Well, we met a great bunch of lads, six of them, from Morpeth MTB Club on Sunday 5th March at Alwinton National Park car park for a sweet little loop around some little Northumbrian hilltops.

Not.

At the start, Ride Leader Dave (very much a man like our own Dave, font of all map knowledge) told me the ride was about 18 or 19 miles. Sitting here at home I don't know quite what to believe as the computer on my new ReCoil (I've re-christened it from Coiler Soopah!) claims 24 miles while my trusty Garmin GPS wants me to accept its conclusion of 14.3. If this was only 14.3 miles I'm a downhill race icon. It felt more like another 45 miler like last weekend's river trek as the bones gradually stiffened up. It could be that the GPS has gaps in its track because I had it dangling on my chest upside down the whole time, and we were under tree cover a few times. I'll try drawing it on Memory Map to find out for sure. Perhaps it was the sheer number and length of climbs that made it seem so long, or I still haven't recovered from the previous ride.

Here's the elevation profile for the route above (note - Alwinton village is just off the map below Clennellstreet.)

Climb was from 500 feet to 1760 feet at highest point.

There was a fair collection of machinery out, a mix of hardtails and short and long sussers, including in the flesh, a rare and beautiful polished Santa Cruz Nomad. When I get to know everyone's names I'll tell you whos got what. We kicked off about 11.10am after a natter and immediately jumped onto the end of the infamous Clennellstreet. This went straight up skywards to get the blood pumping early, and force a bit of bicycle walking very early on. It was pretty cool but we were all dressed for the weather, and there were layers being discarded at the ride progressed. As the track levelled out, we were riding into a valley between steeply-rising hills on both sides and ahead, this could have been Canada, no?

 If you like peace, get yourself out here - fabulous scenery, if a little stark, fantastic fresh air and a sense of being away from the rats and their race for a while. John was surprised at just how much up and down there was, or how much up and up, obviously used to doing the hard bit and getting the reward going down. This loop is a little different with most of it hard work. However, our first decent stretch of fast downward action resulted in the Gollum sliding off at high speed on an ice-covered bend only to be run into by a closely following Johnny! Ouch! Anyway, we couldn't show any obvious pain as we were in the company of strangers, but they made us feel really at home with their shrieks of laughter as we hit the deck in formation. Cheers, lads. Dave

Up, up, on and up we went. We went into the trees of Kidland Forest somewhere up there and it was dark and eerie, so quiet you could hear a squirrel fart. (I was following Dave at the time, and I think it was a squirrel). Half way round, and just in time to miss a hard push up in 2 or 3 inches of snow, one of the party had to turn back to get finished for 2pm. Here's Dave giving him directions.

Dave screams down a bridleway and stays aboard on the ice

We stopped for lunch at Dave's behest somewhere near a farm in a sheltered spot next to a half frozen stream then it was back to work

Right men, it's down from here!

I'll add to this during the week - check back to be bored some more.

Got a few tame video shots to add here - try later.

 

 Keep watching and if you fancy a ride out with us, drop us a line here: bailout@midaircrisis.org.uk