FEATURE
42 mbr MARCH 2018
become the perfect adventure buddy in recent
years, but she too has been struggling with that
work/life balance. So when the time came to plan
a new adventure, we decided it didn’t need to
be epic. We realised all we wanted was a trip to
remind us how relaxing it can be to go for a bike
ride. We didn’t need something bigger and harder
than the last ride.
You know, like an actual holiday. The kind
with a comfy bed in a warm cottage to sleep in,
the kind where we ride our bikes as much or
as little as we feel like, the kind where we sit
chatting in cafes and drinking cups of tea, the
kind where we actually don’t try and cram far
too much into far too small an amount of time...
No 3am slogging up mountain sides to watch
the sunrise.
No hike-a-bikes to reach gnarly trails.
No 10-hour days involving epic distances
and huge climbs.
No riding ourselves to physical and mental
exhaustion each day.
It wasn’t supposed to be a challenge. It was
about temporarily stepping off life’s crazy
treadmill and reminding ourselves that
riding bikes can be just, well, riding bikes.
RAILING IT
So we headed south, to the Somerset coast.
Specifically, Exmoor and the Quantocks,
where we’d heard tales of great riding,
excellent cafes, and good weather. A
heritage steam train — the West Somerset
Line — runs right between these two
areas. What better way to fully immerse
ourselves in our go-slow theme than to
use a form of transport hailing from a
pre-digital era to access the trails?!
Freedom-of-the-line tickets would
allow us to hop on and off at will and
explore the trackside trails. We had
researched the area’s best cafes, and
booked to stay in a quaint thatched
cottage in the sleepy medieval village
of Dunster. A simple, but beautiful
plan was forming in our minds. The
rest of the plan was that there was no
plan... we’d get the train, take a map,
and spend a few days seeing what
Dunster station’s
got old-school charmThis old girl’s been
around the block...