The bike started first kick, that was the easy part. Sunday morning; beautiful day for a little ride in the country. The only problem was that the bike in question was an aging Yamaha XT500 and the countryside in question was more accurately untarmaced tracks of quagmire laughingly referred to as Green Lanes.
Undaunted and with stout heart I rode up to a South Mimms McDonalds car park and joined the few other brave souls who were to be my companions for the day. This was the Hertfordshire branch of the TRF, the Trail Riders` Fellowship). I was immediately struck by the professional looking bikes on display ; bikes with the sort of ground clearance usually associated with bridges favoured by bungee jumpers.
I looked again at my `bike, its tyres looked back at me, they had clearly seen the brutishly knobbly rubber that covered their neighbours` rims and they seemed to be asking me what I had gotten them into. I now realised that I was seriously out of my league and the sooner I got out of here the better. Casually I threw a leg over my bike, no one would notice me depart - I was sure , and gently kicked the motor into life.
However, this caused a sudden extinguishing of cigarettes and final slurping of McDonald`s coffee. My own bike`s bronchial wheezing was drowned out by the TREEENG-DING DING DING DING of twelve rabid fireballs. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the group , driving out of the car-park , feeling like a pig being forced into an abbattoir. After a brief but pleasant ride around a couple of roundabouts we turned off the road onto what to me looked like a narrow, overgrown footpath. Like a pack of greyhounds those ahead of me began to leap ahead. Those behind began to nip at my back wheel as I tried to keep my `bike `s front wheel in a roughly straight line. The ground was a little stoney and certainly uneven ;but even I knew it was a relatively easy lane. Branches and brambles on either side tried to grab at the handlebars and fight with me for control of the front end, my forearms were aching and my visor was fogged up but I daren`t let go of my grip to flip it up.
Somehow I had managed to catch up with the lead riders, brake lights shone through the condensation, and as I eased the bike to a halt I saw the reason for the mass halt. Greyhound number one was picking up his bike, his head turned round to the rest of us sheepishly grinning as he was harangued ,albeit good- naturedly, by the others. I may not have been the fastest down this lane, but I hadn`t dropped my bike either.

I know this is a little short, I keep meaning to add to it, but I think the ` muse` has deserted me!