Sunday 15th July 2007. Weather forecast was upbeat, but predicting rain around teatime. Because it was dry and they're both supreme athletes, John and Derek decided to ride from their Cramlington homes down to the Gollum's abode at Holystone. They arrived about 10.05am. Just as we were loading their bikes onto GollyMobile to go and pick up Jason at Howdon, the man himself turned up in his van! That saved a bit of time and kept us on schedule.

We motored calmly (Jason sat in the front next to the Mad Old Fool, white knuckles gripping the sides of the passenger seat and eyes glued shut) over to Blaydon Rugby Club only to find it was Giant Car Boot Sale Day! That meant no parking spaces anywhere near the start of the Derwent Walk, so we turned up towards Rowlands Gill and parked at the Tennis Club car park instead.

We started the ride up to Rowly just after 11.00am (NOTE! time on photos is GMT - Gollum Mean Time, 17 minutes behind real time, and that's how far behind the other riders he usually is), touring along the Derwent Walk very coolly at the Gollum's direction.

Some time later, he instructed the others to look out for a possible right turn to get us off just past Rowlands Gill. Soon after issuing this instruction, the Derwent Walk opened up a little on higher ground and Chopwell's infamous Power Lines came into view. Unfortunately they were slightly behind us! Panicking, the cretinous creature became desperate to get off the trail and settled for the first opening that appeared. This took us down some very steep steps into an obviously public but not very well tread grassed area. An information post informed us we were now in Ajax Woods. A glance at the map provided showed that the trail we were on sort of went down towards the road, the A694. It didn't tell us we'd have to negotiate a jungle and a river crossing to get there.

     

Eventually, about an hour later, we emerged onto the road and crossed it a bit further east to join the bridleway into the southernmost tip of Chopwell Woods. This brought us to the point where we normally finish our descents and have to get all the way back to the top again. Today, obviously, we had to do the whole climb straight off from the bottom and it sure hurt the Gollum. But we made it OK to the main car park only to find the Chopwell Forest Festival in full swing, with hippies everywhere with flowers in their hair.

   We stopped next to the Forestry Commission marquee in the vain hope that Ian might spot us if he did manage to get out for a ride himself, but that was a long shot. Jason decided it was lunch time, but at 11.15 it was a wee bit early. So we moved on up towards the top end of the Woods to do our favourite full route all in one go, just for newcomer Derek. Here we are just before making Jason put his banana away. Now look closer at this picture and closer

Did you see Jay's sunglasses dangling in the wind? Well, we'd pedalled up to the top of our Rooty Trail, pausing to watch this fella pulling something large from his central zipped area, then proceeding to create owls from tree stumps with it. Show off.

That's when Jason noticed nothing across his eyes. Yes, he had a good few fizzy pops last night, but he swore he had his goggles on, and the pics above prove it. So when we had pushed Derek down over the roots for his Chopwell initiation we went straight back to the spot he'd last had them and looked around. Nothing. But then, Jason spotted something in the grass. No, you're wrong. It was the right leg of his much loved, super-expensive, designer chic eye dimmers! Terry asked the lady in the Forestry tent if anything had been found, but they'd only had a complete pair of £140 Oakleys with both legs still attached handed in so he didn't take them for Jason. Onward to the Downhill and another treat for Derek on his single speeder, seen here doing another stint of jungle jumping.. An unusual find down by the river as we stopped for lunch - the Sword in the Stone is returned to the Lady of the Lake then we had to climb a mud-faced sheer mountain after the Gollum led everyone up another blind alley. John found the quick way down this one on his face before finding enough grip to drag himself and the Kikapu up the cliff face here's the squad preparing for the tricky Ledge Drop at the far end of the Woods on our second trip down and after escaping from Chopwell we find a hidden route through to the Derwent Walk again, thanks to Derek's brilliant interpretation of the word "footpath". Just stopping here to clean the doggy doo off his slippers as John looks on

So the only bit left, at least for Jason and Terry, was the nice downward run back to Blaydon. Note poor Derek's little legs spinning into a mad blur just to keep up with the others on his gearless thingie.

Here's Jay wearing what's left of his gogs. And the farewells back at GollyVille with Johnny and Derek setting off to complete their 30-odd miles overall ride back to Cramlington

Another splendid outing with the best weather all year so far. And well done Derek for tackling everything on not just a stupid, senseless single speed bike, but a rigid front fork one aswell! Crackpot.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention - Thanks to the person or persons unknown who decorated the GollyMobile with banana skins and flowers while we were away from it - I wonder, who could you be???

Terry's bike PC said max 24mph, ave 8.2mph, 19.1mls,(34 for John and Derek), 2hrs19mins rolling.

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