And we didn’t drop the bike

As part of our Round the World trip preparation we need to become far more confident off road. Nothing massively enduro or gnarly, but tracks that aren't tarmac. We did the off road day in June which was brilliant but since then we haven't really done any green lanes and our heads were beginning to play mind games with us. This needed rectified or we would be in danger of never conquering our doubts.

So today we turned down the invite to ride with friends (sorry friends!!) and went off on our own to the local byways. We had to start doing it and proving to ourselves that we can do it.

We started with the two very easy wooded trails in nearby Hamstreet. A great warm up for the slightly more difficult ones near Shadoxhurst.

Now, one of these byways had caused us to turn around last May because there was a tree across the trail. Not a massive tree but a tree nonetheless. We had stared at it; ummed and ahhed; tried to convince ourselves that all would be well; and then turned around. On our off road day we rode over a tree about three times the size and we said then that we wanted to go back to the 'byway with the tree' and do it.

So, today was the day. It really was nothing to worry about and we both just rode over it no problem, feeling rather silly for doubting ourselves a few months ago. But that's how the mind works and whilst there is technique to learn, most of our issues at the moment, at this level, are in our heads. The trail today was very dry which helped a lot as it was pretty muddy last time and we turned back on another bit because of that. We need to learn to ride the dry ruts first I think before venturing into mud and we did that today. The ghost of that trail is well and truly laid to rest.

All smiles and feeling good.

Then it was onto a byway near Wye. We had walked this one last night. It was in two sections, the first one I was happy to try, the second one depended really on how I got on with the first one! It started with a really stony, slippy downhill, not helped by a woman with her dog standing on the only smooth bit, forcing us onto what seemed fairly large stones and rubble. A bit of muttered swearing later (a new skill for Carl's videos is to bleep out the bits of my audio not fit for publication!!) and we had done it. The next uphill brought me out in a sweat as it was very stony too and the bike felt like it was careering all over the track. It probably was skittering about a lot but we didn't feel very in control. We just tried to point the handle bars in the direction we wanted to go! It worked. The bikes did their thing and we both got to the top of the hill and then enjoyed an easy wooded section before that turned into grassy ruts. The middle line worked most of the time and we arrived at the end of the trail in one piece.

The stony section at the beginning had scared me a little bit and I was starting to feel tired and so didn't want to tackle the second trail here as it started with a long downhill of big stones and was narrow. More important for today was to end on a high note having mastered what we did.

So to finish, we returned to a byway we had done last year on the Tracer and Tiger, where I dropped my Tiger in the ruts. I wanted to conquer the doubts I had about it, sure that it wouldn't be a problem for the T7. It wasn't. We scooted round no problem. A couple of narrow bits but nothing to worry about.

Amazing views across Kent.

Then home. Mind you, the lanes that Calimoto found for our return were almost byways by nature. Beautiful lanes with views across the Kent countryside that you don't normally see.

We had a fantastic and successful day and didn't venture further than about six miles from our front door. How superb.

We will return to tackle the second byway near Wye next time. I was just too tired this afternoon and what was more important was finishing feeling good and wanting a little bit more.

We are novices, we admit that. People more experienced off road would probably laugh but we have to start somewhere and we don't mind documenting this journey from the beginning because that's what it's all about. We're not too proud to say we're learning.