Blazing a trail like a natural down Ballyhoura way
Redford: “But I didn’t see it coming.”
Close: “How could you know she’d hurt you? How could anyone?”
Redford: “I didn’t see it coming.”
Close: “You should have?”
Redford: “Yes. But I didn’t. Why didn’t I?”
I’d like to see the Sundance Kid hurtling precariously through – as I did on Wednesday – the beautiful Ballyhoura Forest which hugs the border between north Cork and south county Limerick, on a sophisticated mountain bike.
I pulled on the gloves they gave me inside out, bunny hopped around the car park thanks to the teenager-sensitive front brakes and was told, with a smile, to fasten my ‘brain bucket’ helmet. Perhaps I should’ve seen it coming.
In total, Ballyhoura offers more than 90km of biking trails along this single track, as well as on forest road climbs, which marks it apart as one of Europe’s top mountain-biking destinations.
These loops range from the relatively easy six kilometres of Greenwood Loop, which would take a slowish biker (hi there!) about an hour to complete, to the leave-it-to-the-experts 51km Loop.
This, the ‘brown path’, is for the absolute headers. It could take a biker up to five hours to finish, including as it does l’Alpe D’Huez-like climbs and tough-to-negotiate features in a slaloming, long descent.
Local company Trailriders rent out the bikes to those who visit the recently-developed facility (€25 for a nice bike for a couple of hours, for example).
Jonathon Mansell has just completed his Leaving Certificate and is about to start an exciting outdoor pursuits course in Kinsale, Co Cork. For now, he works full-time for Trailriders and is known around here as one of the most proficient mountain bikers to yet turn the pedals up the hill.
At the moment he’s out of the saddle due to a hip injury. Another clue.
“We’re busy – we had about 47 bikes out on the mountain on Saturday – and guys just keep coming back.
“It’s not for everyone – some don’t know what to expect – but we had three lads earlier who flew around in a couple of hours and then went around the green course. And that was their first time. So they’ll be back.”
Mansell wheels out one of their newer bikes and sits me up on it.
“The brakes are very sensitive, so just feather them like this,” he says, spreading three fingers across each lever and touching them softly. “You’ll be grand.”
Diarmiud O’Leary is a retired secondary school teacher from the local town of Kilfinnan. He’s volunteered to spend his morning guiding me up – and then down – the mountain side. An interesting man with a love of the locality having been involved in the development of the Ballyhoura Way, he peppers generous encouragement (‘you’re more confident now, you have the fitness anyway etc’) with some saddle-soiling scare stories (see that rock there, the greatest advertisement for a helmet...).
I follow him tentatively as we wend up the incline in a narrow path hemmed with large rocks and carpeted in moss, earth, whatever. He explains later that one group walked their bikes around the trail having expected the route to be tarmaced. “I don’t know why they wanted mountain bikes,” he shrugs.
I grow more at ease and happily tail Diarmuid’s wheel as he offers, like an F1 technician, insights into little corners that cause trouble while he’s not afraid to stop and admire the impressive vista that swallows the Golden Vale to the Galtees. After a lung-busting crawl to the top of our route, we begin to peel back down. O’Leary is fearless as he skids across long and winding two-foot-wide timber bridges that stretch across yawning drops.
Surveying the footprints and wheel tracks in the soft mud below – evidence of past falls by better riders than me – I choose to dent my pride rather than backside and wheel the bike across the bridge like a small child crossing the road to school. I’m not ashamed to tell you this.
The US air force have an expression for the period of time immediately after a young pilot fully qualifies and arrogantly thinks they can do it all: the death zone.
As we reach the end of the trip and I’m comfortable enough to stand cautiously on the pedals as Diarmuid encourages me, so to better manoeuvre the bike beneath I realise that I am in fact a natural. If I come up a few times a month, perhaps London 2012 might yet be a possibility.
Then comes that rock. An innocuous nick of the pedal. A skid. A screech. And you’re picking yourself out of a rabbit hole.
“The most important thing is to get back on straight away,” said Diarmuid. “It’s like they say with horses isn’t it? You must always get back on.”
After a giddily enjoyable few hours in Ballyhoura, I’ll be getting on again soon I’m sure.
- Ballyhoura Forest hosts one leg of the 2010 An Post cycle series on Sunday, September 12. The Rebel Rush presents cyclists and mountain bikers with a choice of three trails between 6k and 35km. Visit www.corkrebeltour.ie. Registration closes this Wednesday.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
