Short rides for short days
The joys of exploring Britain in quick bursts
EVERY WINTER, TWO things will happen, sooner or later. One is that I’ll be riding along and it will start snowing, and I’ll wail “Why oh why do we do this?” or something to that effect. The other thing that happens, on a different day, is that I’m riding along and I realise I’m really enjoying myself, that the weather really isn’t too bad and I say to myself: “This is great! Where’s everybody else?”
After decades of getting it wrong, or of ploughing on regardless through lack of choice, I think I’m finally getting the hang of spotting the difference between non-riding days, commuting with gritted teeth days, and days when it’s not only possible to go for a ride but also actually pleasurable to be out on a bike in winter.
In December 2016, the mean temperature for the UK – including the hours of darkness – was 5.9°C and in many places the road gritters didn’t go out at all. It wasn’t very wet, either. To take the most extreme example, in South East England there was 18.1mm of rain spread over the whole month.
In a typical British winter there are plenty of days when – work and other commitments permitting – you can happily clear off and have some fun, reasonably confident that the roads and the weather won’t cause you too many problems (though readers in the north of Scotland may beg to differ).
There are still challenges, of course. There’s often a lot of muck on the roads and the low sun can be a distraction, especially when you’re squinting at it through a visor caked in road filth. But once you’re prepared to deal with these conditions, they’re not a problem.
At this time of year, it might make sense to head for places that you’d instinctively avoid in summer, when they’d be way too busy. In the winter, there are very few caravans, motorhomes and dawdling daytrippers heading for the coast or tourist hotspots like the Lake District or Brecon Beacons.
When this works, you find you have the road pretty much to yourself outside of commuting times. When you arrive, you park where you want and stroll straight into the chippy or boozer to warm up – where, chances are, they’ll be very glad to see you.
The other trick is to go for a ride from nowhere to nowhere. With all due respect to Daventry and Grantham, they’re neither of them on page one of your bucket-list search results. My list
of other alternative ride includes Swansea to Tenby, Bury St Edmunds to Skegness, Hebden Bridge to Richmond and a lap of the Isle of Wight.
When I found I had the opportunity to go for a ride one wintry but almost dry day, I decided it wasn’t an aimless, short ride. I decided it was a micro-adventure: a short ride for a short day. Giving it a name already made it feel more special. I started in Daventry, at Suzuki dealers Bikers World. I decided to head for Grantham, about 70 miles to the north-east. Why Grantham? Because it was years since I’d last been and it’s one of those solid old towns I quite like the idea of, where you can be sure there will be somewhere to stay the night, even out of season.
Which route? It had to be one avoiding big roads and familiar places: that’s what gives this kind of caper its tiny whiff of adventure. So I went out of Daventry following my nose, crossed the A5, and zigzagged slightly wonkily to Husbands Bosworth via Cold Ashby.
When I stopped to clean my visor and have a look at my map, it revealed that I was heading in roughly the right direction. I was close to lots of familiar places, but it felt like I was a long way from home. I’d very quickly had a sense of having drifted out of my usual shipping lane.
There was a wonderful moment on the B6047 between Market Harborough and Melton Mowbray, where the road rises and you suddenly get a view over what feels like three counties, most of it farmland. In Melton I picked up the relatively fast and flowing A607 towards Grantham. The bike was feeling very good. The Dunlop Roadsmarts weren’t causing me any concern. I was relaxed and happily motoring along immersed in the ride but not so blinkered that I couldn’t enjoy the not-quite-familiar roads and villages.
Rolling through the outskirts of Grantham, I stopped at Chris Walker’s recently opened Kawasaki dealership. It’s a good set-up, with a decent clothing department and a strong off-road section, reflecting the British Superbikes ace’s passion for dirt bikes.
One of the bonuses of there not being many bikes out and about in winter is that the dealers aren’t over-busy, so are pleased to have a chat with tyre-kicking time-wasters like me (though I get the impression that Walker’s offer of a cuppa would have been extended even at the busiest time).
Grantham itself proved to be grander and bigger than I’d vaguely remembered, with plenty of fine churches and old coaching inns – not to mention a cheerful chip shop providing some welcome warming stodge. Then stop, I told myself. Quit while you’re ahead. Don’t go pressing on into the dusk, determined to get to the coast or the next big town or whatever. Just park up, check in, call your mates if you have any in the area and see if anyone fancies a curry.
And then tomorrow could be another micro-adventure.
“I’d very quickly had a sense of drifting out of my usual shipping lane”