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Cycling

Into the woods

In need of escape, I crammed my bike into the car and drove to the forest to think of nothing.

Matt

• 2 min read
Looking up at a forest canopy, with the green leaves of the trees against the blue sky and white clouds.

The morning chill still lingered, but I was warm in the window seat of the visitor centre cafe. I sipped my coffee and watched. Outside, people gathered in the low sunlight. Dogs begged patiently for their owners’ food. Ducks looked warily at the dogs. Beyond them, at the edge of the lake, the wind breathed through the rushes.

It was early in my ride for a stop, but I’d driven for an hour to reach the Forest of Dean before parking up and setting off. I don’t much like driving, and it’s a winding, frustrating route from my home. Sometimes, though, when nothing but a ride in the woods will do, I head here.

I finished my coffee, gathered my things and resumed the winding route I’d planned. The 80km track on my GPS map criss-crossed the forest to take in as many tracks, and as few roads, as possible.

A straight grey gravel track stretches into the distance amon a dense green woodland.

I would circle myself into submission, riding until I could think of nothing better than to stop. Then I'd drive home and arrive feeling like I’d been away for a month.

Riding through the forest emptied my mind, sweeping away the clutter that had accumulated over the preceding weeks and months. Trees flashed by. My freehub whirred. Gravel crunched under my front tyre.

For a few hours, my emotions fluctuated with the grade of stone. Fine grit elicited pure joy, a chance to sweep smoothly along the trail. Larger stones frustrated me, breaking my rhythm. All I could think about was rock.

On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work, the smaller it gets. Every thought that arises is immediately and utterly true, every unexpected event is something you’d known all along but had only forgotten for a moment. A pounding riff from a song, a bit of long division that starts over and over, a magnified anger at someone, is enough to fill your thoughts.

Tim Krabbé, The Rider

By the time I neared the end of the ride, my bike and I had gathered a coating of fine dust. This summer has been the UK's warmest on record and the trails were still baked. Before tackling the final climb, I stopped to read a nearby information board.

It warned me not to touch trees suffering from acute oak decline, with their thinning crowns and cracked, weeping bark. The exact causes of the condition are still being researched, but it seems that environmental stresses are likely to play a role. In other words: the climate crisis.

Humans caused this mess, but we’re asking nature to help us fix it. A little way off lay a fenced enclosure where beavers are being reintroduced to the forest. The hope is that their dams will slow runoff after the heavy rain that's more now likely because of climate change, and create habitats for wildlife threatened by our actions.

I wondered what the great oaks make of it all. Do they welcome back the beavers? Do they blame us for their own decline? Do they fear meeting the same fate as the ash and elm?

This is what happens when my mind is free of emails and calls and messages and tasks: I start talking to the trees.