The hills are alive
…with the sound of sniggering. John Westlake and mates head to the Welsh mountains where their lack of bravery and talent receives positive reinforcement
Tee that peak,’ says Paris-dakar veteran Mick Extance, waving his arm at a pointy Welsh mountain across the valley. ‘We’re heading there next.’ My friends and I exchange dubious looks from inside our motocross helmets. Mick might be going there, but it seems unlikely we will. The five of us have ridden off-road before but we possess little in the way of talent or bravery and only our friend Kostos has youth on his side – the rest of us are north of 50. I was secretly hoping for a day’s scenic trail riding rather than a bona fide adventure. ‘You’ll be fine,’ says Mick, picking up the smell of fear. ‘It’s not as di cult as it looks.’
That’s certainly true to start with. Mick runs his offroad experience days on a 1500-acre patch of prime Welsh loveliness in the Berwyn mountains, 20 miles from Oswestry, and his plot is criss-crossed with gravel forestry tracks. We’re riding his KTM 250 EXC four-strokes that pull sweetly from tick-over and are a world away from the finicky off-road twostrokes I remember as a youth. Within minutes we’re happily razzing along behind our group leader, Mick’s son Adam. At every break in the trees there’s a distracting view over the valley and the air has a purity that makes you want to gulp down the stuff like you’ve been holding your breath.
At the next clearing Mick and Adam get us riding round cones to assess our skills (‘really good,’ lies Mick motivationally), and points us at a small log for the first lesson of the day. I expect Mick to start talking about popping the front wheel up with the clutch like you would on a trials bike, but no. ‘The aim with all obstacles is to not fall off,’ he explains. ‘And the best way of doing that is to use your feet.’ Adam demonstrates by riding up to the log on a steady throttle, letting the front wheel ride over the log,
then putting both feet on it and lifting his weight off the bike as the rear wheel effortlessly drives over.
Our first attempts are a pitiful mess of spinning rear tyres and mistimed foot plants, but it eventually sinks in and Mick deems we are fit to proceed. Maybe we might make it up death mountain after all.
After another gravel track blast, Adam waves his arm, turns sharp left and disappears into the trees. We thread our bikes down through the forest on a wriggling path barely a foot wide. The tyres slip sideways over tree roots but grip brilliantly on the peaty soil in between. Ahead of me Rupe adopts the new technique of getting weight over the front and putting his feet down over the tricky bits, and it works. It might not be pretty, but it boosts confidence and no-one falls off. Much. As we start flagging – how can riding this slowly be so tiring? – the trail pops out on another gravel track and we recharge as the KTMS do all the work. The pattern continues – gravel blast past postcard views, exhausting blunder through trees, more gravel, more trees – until Adam brings us to a halt. We haul off our lids and gulp water in between issuing the obligatory pisstakes of each other’s frankly dreadful riding – several of us toppled off on the uphill sections. The sun is out, I’m with my mates at the top of a mountain, we’re all plastered in mud and I’m arriving at the conclusion that life can’t get any better. But then it does. ‘See, we made it,’ says Adam. ‘We’re at the top, where we said we’d be.’ And so we are. Amazing.
º How to do it A day at the Mick Extance Off-road Experience costs £240 including bike hire, all the kit you need and instruction. Mick caters for every level of experience – even if you’ve never ridden a bike before, let alone a dirt bike. There’s decent B&B in the village where Mick is based if you’re too knackered to drive back the same night (which you will be). mickextanceexperience. com