Training wheels

Riding with your kids should be the best thing you've ever done. Here's how to guarantee success

- Fi Spotswood

When and how am I ever going to mountain bike regularly again?” This wasn’t the first thought that popped into my head when I learnt we were expecting our first child. Definitely top 10, though. But it didn’t take long before it dawned on me that the best long-term strategy for protecting my own trail time was to support my children in learning, and loving, mountain biking. Easier said than done, of course. Now, however, with three time-sappers in tow (four, seven, nine), I stand by the strategy, even if I’ve honed my tactics along the way.

We still aren’t quite at the point where a family ride involves a truly phenomenal shred, but it’s close. Very close. Often, our rides are short, snappy affairs. We will split the family for an afternoon and focus just on one child who will bask in the attention of having a whole grown up to themselves. These are where skills and confidence really notch up the levels. Our role is as cheerleader of a Million Tiny Victories, producer of custard creams, and regaler of stories from our own library of mountain biking adventures. These rides are the ones where my heart really soars and I begin entering adventure races and bike packing events in my mind. Then I realise that the child is in fact only four and riding on 16in wheels. And we’ve done 5km in an hour. Maybe next year.

It’s harder to ride all together, but we have some techniques up our sleeve. And this has resulted in some magical days exploring the landscape beyond trail centres, skirting around empty mid-Wales reservoirs and stopping for picnics on amazing rugged hillsides with kites soaring above. There has been some hike-a-bike too, and a few times we have lost a child in a bog. But it’s character building, right?