Mountain Biking in Fontainebleau
“I don’t know about you,” Roddy said, hands shaking slightly as he searched his pockets for the van keys, “but I’ve never prayed so much in all my life.”
We’d just emerged from the treeline into the car park, bikes in hand, with the sound of the traffic from the nearby roundabout ringing in our ears. It was almost dark.
We had set off for what was meant to be an easy, one-hour mountain bike ride in the forest of Fontainebleau just after 2pm.
It was now nearly 7pm.
Neither of us said very much. We just stood there for a minute, slightly dazed, very relieved and, if I’m honest, wondering how on earth we had managed to get ourselves into that situation.
Because we are both fairly experienced mountain bikers. Roddy is a former mountain bike coach, and I’m certainly no stranger to a trail myself.
We really should have known better.
Where it started to go wrong
We’d done our homework. Or at least we thought we had.
We’d picked a trail that matched our ability, checked it out on Strava and found a route that was described as an easy, hour-long loop. Out from the van, through the forest and back across the road to where we’d parked.
Easy.
What we hadn’t accounted for was how differently trails are marked in France compared to the UK. We went in assuming the signage would be familiar.
It wasn’t.
That was probably our first mistake.
Then came all the smaller ones.
I filled a water bottle. Roddy decided he didn’t need one because, after all, we were only going to be out for an hour.
We headed out at 2pm, pretty much the hottest part of the day, in shorts and T-shirts, with no additional layers, snacks, lights or anything else we might need if our little one-hour ride turned into something longer.
Which, of course, it did.
We had our phones, but trying to navigate on Strava while riding a bike, waiting for a signal that kept dropping in and out, wasn’t particularly safe or relaxing.
More than once we’d confidently take a fork in the trail, ride for a few minutes and then realise we were heading completely in the wrong direction.
What should have been a lovely afternoon ride in the sunshine was quietly beginning to turn into something else.
The point of no return
About 45 minutes in, it was pretty obvious we weren’t going to complete the route in an hour.
That’s when Roddy had what turned out to be possibly the best idea of the day.
Breadcrumbs.
Not actual breadcrumbs, but twigs and branches laid across the dusty trail and little arrows scratched into the ground so that, if we needed to turn around, we’d know which way we had come.
It felt slightly ridiculous at the time.
A couple of hours later, it didn’t feel ridiculous at all.
Just past the hour mark, at what we thought was roughly the halfway point, we reached a junction with several possible routes.
We picked one based on what Strava appeared to be telling us.
It turned out to be a black-graded, seriously technical trail.
After about 40 minutes of hard, slow and increasingly uncertain riding ( walking and pushing or carrying the bike at points for me), we finally had to admit it.
We were lost.
Properly lost.
And both our phones were rapidly running out of battery.
Every junction after that became a discussion about which way we thought we should go. With a poor signal, tired legs and increasingly frayed patience, those discussions were becoming a little more tense.
Two and a half hours into our one-hour ride, we eventually decided the sensible thing was to turn around.
At least we knew where we had come from.
Sort of.
The problem was that going back meant heading uphill on a black trail, carrying our bikes over sections we definitely weren’t going to attempt to ride in the opposite direction.
We also knew other riders could still be coming down towards us, so it wasn’t exactly ideal trail etiquette.
But at that point, we didn’t have many other options.
Cold, thirsty and running out of light
Eventually, we made it back to the area of the old fort, which we recognised from earlier in the ride.
There were walkers and other mountain bikers around and, for a moment, seeing other people made us both feel slightly reassured.
We weren’t completely stuck in the middle of nowhere.
But it didn’t really change the fact that we still had to find our way back to the van.
By now it was pushing 5pm.
The light was starting to fade in the forest. Roddy’s phone eventually died completely, and mine was hovering somewhere around 5%.
We’d find one of Roddy’s twig arrows and feel a little flicker of hope, then lose the trail again a few minutes later.
Neither of us had brought an additional layer.
Neither of us had thought we would need one.
It was, after all, only meant to be an hour.
Thank goodness for the Girl Guides
Standing at yet another junction, cold, thirsty and both trying not to let the other one see quite how worried we were becoming, something suddenly clicked.
All those years in the Brownies and Girl Guides were finally about to pay off!
“The sun is setting over there,” I said. “That’s west. And I know we rode away from the west when we set off, so at the very least we need to keep heading in that direction.”
I also knew the van was parked close to a busy roundabout.
So we stopped.
And listened.
We could hear traffic in the distance.
And underneath the traffic, we could hear something else.
Running water.
I remembered that on the way up I had noticed a stream dropping away to our right as the trail climbed. If we could find that stream on our left as we came back down, we would know we were heading in roughly the right direction.
We did.
And we were.
Gradually, landmarks started to reappear.
The sound of the traffic got louder.
Neither of us said very much. I think we were both slightly afraid to believe we had actually found our way back.
And then the trees opened up.
There was the road.
And there was the van.
Exactly where we’d left it.
Four hours later than we’d expected to be back.
So, what did we learn?
Driving back to the campsite that evening, we talked about what had happened.
And, once the relief and adrenaline had worn off, we had to admit that we had been complacent.
Perhaps, in some ways, our experience had actually worked against us.
We are both used to riding mountain bike trails. We know our abilities. We understand trail grading and signage at home. We’re used to heading out for an hour or two and finding our way around.
So we had assumed this would be the same.
We hadn’t stopped to think that we were riding somewhere completely unfamiliar, in another country, where the trail markings and grading were different.
And because it was only an hour, we hadn’t carried enough water, additional layers, snacks, lights or a backup battery.
The irony was that we probably weren’t ever that far away from help.
But if you don’t know how to get that help, the distance doesn’t really matter.
There’s that very well-worn saying:
If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.
It’s one of those phrases we’ve probably all heard a hundred times and nodded along to.
But every so often something happens that reminds you exactly why these sayings exist.
Going back
A few days later, once we’d stopped feeling quite so sheepish about the whole thing, we realised we didn’t want getting lost to be our lasting memory of mountain biking in Fontainebleau.
Because the forest itself was beautiful.
And the riding had the potential to be brilliant.
We just hadn’t given it the respect it deserved.
So we went back.
This time, we went in the morning rather than at 2pm.
We both carried water.
We had snacks, additional layers and a backup battery.
Both phones were fully charged.
We’d researched the French trail markers and grading properly rather than assuming they worked in the same way as the trails we knew at home.
And because I couldn’t find a bike phone mount anywhere nearby, I came up with what I still think was a rather ingenious solution involving a couple of coasters and some zip ties attached to the handlebars.
It wasn’t particularly sophisticated.
But it worked!
This time we could actually see the route as we were riding rather than stopping constantly or attempting to navigate one-handed.
We still took the odd wrong turn, but this time we completed the whole loop in just over an hour.
More importantly, we actually got to enjoy it.
We relaxed. We looked around us. We enjoyed the trails and the incredible forest we were riding through.
It was everything that the first ride should have been.
And I’m really glad we went back.
Because I think there were actually two lessons in our little Fontainebleau adventure.
The obvious one was about preparation.
No adventure is too small, too easy or too familiar to deserve a little bit of respect.
But the second was about not allowing one bad experience to define something.
We could easily have packed the bikes away and decided Fontainebleau wasn’t for us.
Instead, we learnt from what we’d got wrong, went back and tried again.
And maybe that’s the bit I’ll remember most.
Sometimes experience can make us a little complacent. Sometimes we get things wrong. And sometimes the best thing you can do is learn from it, laugh at yourself a little, make a few adjustments and have another go.
Although next time someone tells me a ride is only an hour, I’ll definitely be packing the snacks.
Sunday Inspiration
Favourite Podcast
The pursuit of Outdoor Clues - Tristan Gooley
Tristan Gooley is a natural navigator who teaches us how to find our way using clues from the sun, stars, plants and weather. I was rather chuffed to discover I’d instinctively used some of the very same skills when we got lost in Fontainebleau!
Favourite Quote
Favourite Song
