'Salthy Sea Dog', I mostly ride longer boards, not the conventional lightweight shortboard that wouldn't float me anyway, and I live by the beach. Out of choice I've not traveled further than 15 miles to catch a wave in numerous years and yet this is something i'd like to change, I'm not interested in hopping on planes anymore but to just head up the coast a little, maybe camp out on the beach, hook up a trailer to my bike and find that real love again, that I may have let slip. As a cyclist, riding bikes have saved me in so many ways, both physically and mentally and in a seperate project I'm chipping away at a book called TrailHead. The back lanes of Sennen and hill climbs of West Penwith, with 'grass up the middle' for my gravel bike, have become my cycling domain, yet it feels the right time to explore further afield, strap some packs on and have an adventure or two. As a mountain biker who dabbles in Enduro events, the local gravity trails on 'My Mountain' are all accessible yet I yearn to experience more of the single track in Wales and Scotland, train some more, have some more coaching and enter a few more competitions and whilst still being humble, I feel like I'm riding better now that I ever did. As a walker, Cornwall is an amazing place to walk and explore. I have one of the most beautiful sections of the South West Coast Path five minutes from my front door. I'm usually joined by my trusty Border Terrier, but we're both a little exhausted doing the same walks, so the odd blog will spring up where we venture out in the van, and see if we can find some new places to eat a packed lunch, stare at the distance, watch the world go by, and share the view with you. The pursuit or experience will always determine the information I share, maybe some handy tips, or advice but this can just as easily be ignored or followed, yet for those that do read this, then I hope it will be beneficial and of value, I might even throw in the odd product review. Welcome to 'The Radius', a blog about being outdoors, and enjoying the environment around me and i'll always find something to write about so please join me Adventuring and Exploring Life's Possibilities.  |
AuthorHi, I'm Russ Pierre, a Cyclist, Surfer and outdoor enthusiast. Please join me as I have some fun on my adventures and write about all the stuff that makes me tick. Archives
October 2023
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