UK Adventure: Bikepacking in Exmoor

When UK lockdown lifts, but travel restrictions remain complex, what else is there to do? Staycation bikepacking adventure, of course.

As we huddled in the doorway of a disused shop sheltering from an icy sea wind, we portioned out the remains of half a dry baguette, a packet of wafer thin ham and half a block of cheese. The village we were passing through had failed to provide any means of sustenance. We were cold, hungry, sleep deprived, and couldn’t be happier.

It was Easter weekend and lockdown restrictions had just eased. Spending three months working from home and locked down in a trail-free city like Swindon is not the most pleasant of experiences for a sociable mountain biker, as I’m sure many of you know by now. I missed travelling, exploring, chatting with friends, and above all I longed for greenery. A plan was hatched to break out of lockdown in style, achieving everything I had forgone in one fell swoop.

We had big dreams to do the Welsh Coast to Coast or something around the Lake District, however; we were a bit out of practice and didn’t want to be too far from home if the country went back into lockdown. Exmoor was less than two hours from home and it provided a close means of escapism knowing that it can get pretty remote in the depths of the moors. We chose a route that circumnavigated the National Park in the hope that we would feel away from it all, but could still pass through villages for supplies if needed. Post-lockdown, this didn’t actually work out too well. 

Arriving in Taunton, we dragged our bikes out of the van into a bustling city full of angry drivers and an unreasonable amount of roadworks. We parked up amidst noise and bustle, finished our coffee and croissants, and had a few nervous wees in the hedge. We tentatively eyed up each other’s set-up and became immediately insecure about our own. We’d all chosen completely different bikes and bags, despite the weeks of chat on the “Going Nowhere” WhatsApp group. 

Ollie had chosen the fly-weight gravel stead with no cooking facilities. He would do well on the climbs, but Co-op stops were essential; something he would later regret.  Rob chose the hardtail with pretty much every possible bag position utilised, including a kettle on the underside of his down tube. His dropper post gave him an edge on the descents, but his cooking equipment would later be subject to a vicious attack from a bridalway rock. I felt smug with my light full-suspension Scalpel, but being a size x-small meant that I had all the frame space of a night-clubber’s handbag in the centre and I needed to carry my water on my back instead of in bottles. This would be my biggest undoing.

As the bustle of Taunton melted away, the undulating country roads were a good warm-up for what was to come. Each pedal stroke brought us further away from noise, work, life and pandemic woes. The greenery I had craved for so long was slowly bleeding into my vision and the sun was strong enough for me to have my first short sleeve riding day of the year. Of course, it was bank holiday, so this didn’t last. 

After about ten miles on the road, we passed through the stone walled car park at the top of Triscombe downhill tracks. It was busy with dog-walkers and riders sat on the edge of their car boots pulling knee pads on. Being enduro riders the temptation to do at least one track was strong and we debated how bad it could really be on a laden bike. We flirted with a modest bit of singletrack along the side of the road, nearly lost half our luggage and got covered in mud. It was funny for a few seconds, but then we slowly returned to the road one-by-one with tails between our legs and sensible mode was reengaged. 

A few snack bars later we were officially on The Quantocks. The season treated us to that typical Quantocks aesthetic, with bright yellow gauze bushes contrasting again a clear blue sky. The wind was getting a bit brisk for short sleeves, but it felt like a holiday. Of course, it was a holiday, and the first I’d had in way over a year. Like a true Brit I kept my short sleeves out until my goose bumps started to go a little blue and then out came the jacket. 

The Quantocks treated us to rough bridalways and stereotypically English views of patchwork fields and perfectly sculpted green hills. I had taken about 10,000 photos by this stage, most of which were of my friends and I pulling stupid faces. Honestly, being in the company of others was a revelation at this stage. I was snapping laughter and silliness like I was scared it would run out. 

The photos would prove useful later for this article, as the remains of day one went by in a bit of a blur. Our route traversed from Holford to Dunster and seemingly hit every hill in sight like it was going out of fashion. The descent down from Croydon Hill would be the last time I smiled that day. The north-facing hill held a glorious view of the sea with Minehead in the distance. The views were bright turquoise and almost Mediterranean. Rob insisted that seeing as we could see Minehead we might as well do “just one more descent” to get there. It wasn’t one more descent. Nor was it one more climb.

We pushed on passed spot after spot for good camping with views. We pushed up steep hills and wobbled wearily down fast fireroads. My bike was barely liftable and we had already completed 70km and over 2,000m of climbing; my biggest ride in over a year by nearly double. I leaned my bike up against some trees on a wooded climb with a stunning backdrop in the distance and began snapping it from different angles. I told myself the content was needed, but really, the rest was.

Minehead was a welcome sight for a city. We rode into a local shop and came out with way too many beers and Pringles; a lesson in not buying food when hungry. Olly took most of the weight in his fold-out backpack while Rob used toe-straps to fix a baguette to his top tube. We meandered around the coast as the sun set, looking for a prime camping spot. The sky faded from blue to yellow, mimicking the colours we had seen in the fields earlier that day. I mustered enough energy to pull my camera out my bag for a couple of snaps of the boys disappearing into the horizon and promised myself that I’d enjoy the moment later.

The next morning we woke up in a small patch of woodland on a cliff somewhere outside of Minehead. It was closer to civilisation than we had hoped, but we were in desperate need of food and sleep as the light slipped through our fingers. The boys looked like sleepy little caterpillars in their bivvies, dwarfed by my Big Agnes, which resembled something more like a toilet tent. It would later be renamed “The Turdis” for it’s loo-like appearance, but it’s ability to hold a surprising amount of gear inside. 

I woke up feeling pretty chilly considering I fell as sleep in all of my clothes, down jacket included, hugging a hot Firepot ready-meal. Trees do provide a good deal of warmth on a cold night, but the morning was bitter in the shade so we made a group decision to ride until it got sunnier and warmer so we could stop for food then. It did not get sunny or warm, but we stopped to hug some coffee and eat more Firepot ready-meals anyway. It was here that the meals were christened “Fire-butt” for reasons I doubt you would like me to go into. 

Day two’s highlight would be cycling up Dunkery Beacon… in the snow. Yep, it was April and it was snowing. The only saving grace to weather like that is that I was able to wear every item of clothing, including my down jacket, without fear of it getting wet for the rest of the trip. In fact, the down jacket didn’t really come off from the first night to the final arrival. 

The descent from Dunkery was probably the first descent into madness. Conversation became either sparse or weird. Fingers were becoming numb and food was disappearing at an alarming rate. We rolled into Porlock, from 519m down to sea-level, cold and famished, shouting out pub dishes we were thinking of ordering like excitable school children. We settled on the notion of a good old fashioned fish ’n’ chip meal, seeing as we were on the beach and technically on holiday, but instead we were greeted with “closed” signs at every door. The pandemic had not been kind to the village. It was here that we sought shelter in a disused shop doorway and rationed out scraps of cheese and ham.

Part-full on bike packing tapas, we skirted around the remaining edge of the coast against the most brutal of winds. Gusts were easily 60mph at their strongest and enough to blown even our heaviest bike like a sail in the air if you lifted it off the ground. I vaguely remember hiding behind a wall for shelter thinking it would all go away, but it didn’t. The noise in my ears was unbearable and the only time I got my camera out for the next few hours was when we encountered an inquisitive lamb that seemed to recognise the sent of Rob’s merino socks. 

We were far from darkness, but somewhere in the depths of the Exmoor valley, as the bike ride finally became as remote as I’d hoped for, something inside of me broke. The engine shut down and all I wanted to do was to sit down next a stream and perhaps have a little cry. I was persuaded to march on to a sheltered wall up ahead where we pitched our sleeping gear in a hail storm and told each other this would be funny in a few days time. I poured hot water into another ominous-looking Fire-Butt and placed it between my feet to warm them up. It had been a 55km day with over 1,730m of climbing and for some reason (severe bonking I suspect) I hated everything and my friends were to blame for my anger. I ate in silence and went to sleep before the sun went down, just so I didn’t have to be awake and angry anymore.

The next morning I felt much better about my situation, especially knowing it would end that day. I wish I could report victorious sunrises, with beams of golden light slowly rousing us and birdsong as our only alarm. Sadly, it was quite the British bank holiday affair with the sky turning from dark grey to light grey as the sound of my companions shivering in their bivvies broke the dawn silence. 

The day would be filled with bike packing bingo, ticking a river crossing off the list. I was chuffed to finally use the flip-flops I’d optimistically brought along, but the excitement later got the better of me when the route took us the scenic way (all the way) around a lake for some bonus kilometres. In protest, my legs failed to push the pedals hard enough to get up a small hill and I toppled to one side and into some brambles to achieve the world’s slowest, most pathetic crash ever. I used the opportunity to get a bit of much needed rest, then had a strong word with myself and went on about my business.

In my mind we had done most of the work on day one and two, so I expected day three to be over with pretty quickly, but in fact we had another 70km day ahead of us with a minimum of 1,300m to climb. Day three didn’t have any 500m hills to tackle, but it did have a lot of little spikes, like a reoccurring joke throughout the whole day. In the final hour, if Rob told me one more time that we were climbing the last hill, i might have lept from my moving bicycle and tackled him to the floor for a good kicking. Luckily for him, I had bonked so hard that I was far enough back to not hear his bike-packing banter. Instead I used the mere weight of my feet to turn the pedals while I dreamed about McDonald’s. 

We turned onto a busy road and suddenly the finish flag appeared on my Garmin. Forgetting how far the map was zoomed out, I sudden found a rush of energy and sped up to the boys. “Ay up, what’s going on here then?”, Oli asked me. To which I replied “the end is nye!!” and we proceeded to chain-gang the final five or so miles back to the van. It was probably the longest five miles I have ever ridden, but still, that van might as well have been the Champs Elysee at the end of the Tour de France for how emotional it was to see the thing in sight. It was done. We’d finished. 

On the drive home we discussed our next adventure. We were clearly giddy from achievement dopamines. Later that night I flicked back through photos and videos on my phone with a massive smile on my face. Gone were all the failings. Gone were all the wrong turns and forgotten food stops. Gone were COVID19 woes and the niggling desire to travel. Gone was every grumpy emotion or negativity. All that was left were laughable memories and in-jokes among my fellow adventurers, who are closer than ever before. Of everything we lacked on our trip, at that moment in time we found exactly what we needed.