The turnout was down a little for this ride on Sunday 13th January 2008, but a handful of diehards were there to carry the flag for NMBC.

Guest Writer for the day, Keith, takes up the tale -

Short story.....

We left ASDA at 9:15am after waiting some time for others to show up, We got the impression from Thursday night that more would be there but nada.

I was the last to arrive to see Steve B and Mick H standing chatting, we quickly decided that we would tackle Chopwell woods again, so stuffing the bikes into the back of the car and my new Freelander we headed for the Tennis club car park in Swalwell/Blaydon. So we quickly embarked on another trip up the Derwent Walk (cycle) it was what can only be described as quite decent MTB weather.

We came to Speed Ian's now famous muddy downhill and proceeded to belt down here until we hit the quagmires which quickly slowed us down to a crawl. I personally wanted to keep hold of my teeth, what's left of them that is. We then crossed the road and had another slippy section alongside the Highland Buffalo pen (Steve PIC) So we stopped to pet the animal closest to the fence which started to enjoy itself. So much so that it must have thought Steve's hand was something to chew on. Steve quickly figured this one out and retreated to a safe distance from the woolly ginger Scottish cow.

Once into the woods it was time for all us old men to empty our bladders, so off trots Mick down the hill to the stream, I of course just stood to the side of the path as we could not see anyone. About 5 seconds after we start our call of nature Steve jumps up and shouts Horses!! Luckily I have not destroyed my inner valve so off stops the flow, zip up and hey presto, we both look like innocent bystanders. Of course Mick has used his RAF evasion techniques and was nowhere to be seen. So luckily the poor little fillies on horseback missed out on some embarrassing moments...

So we climbed up the hill to the car park then followed off right to the top of the Woods, once arriving the choc came out and we had a small break before tackling the top rooty section of the Forest. Once we set off the going was quite muddy and there were lots of roots to fly over, catching us out once or twice but nobody left their bike behind on this occasion. Moving across the fireroads we joined the lovely pylon downhill section and blasted down that, a bit of air here and there and quite a nice run down. Once at the bottom we decided to run back up and try it again but unfortunately for us when we got to the top lots of snotty kids with no helmets and little bikes (very little) entered in front. So we bided our time for a few minutes and set off again, the others having instructions to wait a few minutes so I could get some pics for uncle Terry. What they didn't realise was how far down the trail I went to get some new pics. I waited by the triple jumps to get some and by the time people got there they had to speed up for the camera.

Next time on the way up we stopped some rambling pensioners from certain death after they thought the downhill trail was a footpath and asked us why we didn't have bells on our bikes......

Then that just left us to come down back to where we started via the Edge, Steve  managed the  very steep drop off but only just, his suspension compressed nearly fully and his bum touched his spinning black tyre on the back, luckily his wedding veg stopped before dropping onto the tyre. Once the rest of us had finished laughing we headed back down the Derwent Walk again to the car park covered in serious amounts of mud!

All in all a good ride and we got home before 2pm.

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