Thank you! I did wonder about a cross bike, but they seem quite pricey here and I can get a Specialized Myka for rather less. It's easier to avoid mud than hills, I suppose, and I can talk to the bike shop about the best bike for the type of riding I do. I absolutely love getting away from it all, up a track that has just the odd dogwalker or horserider, and my time fellrunning in the Peak District left me with a deep appreciation of the views that you get after slogging through all that mud and up those hills. Also, as a fairly reluctant exerciser, I found that concentrated hill work brings real benefits to muscle tone and cv fitness, and I'm finding the same with cycling. I'm not sure about getting to technical tracks Roadtrip -maybe in the future, but at the moment my riding time is only in 60-90minute chunks and there aren't any trails close enough to fit in with that. It is something that I'm thinking about for the future though.

There was a lovely hill song posted on here, I can't remember who by , but it went "We are climbing, We are climbing, Yes we are Yes we are, This is not a real hill, This is not a real hill, No it's not, No it's not" (to Frere Jacque).

How are you getting on, Kerry?