Mountain biking

I have never seen so much pink my my life. Pink balloons, pink banners, pink bikes and a large proportion of the half million spectators wearing pink. I was lucky enough to be one of the thousand volunteers that helped in the three days that the Giro d'Italia was in Gelderland, and it was a wonderful atmosphere. The perfect weather helped, bringing out more than 100 000 spectators more than expected (despite the Dutch railways deciding on that weekend to do engineering works on the railways leading from the main cities towards Gelderland).  The large number of people meant that on the first couple of days it was difficult to get a good view, but fortunately on the final day I was positioned at the back door of the station, which had a combination of not many people (they all headed up the hill to watch the final ascent) and the course going within centimeters of where I was standing.

Of course, what made it even better was the success of the Dutch cyclists. Tom Dumoulin won the time trial on the first day and to everyone's astonishment managed to hang on to the pink jersey for almost a week afterwards, despite assuring the media beforehand that he was only interested in the time trials.  And Maartin Tjallingii who lives in Arnhem, triumphed on the Posbank coming into Arnhem, in his last Giro, to win the Blue jersey for the best on the 'mountains'. 

All in all it was an unforgettable experience, really quite something.

The Internet keeps pushing adverts at me for t-shirts with 'mountain biking is cheaper than therapy – oh wait, no it isn't'.  Maybe the all-seeing eyes of Google have seen my calendar this week and worked out that with five major deadlines this week it must have been pretty stressful.  Indeed come Friday evening I sunk into my arm-chair with the feeling that there was no way I would have the energy to wake up and go cycling the next morning. Nevertheless, the next morning I was awake in time, so crawled out of bed in time to go out with the club. We set off along the dike as usual, with spectacular views of the sun shining through the mist that was still hanging over the floodplain as a heron swooped in front of us so close that I almost ducked. Once into the woods the mist was gone and it was springtime everywhere. All the trees were showing points of green at their buds, or even already burgeoning into leaf, woodpeckers were calling to each other and drilling out their nest holes and chaffinches with their bright breeding plumage were so busy chasing each other that they did not notice they were almost flying into us. And on top of that, we were out on our bikes in the woods! Despite the rain of the last week, it was not too soggy under our wheels and despite the sunshine we hardly saw any other people, at least until we were virtually back home again. Our route took us along plenty of twisty bits through heathland and woodland, where steering required some proper concentration, enough in the way of small hills to get us out of breath and even the nearby sand crater where the sides of loose sand are steep enough so that you really have to do your best to get up them. All in all, you cannot get a much better way of washing away the stress of the working week than that.

The Ballyhoura mountains (or An Sliabh Riabhach in Irish) are in between Cork and Limerick in southwestern Ireland.  They rise out of a green agricultural plain to a height of about 500 m and host the largest trail centre of Ireland, the Ballyhoura Mountain Bike Park. There is a bike rental shop at the trail head, as well as showers.

Last week I had to go to Cork for my work, so I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a few hours mountain biking there and cycled the white (Garrane) loop. It goes without saying that it was very different from mountain biking here in the Netherlands.  Real mountains, with significant slopes and gradients, for a start. The trail website describes it as "long and demanding climbs", so I was fearing the worst, but it was actually not so bad compared with trails just over the border in the Eifel or Ardennes. Nevertheless it was certainly demanding enough to make it enjoyable.  That also meant that when you come out of the woods, there are some quite spectacular views, especially if the rain is not too heavy at that moment.

The woodland there is something really special, you really feel like you're cycling through a Tolkien novel with giant spiders and Ents likely to be found round any corner. The trees are dense, so that it's quite atmospherically gloomy in places, but above all, the high rainfall (two meters a year!) means that the trees are draped in a variety of beautiful moss species, which is quite spectacular, as well as some rare lichens like Usnea, aka beard lichen.

Despite the differences in landscape, what made it feel really different from here was the rocky surface to the paths. We are used to sand, mud and sometimes snow under our wheels, but these tracks varied from some (but not too many) fire roads to singletrack 'rock gardens' with an uneven rocky surface, to great rock slabs laid across the paths.  Especially with the latter, I was a bit nervous the first time I went over them, it was sloping, wet and polished smooth, so would I just slide off, with one or the other of my wheels sliding out from under me?  To my delight, the Mountain King tyres on my rental bike gripped through the surface water just as if it was dry and flat, it was quite remarkable. The bike had more problems with the uneven rock elsewhere; its fork was definitely its weak point and bounced me around somewhat, making me appreciate just how good my own bike is.  Probably the more expensive fullys also available to hire would have given a gentler ride, but rear suspension is certainly not necessary.  Incidentally, the hire shop was certainly very helpful, both by mail beforehand and when I was there, for instance helping me to put my own SPD pedals on the bike. I forgot to ask them about swapping the brakes around (UK and Ireland brakes are opposite to ones here regarding right/left front/rear), but that was not really a problem.

The other 'special' surface was the boardwalk laid out in some places.  I was wondering how slippery the wood would be in the non-stop Irish precipitation, but in fact they were covered either in old tyres or a sort of sandpaper, making them exceedingly grippy. It was surprising how, considering the boardwalk was very broad and even, just how more scary it feels than if it was the same path at ground level. I suppose you would get used to it soon enough, but I certainly found myself slowing to a lower speed than normal, and restrained myself from gazing at the magnificent banks of Sphagnum moss until I was safely at the other side. The boardwalk covers a few places (mostly bridges) as you go round and then a couple of longer stretches of a few hundred meters when you are nearly back.

Ireland is quite popular with Dutch tourists, so for those readers of my blog who are going there, I would unreservedly recommend a visit to the trail centre. If you go mid-week and off-season like I did, there is no need to make a reservation to rent a bike, otherwise that is certainly a good idea. If you take your own bike, you still need to pay €5 (in coins) for the parking and €2 (more coins) for the showers. The signposting is excellent, but it is still an idea to print out the trail map so that you can take a short cut back if it takes longer than you expected. But definitely go there, you will not be disappointed.