Hello, Bonjour, Hallo, Hola!

The other thing is also, sadly, a mini-rant. Mostly, when it comes to biking, I am relentlessly positive, enthuse at everyone within a mile radius, drag other people into the 'sport' and say hello to every non mountain biker I ride past because I refuse to be the biker walkers moan and whine about when they get home.

But somethings gone a bit  wrong round 'ere. I'd be really interested to know if it's just round 'ere because I suspect it's not.

I am quite strongly of the opinion that everyone should be allowed to ride a bike, be welcomed at trail centres and given gentle advice when things go a bit wrong. In fact, when we first started riding gently last year, the amount of people who offered smiles, hellos, assistance with mechanicals and generally were totally ace blew me away.

Not any more. Today, 3 people said hello. Groups of 4's passed me and only 1 person said hi. It wasn't quiet at Gisburn this morning, it really wasn't and I've never come across a bunch of more miserable sods in my life. I left wondering why anyone had bothered, to be honest, because there didn't seem to be an awful lot of fun being had, I'll tell you that for nothing. In fact, most people were kind enough to look at me as if I had a spare alien growing out of the side of my head. I got progressively more and more annoyed as I rode the wrong way back down the blue route - yes, I was contraflowing. I was deliberately contraflowing. I suspect some of the horrid stares and glares were down to this - for information, I broke one of my brake levers and I wasn't carrying on the horror that is Gisburn with only one brake. But no, never crossed anyones mind I might be riding the wrong way through choice. Nor did it cross anyones minds that perhaps I might be lost - which I might well have been. No one asked. No one said hello. Just glares. Same in the car park. Same when I was going the right way around. Frankly, by the end of the ride I was starting to wonder if I'd wandered into a parallel universe of mountain biking where only unfriendly people had got on their bikes.

That's before we get to the group of, frankly, idiots riding a slew of hired Treks off down the road from the Dog and Partridge with no helmets, having drunk two pints each, bumped into our car more times than I can count, completely blocked all access to the bike wash in their determination to park all their bikes together and just generally been inconsiderate pack animal idiots. Their progress down the hill consisted of ridng 3 abreast down towards Cocklets and lots of weaving across the road. I await reports of a mass death.

I don't know what's happened but it needs sorting. When we go out on a Thursday night riding around Roddlesworth, everyone to the very last from dog walkers to roadies are friendly and polite and frankly lovely. I hate to say it, but none of the accents I heard today were local. So on the one hand, thank goodness our local sense of politeness and friendliness is not lost, it's people coming from other places who don't know any better who are being.....taciturn. But that's not the way we do it here. We stop and chat. We're friendly. We offer spare bits and pieces and we pick it up and pass it on. We smile even if we've no breath for a Hello. We are quite a loose community but there is, at the very least, an acknowledgement that we are all doing something we love very much and that's why we're out in the wind and the rain. No other reason would get you out of the door on a morning like this one.

So, if you're going to come and ride in East Lancs, pack a smile. Remember a hello. Because a few of us are getting hearty sick of your riding two abreast and not moving over to let us past, your determination to leave your bikes at exits of singletrack and your attitude that you don't need to bother to acknowledge other people because it's all about being too cool or something. We don't do cool here. We do heart, and soul. We do love of riding like few other places can. We don't care if it's blowing a gale or pissing it down, we're still going riding cos we said we would and if we didn't, we'd never ride. We love our mill towns and our hills and we're actually really quite proud of the network of fantastic, absolutely completely fantastic trails which are springing up around us at quite a rate of knots. I think I can safely speak for almost every single East Lancs (and, actually West Yorks) rider when I say, we love where we live because we are absolutely spoilt when it comes to places to ride. We're quite proud and we're quite attached to it.

If you come and take advantage of those trails, we don't ask you to pay. We don't charge you for parking at the moment. But blow me backwards, if we started charging in smiles, half of you lot wouldn't get in. Lighten up, if it's not fun, go home. If you drove however long it took you to get to us, one assumes you wanted to be here. You've wearing the kit from head to toe, you've obviously spent a lot of money on something you seem to love doing. Your bike is shiny and looked after. You look exactly like a mountain biker, but I'm sorry, in my book I didn't meet a lot of mountain bikers today and I don't understand if it's cos I don't look like one but I'm out on the trails anyway, or whether you're all just a little bit ignorant and rude.

I am confused, dear readers. Very very confused. And quietly praying that this is not the start of some horrid trend but a mere abberation due to the weather or how early it was, and indeed that somehow it was me, us, our little group, that something about us meant people didn't say hello. But I've got a sneaky suspicion it might not be that at all.