wind. I failed to mention that on the ridge we were really lucky that the wind was tolerable which mostly it isn,t. On the way down the wind was execrable. At one point I come around a corner doing 25 miles per hour but hit a wall of wind and stop dead going steeply downhill on tarmac and was unable to get going against it. Never had anything like that before. dust.
well you have got to start with rock. It is astonishingly varied, great big chunks of it, I mean on a half Hillside scale. Reds, Grays, greens, yellow all different minerals all different stuff with different properties . the roads are quite often tarmac dirt tarmac. this is because the hillside has collapsed hiding the tarmac most often and as it is the sort of stuff that collapses, when cars go over it it turns to dust. If that is just the right amount it is quite smooth to ride on but mountains don’t know when to stop and it builds up so that you lose your stearing or grind to a halt and bear in mind this stuff is just like a bag of cement powder . when a car comes past you are unwise to breathe for 20 seconds or so ,so if cars or Lorries come past in either direction more often than that you just have to breathe it in. I don’t know why you don’t exhale mud. The human body is a wonderful thing.