Jason and Terry were the only MAC crew available on May Bank Holiday Monday, 29th May 2006. This trip was planned many months ago and strangely enough, the route was published in What Mountain Bike June edition which arrived at the Gollum's cave in Holystone on Friday morning! Just to back it up, he downloaded a couple of routes from the local Trailblazers to give a couple of alternative routes, just in case.

The two left via the Tyne Tunnel around 9.45 and landed at Pinchinthorpe near Guisborough at 10.45 via the A19. The weather couldn't make up its mind on the way down and stayed that way until the ride was completed. The Coiler Club made its way up, up, up the fireroads into the Woods, trying to make sense of the signposts and guess the missing ones, while also asking passing hikers if they knew the way to anywhere. The result, rightly or wrongly, was that the dynamic duo covered five and a half miles before finding the first bit of singletrack, and that was uphill. Still, it was better than constant fireroads - we could have gone with Morpeth Reivers for that! 

 

We also climbed the highest hill in the immediate area for no good reason, as we had to come straight back down again to find the right trail. Here's a couple of views from the top:

   

Here's the offshoot we should have taken, on the right, instead of going all the way up. The views up there looking down on Guisborough were very impressive as demonstrated by the next series of pix - you can also see the inevitable clouds of poison gas rising from Teesside in the distance:

 

When we did get on it, it led us down the side of the moors between them and the trees lining the edge of the wood. It was very narrow in places, hardly used, we think, and quite technical with a great many exposed tree roots ready to throw you off line or straight over the bars. Luckily we escaped any incident of that nature. There was some payoff later in the form of a steep but wide and fairly flat downhill section which led to some great singletrack edged a lot of the way with logs, in fact it looked a lot like a footpath. Here's Jay padding up for the descent The end of it was a bit spongy, as you can see here -

 

A mile or so further on we emerged into open space against the moors and this is where you clap eyes on the amazing chunk of rock known as Roseberry Topping. There were bikers descending this, but I don't know if that's kosher or if it's a footpath. If it's legal Jason and I will be over for a crack at it next trip.

and more roots -

Somehow Jason had managed to mix up the maps with the aerial photos and written instructions, so we ended up trying to follow three different trails as well as the Black Route, all of which meant disaster and a pretty short ride of around two and a half hours. Never mind, we'll be going back fairly soon to get it sorted properly. The trip back to The Toon was in bright sunlight, shame it was cloudy and freezing for most of our mounted time.

 

 

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