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John and Terry were the only riders out on a beautiful morning (at last, Spring may be here?) and decided to keep it local as the Gollum had a bit of work to do to prepare for the Cycle Speedway Reunion the following night (see here).

We offloaded the now tired Awol and the neglected Cuda and headed up the hill to the farm and the top of the rooty singletrack. This would be the first time for a year when it would be a dry trail. We've been largely avoiding Chopwell because of it's inability to cope with wet weather, but it should be good now until the Autumn, so go have a look. We cruised down here fairly gently, not knowing what to expect from the usual bog half way down. Sure enough there were still puddles of slush here but nothing insurmountable. This is much nicer in the dry, the roots being a lot more predictable and ignorable so only fear can slow you on this section now. It's a great warm up for the rest of the trails. However, today in this brilliant morning sunshine and the trees keeping the wind out, a warm-up was our last requirement.

Reaching the bottom without incident we returned to the car to collect the Gollycam, then set off for the Four Stages of singletrack. When we arrived at the top we met what seemed to be a guided tour being undertaken by a group of 8 or 9 riders on a mixture of XC and freeride bikes, a few wearing full face lids. We let them clear section one and took off after them. Unbelievably, the whole route was almost bone dry, and there wasn't much pedalling required to get all the way down. Just after entering stage three we passed most of the group in front as two or three had bitten the dust, we tried not to laugh as we steamed past. There's been some changes down here, including the dismantling of the biggest take-off ramp, but we don't know who by, and we've seen deliberate vandalism here before. Amongst the local bikers, the walkers don't have much of a reputation and are suspected of some of the trail wrecking.

After the Awol had squeaked and squealed it's way down the final run, and we'd had a moment to recover, we were once again behind the group, and caught them a few minutes later after pushing up the far side of the forest. From there we jumped in front and sped down the now dry, but still quite tricky trail that runs down a thin lip on the edge of the little valley which ends at the almost vertical drops near the river. We caught our breath again here and headed back up towards the Eagle, then past the Bombhole and back to the car again, this time to lose armour and extra clothing. It was time to see whether the Downhill had recovered from the Winter Blues.

That was quickly answered as we emerged from the trees off the forest drive. The whole trail that lies in the top field under the electricity pylon has been totally transformed into a mini Seven Stanes type man-made roller coaster. We jumped on it but found it very tricky as the new stone shrapnel surface has not yet had time to bed down. It's going to be superb when it does. Quite a few changes in direction and features mean it covers a bit more ground now, mainly at the bottom of the field. From there, the singletrack into the trees looked more like it always did, but tell-tale dribbles of gravel and stone chippings gave the game away and, sure enough, when we arrived at the sharp right turn to go over the first bridge, the trail had been completely altered in an obvious effort to make it all-weather and also a good bit faster. After the short wooden board snaking section we were forced to slow to a halt when we came across a working party from the North East Freeriders, busily dragging stone chippings along a stretch of the trail. We stopped for a natter to catch up with the latest news. And it's all good for MTBers in Chopwell. The lads have won a decent sized grant and are busy extending and improving. It didn't take much persuasion for us to be talked into helping out in a fortnight's time. So, for the first time, MidAirCrisis formally announces a ride-free Sunday so we can go and do our bit in our local hotspot.

As well as updating us on their plans, the grafters also described what they've done on the lower end of the forest where there used to be a fairly high North Shore section a few hundred metres long. This has now been totally traqnsformed into a swoopy, bermy, jumpy miniaturisation of Glentress Red Route - and when it finally beds down - wow! We were quite willing to stay out of the way, but they almost insisted we give it a whirl, in fact as many whirls as we fancied! So we gave it two goes and discovered what an excellent little playground this will be. If it wasn't for the first fireroad breaking the run two thirds of the way down, the whole drop from the pylon would be quite amazing. And it'll get better now as time goes on. As soon as we'd taken some pix we called it a day and were home for 2.00pm after a very pleasant little blast.

here's a 4MB vid of John on the new bottom berms

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