Lately it’s been foul round where I ride; the mud has got to that stage where there is absolutely no traction, be it moving forward or struggling to stop sliding sideways. Sometimes I feel like my bike needs a keel.

Our mud is that thick claggy clay based stuff that clogs up like tennis balls of mud around your seat stays and fork arch. The stuff that makes your bike weigh three times as much and reduces your singletrack attacking abilities so much you may as well be a clump footed pigeon.

Luckily though, we don’t have that sandy mud locally- which is amazing to ride as it stays firm and can be shaped nicely, but hates bike drive trains. It makes natures finest grinding paste when mixed with water and wears chains, cassettes, paint jobs and brake pads faster than you want to acknowledge.

On that basis I’ve developed a systematic approach to checking my bike, depending on the amount I ride it in the mud. Although this time things have turned on their head and caught me out, leaving me feeling somewhat humble.

I was having a slip and slide session in my local woodland, enjoying the zero traction and using every bit of counter steering; line picking and aggressive riding I could to get through- so things seemed normal when I went to brake- not a lot happened except a grinding noise. I put this down to the lack of traction and the mud- so carried on trying to tame the old iron horse.

Winching back up again, I decided to take a different route back- down a massive local hill on the road instead. You can see where this is going, right?

Anyhow, I was in a tuck going flat out laughing at the amount of mud spraying off the bike when I approached a crest that I knew traffic backed up on. So I sat up to air brake, which slowed me down to I’d guess about 35mph- judging by the fact I’d run out of gears long ago.

I dragged the brakes, and heard a loud grinding noise. I knew straight away that my pads were down to the metal, and whilst giving myself a mental beating for not noticing earlier, I felt the colour wash out of my face.

I was in a bit of trouble here.

There was traffic too so I pulled out in to the middle of the road and gave the brakes some shit, knowing I had to stop now before the next section. I managed to slow further- but not enough. I was going too fast to abandon ship and using the old foot brake would have sent me out of control.

What felt like five minutes later, although was a matter of seconds, there was a big clunk from the rear brake and all of a sudden the rear wheel locked- I had a bad feeling some real damage had been done but it helped slow me down and I managed to get the bike to the side of the road and use someones upward sloping drive way to lose my speed completely and stop.

I’ve genuninely not been that scared in a long time- if I didn’t stop where I did, I’ve have been doing a good 40+mph when I got to the big roundabout at the bottom, and would have been going straight to A+E in an ambulance.

So what I’m saying is inspect your mountain bike properly- I don’t need another reminder, ever.

Thankfully I just need a new rear disc rotor, pads and hardware- the old pads wore straight through  and snagged on the rotor, ripping them out and twisting the disc.

Lucky- this time…