When I am among the trees

Looking back at my rides over the years, it’s clear that I’m drawn to cycling among trees. Forests feature heavily in my favourites.

The last family trip we took before the pandemic – and the first we made after restrictions lifted – was to ride in the Forest of Dean. Looping around the forest roads, we bypassed busier sections of the family trail and made up our own route. The wide tracks meant the three of us could ride side by side and we could chat, falling into the steady rhythm of a longer ride. The anxieties of confinement, of rolling news coverage, melted into the trees.

Soon afterwards, G and I headed to Mortimer Forest – climbing to the viewpoint before speeding down the gently curling logging roads on the far side of the hill. I wrote recently of cycling in Denmark, that ‘some landscapes are particularly open to revealing themselves to the cyclist’. These are places ‘where the rhythm of cycling matches the natural rhythm of discovery’. Forest roads – with gradients, curves and switchbacks built for huge harvesting machines and log lorries – make for rides that flow sinuously through the forest.

Working areas with their log stacks, scattered brushwood and deep ruts make way for quieter places where the understorey comes alive. G and I once spotted one of Mortimer Forest’s unique long-haired fallow deer darting across the track in front of us. I regularly see red kites and buzzards circling overhead. To ride the forest roads through these rich landscapes is to become part of them for a few hours. To let them wash over you. To bathe in them.