The Ridgeway is a trail with a dual personality. In summer, a friendly place to stop and picnic, watch the skylarks and take in a landscape steeped in history. But In winter, when riders are confronted with unfavourable weather or poor trail conditions, cycling times can more than double. This is because strong headwinds are not at all helpful when riding along an exposed ridge, wheels don’t roll as well on soft waterlogged turf, and sticky mud can clog up wheels, brakes and gears.
Journey's End, Avebury February 1986
Though I have fond memories of easy-going sunny rides and being pushed along by warm summer tailwinds, it is the challenging winter rides that I best recall. Over the past forty years I have cycled to Avebury many times. However, no arrivals quite compare with February 1986 when, as I approached along a frozen Ridgeway and the light began to fade, the first flurries of approaching snow settled on the downs beside me. As I turned off the Ridgeway onto the Herepath and began my decent towards Avebury, the snow deepened, replacing the frozen turf and chalk beneath my wheels. Soon I was cycling between the snow-topped banks of the henge towards the ancient stones. The snow had capped the megaliths as it must had done an inconceivable number of times since the stones were first erected some four and a half thousand years ago. As dusk gave way to frozen night, I cycled through pristine white powder to the welcoming shelter of the bed and breakfast where my long ride from Streatley came to an end.
The electronic shutter on the camera used on the above ride failed, because it could not cope with the cold.
So here is a photo from an earlier ride in January 1985 on the Ridgeway at Coombe Hill in the Chilterns.
View attachment 790926
Below is a recent video of someone cycling the section of the Ridgeway described above, where the ridder falls off and breaks some ribs.
The relavant section of the video is between 07:06 and 10:29:
BITD, I used carry an emergency whistle and survival bag in winter in case I suffered an injury, after which I was unable to continue riding. The Ridgeway in winter could be a lonely place where you saw no one for hours and it would have been a long wait, possibly overnight, before anyone came along.
For anyone not familiar with riding on chalk it can be a very treacherous surface. Especially so when wet and the wheel polished surface had developed a slimy coating of algae as invisible and slippery as black ice. Back in the 80's, a scary fall on wet chalk that prompted me to develop riding techniques for coping with such surfaces and in particular for dealing with wipe-out inducing cambers.
