Playing in the sand

I'm a bit of a geek. So I'm going to use a geek analogy to explain why towpaths have their place in my little biking world, and why I'll tolerate others disdain and admit to it in public.

Geeks tend to use sandpit environments to test things out. These environments can be training copies of databases used to train new users on, they can be staging platforms used to roll out a big change to some software before it goes live, they can be exact replicas of the live software, or they can be vague approximations of them. You get the idea. A safe space to rollout some complicated changes in an environment where, if something goes wrong, things can be rolled back and taken out of the system, without affecting end users who cannot afford the interuption and downtime.

Towpaths are where I learnt to do a number of things on my bike. Not falling into the canal is the obvious one. When I first started riding my bike, I was so wobbly that I couldn't look behind me without veering off in a different direction. You don't tend to need to look behind you when riding on a towpath - it's the obstacles in front of your wheel such as dog droppings and children running around randomly which are more of a danger. Not being able to look behind you on a road, to check whether a car is coming before making a right turn, is a slightly more lethal issue.

They're also where I learnt to ride my tyres down singletrack twice the width of my tyre. They're where I've set myself my own little goals, when the path has left the tarmac behind and become a mass of dried in ruts, where I've tried repeatedly to keep my tyres in the rut and not wander out of them. The penalty for wandering out of it is nothing more than a slighty back wheel skitter, on that towpath. The punishment on a log path the same width would likely be a little more severe.

I also learnt to manual and deal with small step ups. There's a motorway  bridge near the start of where we join it, with some big concrete two by fours spanning the path. There's no avoiding them. So instead of getting off and walking, I tried approaching them in different ways, with no danger of injury, testing different weight balances, testing how much downforce to create, working out how comfortable I was approaching them at slow and high speeds, and gradually getting to the point where getting over them didn't warrant a second thought. Far better to play around there, where the path widens to the allow for the motorway bridge above, then to block a red trail or a local bridleway practising the same thing over and over again and getting in everyones way.

Where I'm going with this, you see, is that towpaths have their place, and they are my sandpit. The first thing I did when I got my new bike was take it for a blast down the towpath. We know it well enough now to know where the dogwalkers and canalboat owners loiter and park, and where they don't. We know which bits its safe to slam along, and which bits are suited to more of a gentle pootle. We know where the mile of compressions is and are using it to learn how not to peddle, instead using the ground beneath us to conserve momentum and deliver us happily to the aforementioned motorway bridge.

If I rode nothing but towpaths, I would be a 2 dimensional rider who didn't step outside of comfort zone.....perhaps. Or perhaps I would be a commuter, using my bike as transport instead of merely a toy. A towpath ride is what you choose to make of it - a safe passageway from point A to point B, or a series of challenges both physical and the ones you create, a sequence of tests and obstacles which are as difficult or as easy as you make them.

Towpaths are my sandpit. They're where I go to play, in safety, where I go to learn the limits of my bike, where I've learnt all the skills which I am now, with hesitancy and tentativeness, taking out into the big wide world and using on our local bridleways. I am less afraid now, of those bridleways, because I am assured that I can deal with what that track might throw at me. I am more familiar with my bike because I have played and pushed and befriended it.

Don't knock the towpaths. They are exactly what you make of them. Just mind the midgies.