YOUR RIDES
MY FAVOURITE RIDE CHEDDAR GORGE LOOP
RiDE reader Rich Bentham takes us on a trip through some of the best bits of the Mendips
RiDE READER RICH BENTHAM
Rich, 57, flogs Mercedes cars for a living but spends his downtime on two wheels. He’s been riding since his teens, starting on a Honda SS50, and he currently rides a new KTM 790 Duke, which replaced a Kawasaki Z900 (“written off in Spain by a car hitting me”). He lives in Bristol and covers about 12,000 miles a year for fun, commuting, on trackdays, touring, and as an IAM observer and blood biker.
RICH IS FROM Bristol, so it’s a no ‐brainer to meet at the Fowlers dealership and grab a coffee in the excellent Harry’s Cafe upstairs. “Got a lock? Good – use it. Theft is rife round here.”
The locks do their job, and we set off. Bristol’s a funny place – parts are lovely, with a nice university town vibe, but so much is run ‐down and ugly, and the graffiti is awful. But at least Bristol knows when to stop – and as we pootle along Ashton bypass, stretching legs and adjusting tackle, we’re abruptly out of the urban environment and into trees, fields and villages. A left turn at Brockley Combe and the fun begins.
The ride
As soon as we turn left we’re into the dappled light and shade of a tunnel of trees running through tangled woodland
– asurprise, because it’s signposted to the airport and I was expecting a bigger road (turns out the usual way into the airport is from the A38 Bristol-Bridgwater road).
“It’s tight and twisty here,” says Rich. “Usually pretty quick – harum ‐scarum all the way past the airport entrance. You’ve got to be careful, though – it doesn’t get much sun under the trees so you have to watch for damp patches and gravel.” He’s right – even on this sunny late morning it’s a bit damp from early mist, and several corner apexes feature big, slippy manhole covers.
After a nice run through the early part of this section, we get stuck behind a slow ‐moving bus – an airport sprinter that’s not sprinting anywhere. It pulls into the airport and the road widens as we pass the end of the runway, with double ‐red lines presumably warning rubbernecking plane spotters not to clog up the carriageway.
