We Do Adventure

One man's walk in the park is another man's first off-road riding experience. In fact I took five people out on bikes on Saturday afternoon. For all of them it was their first time riding mountain bikes on a mountain. (Our ride topped out at about 3500ft.) The opportunity arose because this weekend was Novi Most's bi-annual team retreat, happening this time at a ski-centre hotel we visited in the summer when we were taking young people from Jajce mountain biking. I knew the hotel rents reasonable bikes out at reasonable prices and that the surrounding countryside offers a reasonably easy introduction to off-road riding. At least that's the way I told it. I wasn't wrong on the bikes or the value-for-money rental but easiness is, of course, a matter of opinion. Many things in life become easier with experience and while I may have lost a little in fitness over the years I can still claim to be an experienced cyclist. I don't attack hills like I used to...

If I say ‘eating problems’ you’re probably already thinking about not-eating or over-eating or allergies. My problem, if that’s what it really is, is none of the above. It is that I have a bad habit of scoffing my food too quickly. I’ll often catch myself and make some annoyed-sounding noise through an unfinished mouthful. Tonight, as we had dinner with a friend who’s about to embark on a short trip to Scotland, I managed to pace myself. Slightly different from this morning when I bit of more than I could chew – although, admittedly, only metaphorically. It was a fine morning for mountain biking and I set my sights on the somewhere near the top of one of the mountains around Mostar. As I’ve yet to find a detailed local road map I consulted Google maps to check my options. Even here you have to use the satellite view as they’ve only mapped the one big road through Mostar. There is, however, enough zoom on their images for confident route planning. The terrain view told me I was planning...