A good friend from childhood coffee mornings / Halfords / faffing about with cars came over to visit me in Bristol the weekend before last. As someone who was always into mountain biking we jumped onto the bikes and headed up into Ashton Court and Leigh Woods to have a go on the purpose built trails. Halfway up the hill to Ashton Court I realised that I’d forgotten my helmet and my gloves and I remember thinking, today will typically be the day I need them.

We were blessed with beautiful weather and the trails were the driest I’ve seen them allowing one to forget about lethally slippery roots and rocks. We were out for a good three hours, sustained by H30 isotonic drinks and protien bars (no apologies for the plugs commercial plugs), and a fantastic three hours it was, gradually building the confidence and pushing more with quite a few airborne moments. This Mountain Biking lark is great fun and I recommend you give it a try.

After a quick sightseeing visit to Clifton Suspension Bridge we planned to pop down to Aldi to buy some beers and then head over to Adam’s for a barbecue, which would have been a perfect finish to a great day.

Riding down the hill from the bridge (at quite probably the fasted speed I’ve ever been on a push bike) I started braking to take the left onto the tow path. These Hydraulic disk brakes on my Cube are phenomenal allowing me to scrub off immense speeds very quickly. Unfortunately, Anthony behind, didn’t have disk brakes and wasn’t able to scrub off so much speed, rapidly closing on me,and thinking that I was slowing down to follow the road right, he went to my left to avoid me just as I turned left…

Our handlebars collided, both both bikes turned right, and not for the first time that day we were both airborne, but this time out off control and without the bikes. We both hit the ground pretty hard. Anthony coming off at a greater speed than me, bent his thumb back, hurt his wrist and ripped of lots of skin off his hip, shoulder, arm and back. My back was fine as my rucksack protected me, but I was much the same on my knee, hip, elbow, shoulder and… erm my head.

With my right arm in rather a lot of pain and swelling up rapidly, as time went by every movement became more painful. We decided to head on up to the Hospital to get it checked out. After a lot of waiting around I got given a sling, x rayed and finally seen by a Doctor. She told me, thankfully, that there was no fractures or breakage, but it was badly sprained / bruised. She cleaned up my wounds and then put two staples into my head to help that wound heel. Standard practice apparently.

The head wound hadn’t hurt that much, and seemed minor compared to my arm, but on going to the nurse to have the staples removed, what should have been a five minute job, turned into a three hour affair involving a lot of pain, more blood, nitrous oxide and anesthetic injections into the scalp…

If there is one thing I’ve learnt from this, it is not to forget your cycle helmet!