Off Season Adventure

Words by Ed Oxley from Great Rock and photos by Doug McDonald from basqueMTB

Turning our passion in to our job is a dream that we’ve both managed to achieve. Having the mountains as an office is very cool and spending time with people who love riding bikes is a daily bonus. Of course there are dangers with this lifestyle. What if riding as a job turns the passion into a chore? And when do you get to do the riding you want to do for yourself if you spend your time providing riding for other people? I have to say there could be worse problems!

During the season we run the type of mountain biking holidays that we’d like to go on ourselves. Whilst we ride almost every day, we’re still having to work. We’re choosing trails, guiding people, teaching skills, driving, sorting out the logistics, fixing mechanicals and making sure that everyone has a good time. Doug, the Basque MTB main man said to me, “the holiday is our job, but just for once I want the holiday to be my holiday!” So we decided to take a few days in the off season and go and have our kind of holiday just for ourselves. It was our #offseasonadventure

#offseasonadventure Because the holiday is our job!

Our plan was to ride great trails, eat fine food and do something to relax that didn’t involve bikes. We didn’t want to have to be in charge of choosing all the trails, so we hooked up with local riders who were keen to share their knowledge and show us some new riding spots. Off season is the time to seek out the new and we took this opportunity to explore an area which had recently been cleared, turning obstructed and overgrown paths into prime singletrack. It’s great to explore and wander off into the unknown, especially when you find something that will be good enough to share with guests next season.

Chasing the last light.

The best way to stop the job killing the passion is to get out and ride just for the hell of it! Hitting a new trail and maybe scaring yourself a little does wonders. Our business is offering adventures to people, however it needs to be less of an adventure for us guides. We need to be sure that people stay safe, get food on time and finish riding in daylight. The rules change with an #offseasonadventure though and on this trip we hung around watching the sun set on the top of the hill. This meant we were riding in twilight and hoping for the best that there was a trail under our tyres on the way back down the hill. We also rode most of one day with nothing to eat, apart from a few sweets found in the bottom of my pack. Eventually our legs were as empty as our bellies. It was great! The next time we do these trails things will be different. The riding will be just as good but we now know when the restaurant is open and it will be the summer, when with longer days we can be out riding until 8pm.

#offseasonadventure means shorter days and more clothes.

To start our adventure we met up with Carlos, one of the first locals that Doug met when he set up his company in the Basque Country. The story goes that Doug was rolling down the road still wearing his pads after a day of trail scouting when Carlos spotted him. After delivering a serious verbal assault for riding down a road, “on that bike,” Carlos dragged him back to the top to show him the best singletrack. These days Doug doesn’t descend on the road, although Carlos still has an opinion on everything.

The day was spent riding familiar classics on the coast around San Sebastian as well as checking out some trails that locals have just opened up. More gems are revealed and it’s high fives all round. We try a new place for lunch by the sea that does tasty fresh tuna and anchovy rolls. It looks like a pirate’s warehouse all decked out with nautical paraphernalia and the €20 menu with 5 different types of fish will definitely reel us back here soon.

Riding the beautiful singletrack to San Sebastian.

Bodies take a hammering when you spend so much time riding bikes. Carrying a heavy guiding pack and tapping out the miles leaves you with aches and pains. Going to try out a new spa that we’d heard about was a great excuse to spend some time relaxing, and as rain was forecast it was an easy choice not to go riding. Added to this was the knowledge that there was a great bar with local food nearby. No searching around in the bottom of the pack for food today! We didn’t know what to expect from the spa. Was it really somewhere for people like us and would we be able to relax without handlebars?

Because we’re worth it.

We changed into short shorts (and no knee pads) and immediately started laughing at each other’s mountain biker tan lines and the pointlessness of wearing a bathing cap for hygiene reasons, when the hair on our heads is only about 5% of our total body hair. The biggest surprise was when we waded into the pool to find that it was loaded with salt and we could just float as if in the Dead Sea. Maximum relaxation came in a smaller, dark and more heavily salted pool where the sensation of weightlessness was incredible. As mountain bikers we spend our lives, especially in the UK, trying to avoid getting wet and so it was quite hilarious when we found the various cold rainwater showers outside the sauna room. Fancy jets created the effect of either a storm, steady rain and even mist to cool us down. It was just like being out in the hills back home. By the end of the day we were as salty as a pair of anchovies, feeling fresh and ready to ride again.

Even the food comes in autumn colours.

Of course the off season is the off season for a reason. And that reason was clear the next day which dawned wet and cold. With real rain forecast we used our usual strategy of heading away from the coast and towards Pamplona to find dry trails. We met up with Antonio, one of the Basque MTB guides and Oscar, both local to this area. They showed us a new trail, recently built by bike mad firefighters in their time off. It’s amazing what 10 well organised, burly men can do with 2 weeks and a loads of shovels. After a bench cut, singletrack climb we descended continuously for over 700 vertical metres, dropping 4km round hundreds of perfect, flowing corners and over several tasty rock drops and jumps. Definitely one that we’ll be going back to, although by then we’ll have arranged permission to uplift most of the climb in the van!

Turning over a new leaf.

The last trail that we rode was one that Doug built last winter and I’d never had the chance to ride. From what I’d heard it was a super steep track that not many people rode and chances were that I’d die trying to get down it. Happily the Chinese whispers were off the mark. Yes it was steep, but it was really flowy and fun to ride with a bit of commitment to the gradient. We messed around getting some photos at the top, mesmerised by the lovely autumn colours and the hub deep piles of fallen leaves. In the day job we’re always trying to get the balance right between keeping the ride flowing and taking photos. People like getting good holiday photos of themselves on their bikes, but you have to be careful not to make the ride secondary to the photoshoot. Not so today, this was our holiday and we were itching to ride, so the camera went away and we got into the moment rather than trying to capture it.

All the leaves are brown….and the trails are steep.

After a week we’d ridden hub deep through crackling leaves, used the force to navigate steep coastal trails in the dark and drifted across salty pools with our minds far away. We’d cemented old friendships, shared trails and had meals with the locals. Most of all we’d seen things from the other side of the fence; we’d taken a holiday and lost ourselves in it. All of which left us feeling rather hungry.

Building up an appetite and then over eating. Life is good, gout imminent.

Our trip ended in the cosmopolitan city of San Sebastian where the forested hills tip us out on to the beach and into the old town, which is full of bars offering traditional as well as modern gourmet food. Pintxos (pronounced pinchos) are the Basque version of tapas and they didn’t stand a chance as three hungry mountain bikers fell upon them. Artichokes painted with gold leaf, bacon and liver kebabs in an oil and vinegar dressing, salt cod and red peppers on toast and black pudding encased in pistachio nuts with raspberry sauce were some of the amazing dishes that we tried.

Thin & hungry after 7 months of biking. The pintxos didn’t stand a chance.

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about our ‘busman’s holiday’ and looking at our photos. Perhaps we’ll see you out on the trails sometime.

You can find out more about the holidays that we run together in the Basque Country here http://great-rock.co.uk/trips/basque-mtb-skills-holiday/

Thanks to our partners:

Basque MTB
Orbea
Osprey packs
Rahox brake pads
Ameztia for providing the spa

Great Rock
Santa Cruz Bikes
Sweet Protection helmets, pads and clothing
Mavic wheels
Shimano
X-fusion forks
Chromag
WTB tyres
Acre packs
KS dropper seatposts
Invisiframe frame protection kits
Squirt chain lube

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Mentions: @DougBasqueMTB @GreatRock @mavic @WTB-Marketing

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