We were lucky to escape with a dry day as the rest of the UK seemed about to be flooded following torrential rain, especially in the west. Somehow the Rain on Tyne Stayed Mainly off our Line (yeeaakk!!!) and the Gollum left home around the same time as John, 9.45, to meet somewhere between Cramlington and Holystone. This time it was Hillheads Farm at Killingworth, as Golly struggled to propel the Cuda against a stubborn pair of front Hayes brake pads following his "fix" of the front brake the previous night. Must learn how to wheelie. Luckily the wind assisted, but it was sheer luck that John didn't make it all the way to Holystone before bumping into the heavy-breathing old fool.

See Fixes page for more on this problem! (later this week).

We rode over to Wideopen and into the top of Gosforth where Golly stopped, almost totally knackered, to remove the calliper from the front of the Barracuda. Just couldn't go on like this!

This is a strange place to carry your front brake... 

Anyway, that made the Cuda dead easy to ride, just like a normal bike, in fact. A bit later we spotted some trees and dived off the road to see what we could find. We found something. From now on, we're calling this "the secret trail" and we're saying nowt else. We jumped and skidded and dropped and... this is what happens when you career into the unknown and discover a bit too late that your right hand isn't having any effect on slowing you down - largely because your front brake is now strapped to your handlebars! So, the Gollum ends up in the dyke, as follows:

Pretty dumb, don't you think? And this is  where the front brake should be - take my advice and make sure yours is.

We didn't expect to find this natural blockage across our new "secret trail":

Here's a couple of highly entertaining videos (not!), about 5MB each, but really not worth the download.  vid1    vid2

We somehow managed to consume another 3 hours of precious quality time but at least the old legs were stretched and we weren't stuck out on some blasted sodden moor with that other mob. Next Sunday the plan is to give John's Kikapu a proper run out at last, at Dalby Forest, but it won't be worth going unless there's at least a small person's handful of us.