Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection by Jo Burt

For more than three decades, a mountain-biking sheep has captured the imaginations of off-roaders up and down the country. Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection is a coffee table-sized round-up of some of the cartoon strips and drawings that first appeared in Mountain Biking UK (MBUK) magazine back in the 1980s, and it's a beautifully crafted collection.

Mint Sauce in his current form took shape after a brief cast of try-outs, coming to life first as a doodle on a sketch pad. Why a sheep, is something its author, Jo Burt, can't really explain.

To say Mint has a cult following is probably fair. Attending one of only two book launches his reticent creator has appeared at so far (this also helps to explain the time it's taken for the first book), I finally understood what I had long suspected about the power and beauty of these cartoons.

I hadn't subscribed to the magazine so only knew of Mint in passing until going in person and buying a copy of the book. Even with high expectations, it startled me. Standing over a table of original drawings being displayed at said event – Burt still does them by hand in acrylic – I realised I was about to cry. This was embarrassing in the middle of a brightly lit bike shop surrounded by strangers. Then I realised the man next to me was in the same boat.

The strip depicts the story arc of a dad gifting a bike to young Mint, the start of a life of adventures. It ends with Mint standing on a South Downs hill – where both Burt and the sheep ride their bikes – with the caption 'thanks for the bike dad'.

The man in question told me, as tears streamed down both of our faces, he had lost his dad a couple of years ago. 'This is my life,' he later told Burt, gesturing at the pile of drawings, spanning more than 30 years. He's not alone: Mint Sauce mirrors our experiences, in the way that cartoons and graphic novels can, not just with a lightness of touch but a real pathos.

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That's not that it's overly worthy. Discovering Mint for the first time, I laughed out loud, too. The trail forecast, in the style of the shipping forecast: 'Woods, variable roots, badgers by evening.' The bikes that sneak out alone at night to tackle the trails their riders couldn't.

What has grown over 30 years then is a world, centred around the South Downs, which is inhabited by Mint and a cast of supporting characters: Mint's girlfriend and her tartan skirt, his best friend, Chipko Andolan, named after a non-violent Indian environmental movement. Then there's the ephemeral characters: Death, who stalks the woodlands 'clearing nettles' or stands before a dangerous drop, scythe at the ready. Woodland pixies up to no good. Then there's Summer, in a flowing dress, whose presence is as fleeting and longed-for as the season, and as unpredictable and enigmatic.

There's an almost thought-for-the-day quality, a philosophy. 'Sometimes you need to make the effort to find happy' and 'what's been lost in all the twattling on about tyres and wheel sizes plus and suspension travel and bar width and dropper posts and carbon and steel and 9, 10, 11 or one is that it's as simple as this', a bike ride. Mint can be earnest and sometimes righteous, but then can't we all?

Beyond the big face and stick legs, those who know and love Mint Sauce will be familiar with Burt's big skies against the rump of the South Downs, and the details that reward your attention. When asked about some runic language on one drawing, which he could have just made up, Burt admits it does mean something, and that at least one person cracked the code.

It harks back to a time when, as Burt puts it, a magazine would come out once a month, there was no internet and so you would read and re-read the same pages, studying the details. And so Mint Sauce rewards your attention. Tiny upside-down writing, song lyrics atop each page. The metaphors: the plane with the black dog on it (Burt's dad was a pilot and the Downs' skies are peppered with them – but it's also a black dog in the Churchillian sense).

There's the outright sad strips, Mint's low moods that sometimes, but not always, are lifted with a bike ride. The fight against mud and rain; relationship difficulties, losing a friend, the struggle against the terrain and your own limitations. And then there's the humour, poking fun at the cycling world, its obsession with parts and performance optimisation. It also pokes fun at Mint himself.

Burt once killed off Mint Sauce, at what he describes as an immature, passive-aggressive rebellion against success and the mention of themed juggling balls as merchandise. He still regrets the clumsy comeback, involving a fish tank. Burt is not one for fuss, he seems like he would rather just be riding his bike, or drawing.

What Burt has achieved with this collection, and with this body of work, is a celebration of the simplicity of a bike ride, and a refusal of the at times macho spirit of cycling – as well as a thing of real beauty. Mint's life, as it were, celebrates the joy of cycling and the connection cycling gives us to special places, to ourselves and our riding companions. Burt says: 'I remember making the decision very early on that Mint should be more about the mountain than the bike.' There's no doubt he's achieved that.

It's the elevation of the bike ride to something almost spiritual, where all of life's kinks are ironed out, where troubles evaporate, mostly, and we can laugh at ourselves and our little obsessions. Where the familiar is reassuring. Where there's a pride in our corner of the world, in this case the South Downs. And where there is magic, if we look for it.

Verdict

Fabulously rendered coffee table collection of three decades of the iconic mountain-biking sheep's adventures. Lovely!