Dirt & Druids: Taking on the gravelicious Enve Stone Circle

For once, nothing happened.

The last few gravel events and big rides that we’ve been on have had something happen, be that a mechanical issue or the weather having ideas, or both... but there’s always been an 'incident'. And a little muttered swear, and while it makes for great anecdotes later it does get a little weary and it would be lovely just to go for a nice ride. 

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At the Enve Stone Circle nothing happened, and judging by those around us I think we were some of very few that got away with it.

The bar is set early by our friend Elaine, who’s forgotten her cycling shoes, so there’s a panic WhatsApp to see if we have spares, or some flat pedals, which we don’t. A hunt around for something useful proves fruitless, but her ride companion just happens to have some of those flat pedal inserts that clip into one side of SPD pedals so you can pootle to the shops in your trainers, so that’s her challenge raised for tomorrow’s ride. 

We’ve missed the Friday night hill climb, but we see pictures of people doing it in tutus so it must have been fun. We arrive with just enough time to park the van in the field in the lee of Old Sarum just north of Salisbury, eat a take-away kebab on the tailgate and sign on for the Historic ride.

For the second edition of the Stone Circle gravel sportive there are three rides to chose from: the 220km Monumental, the 155km Historic and the 55km Festival. We've chosen the middle one, which feels like the correct ratio of ride length to nice day out on the bike.

The 220km Monumental riders have an early alarm as their start is from 0430 to 0530. All riders are set off in small batches as the first section of the ride is 500 metres of narrow path between the hedges, that leads to a road crossing that could incite mayhem if there was a mass start, so it keeps things civil and riders are politely strung out along the trails.

There’s an hour slot for each distance’s start, which also relieves getting to the start stress and allows time in the coffee queue if needed, or an extra hour in bed if you’re happy to clip in at the last minute.

Our Historic ride start waves are at an only just more civil 0630 to 0730. Lined up with an ancient hill fort behind us and the sun just above the horizon in our faces feels like a special way to begin the day. Within a couple of kilometres there’s already a rider walking the other way with a terminal puncture, so that’s their day over unless they’re heading back to camp to get things fixed (that’s one more thing that didn’t happen to us). Although I am wilfully rolling the dice as I’ve mounted some brand new and temperamental untested tyres for the day, so I’m expecting things to go tuttingly wrong at any moment. 

The first part of the route heads north towards Salisbury Plain on easy miles to ease the legs across fields, down concrete paths and along quiet country roads, all taking the chance to be unashamedly bucolic on this rare sunny summer’s day. It can do this all ride if it likes thank you.

The first real test of the day is a long steady climb after about 10km up towards Stonehenge, and I remember coming up this way on my road bike thanks to a “It Looked Fine On The Map” routing error whilst I was doing my Parallels ride a few years back. It’s characterised by deep chalk ruts effectively hidden by long grass that catches out more than a few people. We live in similar country and we’re used to this wheel and pedal catching terrain, but others catch the sides of the ruts, stumble, dab and crash over the bars.

In a short space of time we see four people lying in the grass, some are just winded, others are bad enough to require someone standing next to them making a phone call. That’s a few more things that didn’t happen to us today.

The beauty of this apparently treacherous path is that you approach Stonehenge from an angle most people will never experience, perpendicular to the A303, so the stones gentle rise above you on the horizon. The magic is abruptly broken by the main road, a fence and a security guard, but for a few moments you get an inkling of an idea what the place might have been like a few thousand years ago.

There’s a small bit of irony in that we can’t actually ride past the world’s most famous stone circle on the Enve Stone Circle ride, but have to get off and walk for a couple of hundred metres instead. But that’s fine as organisers Hotchillee have done a deal meaning we can get as close to the stones as possible without having to pay to get in, and it gives everyone a chance for photos and suchlike. This early in the morning with no gaggle of tourists getting in the way Stonehenge does look pretty special, although the sarsens are always smaller than you’d expect.

Remounting we turn right and head past all the parked up hippy buses and onto the Plain.

Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau that covers about 300 square miles, and to have so much empty space in the usually crowded and busy south of England is a rare joy. A large factor facilitating this is that a lot of it is owned by the Ministry of Defence and is used as a military training area; something that doesn’t always play well with roads, houses, supermarkets and golf courses, but it does mean there are miles and miles of empty chalk grassland and wide access roads.

The long stretches of gravel across the Plain are the stuff of adverts and an absolute treat. We circumnavigate a large portion of the northern edge, red flags keeping us from heading into the interior. It helps that the sun is shining and there is little wind, because with a bit of drizzle or a naggy headwind this would be a different experience. Here and now it’s absolutely perfect and what Gravel biking with a capital G should be like, so we make the most of it while the going is easy and our speed is swift and flowy.

To keep us on our toes, there is a cheeky little descent (with corresponding climb out the other side) that hides a couple of significant drops in it that looks perfect to catch riders out, something that the organisers have thought about because there’s a medic waiting patiently at the bottom. Nothing happened to us going down here and we didn’t crash.

The first feed station is at 67km at the White Horse car park on top of Bratton Camp, and if we peered over the edge we’d see that equine chalk figure; but our gaze is distracted by the snacks. There’s bananas and slices of melon and cake and cookies and a large platter of cashew nuts, which seems like a rash idea as I reckon I can recoup the entrance fee in just a few sizeable handfuls and some little peanut butter filled pretzel things which are the absolute hit of the day.

While the food table is being ransacked, the on-site mechanic is having a busy time dealing with tyres, gears, slipping seat posts and oiling chains made dry by the miles of gravel dust.

Tummies filled, there’s a long long descent off the Plain as the route heads into Warminster, and the nature of the ride changes from hero gravel to the more UK standard gravel of bridleways, old railway lines, quiet lanes, broken roads, twiddly bits through woodland and lengthy bumpy edges of fields. There are some extended sections through the trees here as we skirt all the way around the edge of the Longleat Centre Parcs, happy with our life choices that we’re this side of the fence. As we’re about halfway round now some of the people around us are feeling it.

There are 1,800 metres or so of ascent in the Historic route, so it’s on the climby side and quite a lot of them are of the endless draggy type that anyone who has ridden any type of downland will be familiar with. And it’s tiring.  The ride undulates through seemingly endless forest that you might not expect to see the acreage of in the south of England, and in a complete contrast to the openness of the Plain it provides pleasing shade from the unfamiliar sun. 

The group of riders we’re toing and froing with have all gone a bit quiet, which is a sure sign that things have got a bit hard. One of them quietly asks is if there’s far to go, whilst another later thanks us for the company as having wheels to follow made it easier for them.

The second feed stop at Alfred’s Tower comes at just the right time for a lot of people, although it’s preceded by a short road hill that’s unnecessarily steep when you've got 100km in the legs. It’s where our ride and the 220km Monumental route converge, and it’s a busy stop littered with bikes and bodies. If you’re specific about your nutrition needs or don’t think the feed stations will have enough cashew nuts, there’s the option to have a 'bonk bag' of your own ferried to be waiting for you here.

Hiding in the corner by the bins is a rider with a broken bike and torn clothes. His ride is finished because his front wheel has snapped in half as a result of a deer leaping out of the undergrowth and crashing into him. While his bike has significant damage, he’s fine and he definitely wins the anecdote of the day. We didn’t get attacked by wildlife today. 

After passing through postcard-perfect, take-your-granny-for-a-nice-lunch Stourhead, the route returns to more open downland again, where a silly routing error sees a group of us on the wrong side of a hedge. There’s an awkward bike lift and fumble over a nettle-infested barbed wire fence, and judging by the trample marks we’re not the first to have made that mistake. Then, there’s a comedy scene where a bunch of London riders are confused by a pair of gates and clamber over them rather than work out the simple logic problem of opening them both.

In every ride there’s the one hill that takes it out of your legs more than it deserves to, and the climb up Summerslade Down is it on the Stone Circle. It starts off steep enough to have most walking from the gate, whilst others give it a good old grunty pedal up, and then it just levels off to drag up the longest field in the world. By the looks on some riders faces it’s been quite the drain on energy levels.

Thankfully it’s largely downhill to the final feed stop at 137km in Fonthill Bishop village hall, and it’s clear that the ride has taken its toll. But as well as the usual snacks they have a choice of filled rolls to get you across the final stretch.

As we leave we pass a rider who has the hunched stem-staring, feeble forward motion of someone who’s totally cooked. He looks skinny fit with a fancy bike and he’s wearing the ticklist of fast clothes, and I’m going to hazard a guess that he was suckered into going too fast on the initial gravel section and has comprehensively blown over the following unrelenting undulating terrain. As we weave around him I point to my back wheel, and he latches on to be dragged up the long steady road climb out of the village. That’s another thing that hasn’t happened to us, we didn’t go piff. Thank you cashews. 

We leave him behind as we climb up the Ox Drove, and we find ourselves in a small group that seems to want to make time as we drop out of Grovely Wood and swoop down the valley on tarmac to have to climb back out the valley again. One of them is happy to sit on the front and drag us all to the top (thanks for that, but you really do need that creaking bottom bracket sorting out) and then we scream down the other side in close formation before excitement gets the better of the lead rider... who doesn’t have a working GPS, and they miss a crucial turning. 

The finish is a rarity in that it’s not a mess of jiggly paths to make up the distance, but something that makes it all feel worthwhile and with a reward for your efforts, as you can see Old Sarum loom up ahead of you with a couple of kilometres to go. It’s a cruise back across the fields we came down earlier in the day and a climb through the ramparts into the hill fort, where a free Komoot cup of Stohk beer is waiting for every rider that crosses the line. To help fill empty legs there’s a choice of pizza, burgers, fish & chips and ice cream to choose from, or a mix of any of those.

Thankfully the weather is still on our side, so it’s easy to flop out on the grass as tunes waft over us from the DJ. We watch riders trickle in, in various states of dustiness and tiredness, and catch up with tales from the trail. There are plenty of stories of slashed tyres, broken and bent bits and crashes, and the friend who lent Elaine those flat pedal inserts points out her half self-extracted SPD cleat bolt. None of these things happened to us, we had a nice day on the bike without a single incident. It was lovely, I can recommend it.

Hotchillee Events