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CYCLING
Bikepacking for Bristolians
Emma Kingston takes us on an all-terrain cycling adventure around the Mendips. Prepare for feral goats, award-winning pies and some quality riding you might not be expecting so close to the M5
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f course Emma Kingston – an adventuring mountain biker, writer, teacher and self-confessed map geek who has ridden, walked, climbed and camped in the South West for over 20 years – lives in Bristol, the UK’s first designated ‘cycling city’. She took up ‘bikepacking’ – a combination of all-terrain, multi-day cycling and lightweight, selfsupported backpacking – when she realised it meant that she could stay out and ride her bike for even longer, explore interesting places off route and eat an outrageous amount of ice cream. Having travelled extensively in search of ever more flowing singletrack, her knowledge of the West Country is enviable. Now she’s written her first book gathering all her experience together and resulting in 20 mountain bike adventures across English destinations including the Lake District, Exmoor, Northumberland and the Jurassic Coast as well as her home turf. Each route evokes the freedom of hiking off the beaten path and includes the information needed to help plan a ride, points of interest, food and accommodation options in addition to fine photography and overview mapping. Downloadable GPX files of the routes are also available, plus practical advice for both well-wheeled bikepackers and those who want to try it for the first time. Here she shares her Mendip Hills and Weston-super-Mare route along with all the accompanying insider tips.
Mendip Hills and Weston-super-Mare
The Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty rises abruptly from the flat wetlands of the Somerset Levels and forms a long limestone ridge running from Bleadon in the west to Chewton Mendip in the east. Its undulating grassy plateau is punctuated by dramatic gorges and rocky outcrops that offer a spectacular vantage point for an exposed bivvy. Outwardly, the hillforts, henges and barrows reveal a prehistoric ritual landscape, while beneath the hills the soluble limestone has resulted in a complex karst landscape of sinkholes, underground river systems and caves. Farming still plays a key role in the region’s economy and a bikepacking trip here wouldn’t be complete without a visit to some of the independent dairies, farm shops, orchards and breweries in the area.
Wavering Down singletrack
38 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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SEPTEMBER 2021
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NO¯ 202
Dinner high above the M5
This route is very much a route of two halves. The first half explores the quiet lanes and gravel tracks to the west towards Weston-super-Mare, the original British seaside resort complete with sandcastle competitions, donkey rides and ice creams on the Grand Pier. There is also the option of some beach riding along the hardpacked sand of Weston Bay and Brean. The second half heads east over the Mendip Hills to pay a visit to the world-famous Cheddar Gorge and link up some of the area’s best cross-county riding on the way – from the technical singletrack under Beacon Batch to the narrow, exposed trails around Wavering Down. Prepare yourself for feral goats, award-winning pies and some quality riding you might not be expecting so close to the M5.
The route
It’s just after sunrise. The hillside is quiet except for the background roar of the gas stove. A kettle balances somewhat precariously on top of it and a telltale wisp of steam is starting to escape. Down below, a low-lying mist has settled over the wetlands – the Mendip Hills an archipelago rising above a white sea. The Somerset Levels are under there somewhere, a patchwork landscape scored with the horizontal and vertical lines of field edges, waterways and trees. The Mendip Hills and surrounding Somerset Levels have proved an irresistible draw for humans for thousands of years. Prehistoric people built a complex system of elevated wooden trackways across the low-lying and marshy wetlands such as the Sweet Track – one of the area’s oldest existing tracks, built around 6,000 years ago. During the medieval period, most of the Levels was owned by Glastonbury Abbey and the monks were largely responsible for the network of drainage ditches known as ‘rhynes’. Up on the hills, the Romans had begun to extract lead in large quantities from the hills only a few years after arriving in Britain. Look out for telltale patches of uneven, undulating grass known locally as ‘gruffy’ ground. Nowadays, the area is popular with walkers, rock climbers, cavers and cyclists who gravitate to its most well-known landmark and the birthplace of the original Cheddar cheese – Cheddar Gorge. At over 100 metres deep and 4.8 kilometres long, it is England’s largest gorge and makes for a thrilling road ride between its vertical limestone walls. There is even the option of climbing up to join a bridleway running right along the edge of the eastern cliffs. Down below, the Cheddar Yeo River flows through a huge underground
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