TRF Somerset Group Coast to Coast, October 2006

written by Ian O'Brien

After posting my application form out of "Trail" which is the TRF magazine, I recently had a brilliant but wet weekend riding some fantastic lanes in Somerset and Devon. The ride started and finished each day from a pub in a village called Hatch Beauchamp which is about 10 miles from Taunton. There were about 30 riders split into small groups, some of which headed south towards Lyme Regis/Sidmouth area whilst the group I was in headed north over Exmoor towards Minehead on the Saturday and then did the other coast on Sunday to the beach at Beer.

Everyone could choose which group they wanted to ride with depending on whether you you wanted easy or technical routes. I went for the harder routes and there was every sort of of lane imaginable with some real "stoppers" which required a team effort to get up together with having to manhandle bikes over fallen trees-great fun. There were some wonderful old sunken lanes, many of which were quite badly overgrown and according to the guide, impenetrable in summer.

During the weekend I clocked up over 200 miles on the bike and I would say at least half of that was off the black stuff. There was a purpose to the event this year. The fee for the cost of the weekend (£50) was being used to fight to keep lanes open. The Somerset group had claimed a number of lanes before the NERC cut off date and asked if any riders that had ridden these previously to provide evidence. They produced a DVD identifying the lanes in question together with user evidence forms on the disk so if anyone may have ridden in the area and may be able to help, please get in touch and I'll send a copy of the DVD.