THANK YOU, MOUNTAIN BIKING

Mountain biking sometimes plays rough, but ultimately it gives us more than it takes, moulding us into skilful, resourceful, and ultimately happy people… albeit with some scars to back up the memories

- Sim Mainey

The wind pushes the fabric of the emergency shelter against the side of my face. Frozen fingers attempt to operate an Opinel knife and slice up chunks of equally frozen chorizo sausage. At some point the idea of a mountain-top charcuterie had seemed a good idea. The shelter’s small window is steamed up and around me there’s giggling – five of us crammed under a fancy Day-Glo bin bag having pushed, carried and dragged our bikes up Yr Wyddfa. Hikers in full mountaineering attire trudge past us and our bikes, strewn across the slope, shaking their heads before crossing the snow line and disappearing into the cloud. We weren’t going to make the summit and we didn’t care. As days on the bike go it was, objectively, rubbish. It was also utterly brilliant.

Mountain biking is my life, and experiences like that on Yr Wyddfa have been moulding me for as long as I’ve been riding. In truth, I’m not sure who I’d be without mountain biking and I don’t think I’m the only one. Mountain biking is a great teacher, or influencer, and no matter how long you’ve been riding there will be some aspect of your life that has been changed by it – and, apart from a magpie-like attraction to shiny metal and a habit of tyre hoarding, it’s for the better. But, for all the money spent on bikes and bits over the years, I’m still heavily indebted to mountain biking.