Followers of my twitter feed will have no doubt gathered that in a weeks time I will have left the big city for pastures new....
Every time I've been down the M5 motorway, since as young an age as I can remember, the shadow of the Malvern hills has always had me transfixed..........And this time next week, I will be living there!
The Malvern Hills are made up of approximately 45km2 of rounded hills criss-crossed with bridleways and the foot of which will be less than 100yards from my new front door,(result!) Now to some folks that may not sound big enough for an all-day epic ride or the perfect location for an endurance-head but what they lack in square kilometres they make up for in vertical per mile. So having visited a couple of times and done my home work a can say, riding here is generally pretty tough, well, its nails to be honest and pretty much the best place i could think of to live within 2hrs of the office...... Climbing up from my front door by bike to summit takes anything up to 30mins depending on which way you go and rewards you with a whole amount of pain, you didn't really bargain for..(I've not even ran there yet!) But once up there the singletrack varies from flat out ridge lines, to steep switch-back wooded descents.(complete with what I found to be nasty techie, off camber roots combined with rocky steps and gullies! ebay search:body armor)
As for conditions on the hills, being just a bunch of great big rocks, means it is an all weather area and when other areas are laced with deep,shitty mud the Malverns almost remain a veritable haven of dry trails... (this just gets better) So this could maybe even see the end of the one-ride brake pad days???? (unless I get bored and go back to riding Cannock in the wet, narrrrrrrrrrrr)
So in all, as you may gather I'm quite excited about all this, OK so I'm renting and living at my financial limit (just for a change) but once again, I'm into my inevitable search to find the ultimate balance...........
If your still not convinced,
then check out this video of the route from the top down to my new front door, well, almost:
