Have you ever thought of trying something new but it scared you senseless? And it didn't have to be a big something new, like bungee jumping or sky diving but just a little thing. Well that's what I did whilst on my holiday in the Highlands last month.
Now what I tried wasn't entirely new, because I have done it before in a sense. My boyfriend really wanted to go mountain biking. He used to go mountain biking with his friends, so he's done it plenty of times before. I however, although I've ridden a bike since I was tiny, have never done any kind of off road biking.
I have a fear of falling off my bike, especially on to stones and rocks on a path whilst going fast down a hill. I was excited about trying to go mountain biking but that fear was definitely going to get in the way.
I have a fear of falling off my bike, especially on to stones and rocks on a path whilst going fast down a hill. I was excited about trying to go mountain biking but that fear was definitely going to get in the way.
We obviously had to rent some bikes being on holiday (and I didn't own a bike to take with anyway) which wasn't too bad. It was £15 each for four hours worth of the bikes. That was plenty of time for what we were going to do - a full eight hours on a bike would have killed me.
The original place that we were going to go to was called the Glenlivet Estate. There's a small cafe up there and the hire of bikes. The place opens at ten and by the time that we got there at eleven, all of the bikes had already been hired out for the day. Either they don't have many bikes to begin with or there were a lot of people there that day. (I personally think they didn't have that many bikes to begin with).
The original place that we were going to go to was called the Glenlivet Estate. There's a small cafe up there and the hire of bikes. The place opens at ten and by the time that we got there at eleven, all of the bikes had already been hired out for the day. Either they don't have many bikes to begin with or there were a lot of people there that day. (I personally think they didn't have that many bikes to begin with).
So instead we thought do we just go home or do we try somewhere else? Not being defeated we drove on to Granton on Spey. We weren't sure about anything there as we hadn't looked at it in advance like we had Glenlivet. After a little wander around we discovered the bike hire shop in the town square. They were the same price at £15 for a half day on the bikes - admittedly we had to wait half an hour to get them as they only had big bikes left. Little me with my little height wouldn't have been able to fit on them, so instead it was off for another wander for half an hour to wait; that's much better than just being turned away the second you arrive.
We cycled down to the Anagach woods and cycled around the paths down there. I was terrified of going on the rocks because I just had this image in my head of the wheels slipping going over one, sharply turning and me on the ground. As it turns out I was perfectly fine riding the bike around. After cycling around a couple of times we tried to find our way to the actual mountain bike trails. The trails had their own three jumps and different obstacles; each of the trails had different difficulty levels - needless to say that I stuck to the blue trail which was the easiest one. Connor was quite happy going on the red trail when I was ok on my own, so he could try out the more difficult obstacles.
After four hours I was dead - I mean bike seats aren't exactly the comfiest things in the world. Although I was terrified to begin with, I rather enjoyed myself. And just a couple of weeks later when it was my birthday, Connor bought me my very own bike. It's not a mountain bike, just a regular old bike but I can't wait to get to cycle around everywhere. Living right beside a cycle path has suddenly come in very handy.
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