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The early afternoon sun bounced from the face of the Downs and convinced us this was the warmest February day imaginable. The track is narrow in places and clings to the off-camber side of the Down as the view constantly threatens to wrench your concentration from the occasionally tricky path. Finally the track climbs a short distance to the South end of the bay and it's up on to the road and a trip to one of the cafes for 'half a dozen Welsh cakes and a pot of your finest tea Mrs Jones'.
After stuffing ourselves we couldn't resist a short detour towards Worms Head and a chance to ride way too close to the silly high and dangerous cliffs and drop in and out of the natural bomb holes. Finally after riding the ridge at the end of the cliffs we reluctantly had to resume our route. We re-traced our tracks to the end of the bay then attacked the climb up the South end of the Rhossili Down. Well I say we attacked it, actually we walked up most of it, look it's pretty steep O.K? Alan and Dom made a better go of it, riding the top section whilst Lenseman and myself stopped to do a photo-shoot and take in the view.
We soon covered the distance along the top of the Down and started the helmet-cam for the descent. A proper bridleway on the map this must have broken a few horses legs. It starts with a sweet grassy single track then plummets 500 feet down in one long contour slashing, no holds barred steep-fest. I've ridden steeper drops but this one is rocky, holey, slippery and impressively large. Avoid the steps walkers have cut at all costs, it's the kind of hillside often shaped in to multiple switchbacks but this one just takes the shortest route down. At this point Alan was in the lead with me sensibly following his practised line for the most part, Lenseman as the video testifies was in deep trouble.
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Accident investigators studying the 'black box' flight recorder are convinced Tom made a full loop, before going in to a flat spin and crashing nose first in to the hillside. Later it was discovered that the rear swing-arm pivot on his classic Pro Flex 856 was all but falling off, resulting in some 'unusual' handling characteristics (low maintenance types take note). Whilst we sat smugly at the bottom of Hill End, Lenseman could be seen high up on the slope in the full sunshine worrying at his stricken rear end.
Eventually he joined us and we decided to hit the road as the afternoon was drawing on with quite a few more miles to do. We rode the road until it crossed Cefn Bryn then retraced the ridge to a single track off the left flank. They said it was rocky and that 'you full suspension boys' would like it, yeah, with another four inches at each end... We rattled back down to Park Wood then took a short road section to another rock-tastic bridleway which ends back at the Water Mill. Lenseman showed that he'd used up all his luck on the weather by flatting on the last section. By now the Welsh cakes were a distant memory and we hit the local shop for a Bara Brith (fruit cake) and Red Bull, a combination I heartily recommend to the blood sugar and energy free. Now just a quick two hundred mile drive back to Leicester in the fog...
Swansea-Gower.co.uk
For information and accomodation in the Gower area.
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