What a day! As you may have imagined if you've followed the story of Jason's Batchelor Bash on the boat to Amsterdam 13th-15th may 2005, there was no way he was going to make today's ride in aid of Macmillan Cancer Relief at Hamsterley Forest. Although the MidAirCrisis team back at HQ in Newcastle tried raising him by text, phone and MidAirCrisis-Message at 08:00 and 08:30, there was only voice mail response, and even that was hiccupping and speaking in a slurred tongue.

That left John and Terry to fly over to Gateshead to collect Michael and complete the threesome making the trip. Young David had already changed his mind about going as Newcastle were hosting Chelsea and he has a season ticket. What a choice, eh?

Off we sped, arriving right on the dot at 10:00, the scheduled start time. This was slightly delayed due to the impressive turnout, getting underway about 10:10.    We chose the longer of the three routes, naturally, expecting not an easy ride but a pleasant one. Didn't see it that way after walking up the first few fireroad sections though! Very hard work made harder by wearing full body and leg armour, much to the amusement of some present. Michael even wore his full face helmet, being a bit wary now of trusting the Gollum, who always says "no danger this weekend", and that's when the bones get broken.

We tried absolutely everything to get in touch with Jason... but even under this thing we got no response!

Smoker Michael "smokes" John & Terry on one of the (very) long inclines.    We rode the first half of the ride in the company of several very fit ladies (fit in the physical fitness sense, Olde-Worlde style), and they showed us up on the climbs more than once.    Who cares, we're not male chauvinist pigs, you know. The ride itself was a bit disappointing compared to the first two events, but if you look at the Hamsterley page you'll see why they had to alter the trails for this one, and the quality suffered a wee bit. 

Considering the time they had to devise a new route, however, the trail builders did a very good job of finding some fairly technical singletrack to pop between the fireroad sections, just to break up the ride and give the more adventurous a giggle, so well done to them. One thing that did cause a few problems, however, was the signage. On several occasions the whole mass of riders had to turn back and retrace their steps to find the correct route. Strange thing was that the signs were perfect in the off-road sections! Another drawback was that after struggling for miles to catch an 8 year old kiddie on a micro BMX, and finally passing him, Golly had to turn around at a dead end TWICE and found himself behind the kid yet again! Here's the microscopic humanoid himself. 

Anyway, after 14.5 miles of gruelling uphill walking, we got back to the finish at 1.00pm to be presented with our certificates and a goodie bag. Wish I'd had my confiscated (due to bankruptcy) VISA card with me, as the Iron Horse Cyclery from Darlington had a beautiful Whyte 46 on display in their marquee - only £2,700 with a bit of discount for the day. Not really sure that something a pound or so lighter than my Kona Bear would get me up these inclines any easier though.

One of the last bits of downhill/singletrack before the finish saw John avoiding another painful lesson thanks to his recently-acquired Brand-X body armour - he really smacked a tree on the way down, Michael's eardrums almost perforated by the crack, only to find this when we finished the ride - lucky boy!   Parked next to us were a bunch of Mericain Tawrists who wanted to know what our accent was. We communicated using hand signals - now they think we're from Venus. (yep, they understood the letter "V" perfectly).

Another great day ride, plenty of hard work with a bit of payback. The aches and pains in the legs 24 hours later are testimony to the severity of rides like this to wee Rock Gollums like My Precious. Next weekend we're local, see Travels page.