The View From Here - a blog

30/04/23 - From Groovy to Gravy

Having ridden the 100km of Rapha’s A Day in Hell last week, I felt confident taking on the mere 37 miles of Spoke Cycling’s inaugural Groovy Gravel ride. Roughly half the length, you still get beer and frites at the finish. This was going to be easy, right? Actually, you also got an orange Spoke mug, but more of that later.

Spoke have been running gravel rides on Wednesday evenings spring to autumn from their Codicote cafe. Groovy Gravel was a natural extension of this vibe for owners Alex and Jonathan. I took the train up to Welwyn Garden City with Richard May and we grabbed a coffee and a race card (oddly there was no number on it). Like last week at A Day in Hell I had knobby 42mm tyres, as did Richard. But looking around there were quite a few mountain bikes. Did they know something we didn’t?

Lucky that I cleaned my bike in advance...

They did. It rained a fair bit that week, but the key thing was the route. It was quite intense. Almost entirely off road and with many muddy, flooded areas and unrideable sections. Hike-a-bike is not really Richard’s style and he headed off to work up a sweat on more solid surfaces around the halfway mark.

This was a total hike-a-bike part of the route

It was quite a challenge to stay upright. This can be fun. Without a little slip and slide going on, it isn’t quite a gravel ride. The first steep gradient we hit and everyone was walking. It was just too sloppy to have enough traction. Even the MTBs. We had quickly gone from groovy to gravy. From gravy, we hit some seriously flooded trails. I do like this kind of dirty ride.

This is me on one of the "more sensible" sections

I fell in with a rider called Ash. He was struggling a bit, so we stuck together. We both managed slow-mo spills and both suffered horrendous “glue mud.” I don’t know what else to call it. It is like fast drying concrete and clogs up everything. There is one field between Tewin and Bramfield that is full of this evil stuff. Just two wheel rotations and your bike is buggered. If you have a front mech, it will be stuck. Front wheel, stuck with a clogged up fork. Back wheel, stuck with a clogged rear bridge. And the chain… Seriously, the chain had glue mud between every link. Both of our bikes had this and the chain would not sit on the chain ring. We had to grab handfuls of water from puddles and work this filth out. That took 20 minutes, no word of a lie.

Ash, some mud and a snack

My bike with residual glue-mud having spent 20 minutes unclogging it

Clearly I had put my foot (feet) in it

We limped back to Spoke running on fumes. 37 miles had felt like 137. Most people seemed to have done the shorter 20 mile route on a MTB and who could blame them? The beer and frites and sense of camaraderie were great, the route (although super challenging, was really well marked out with orange ribbons. And as well as the beer and frites, you got an orange Spoke mug as a gift. I couldn’t fit it into my pockets, so I zip tied it to my bars. Brilliant, eh? Except when I got home, I cut the tie and forgot to grab the mug. It smashed!

My smashing way to carry a mug

I think Alex and Jonathan should take great credit for getting this event on. They are going to have several road rides, too, to build on their Ride of the Falling Leaves from 2022. My only gripe (which I made loud and clear) was that it should have more road sections. Half the pleasure of a gravel bike is that it is capable and quick on and off road. A bit more on and I think this ride would be even more groovy.

Frites and beer included

Here’s the route, just take a detour around that field near Tewin.

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/42484587

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/42482652