Heard the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, the Taiwanese and the Gollum? They were standing on this bridge with their bikes one sunny day. On second thoughts, I'm too nice to tell you that one. Today, Sunday 15th June 2008 there were only four NMBC members who considered it a suitable day for a ride through the scenic Northumberland countryside. Target for this one was Mitford, just a few miles inland from Morpeth, where Chris, Paul and the Gollum teamed up with NMBC co-founder Derek. He's been missing for a long time from our Sunday rides due to a miserable run of health issues but took the plunge on this bright, breezy morning hoping for a nice relaxing re-introduction to "natural" rides.

Our route was to be one of the popular "Mitford Round" ones, but done in the opposite direction to normal, anticlockwise. So we started at about 9:45am easing our way northwards on dual farm track to Newton Mill and the first of many crossings of the River Wansbeck's source tributaries (wow, a geoga lesson!). Then it was on up to Pigdon before turning west towards Stanton. Time to cross the river again down to Longshaws before turning west again into Oldpark Wood for a bit of tree avoidance and mud grovelling. We then covered a short section of the Devil's Causeway down to Thornton Moor and a fiddle down to Hartburn.

 We, er, took our bikes for a walk down a footpath to the funny little cave thing where a certain idiot Gollum managed to get himself stuck up the face of the bankside, much to the amusement of his fellow travellers. We were advised by a local that there was a "lunch" on in the village in half an hour's time, but we were on schedule for a stop somewhat later down at Bolam, so on we went. We ended up at The Stables Tea Room at Meldon for a fairly late lunch, after a mixture of deserted tarmac, meadow, farm roads and some excellent snippets of singletrack. It was at the very end of one of these that a nice round rock, about 6 inches in diameter, caught Derek out as it lay hidden in the grass verge. That didn't cause a fall, but it did effect a rapid dismount and an immediate pain in our returnee's shoulder, just what we don't want. He soldiered on, as we always, inevitably, do. The only other "casualty" of the day was Chris with a couple of falls, the most spectacular being on an off-camber meadow descent when his bike tried to turn up the hill sending him over the side down it. A great laugh for the onlookers, and thankfully no injury inflicted.

The worst section of the ride was a half kilometre stretch from Angerton Station on the old line, which was a good few inches deep with soft, sticky, stinking peat bog topping which managed to envelope Golly's new LiDL bike shoes. Somehow Derek kept finding little bits of entertaining singletrack as we wiggled our way through the landscape heading back to the cars, with another couple of river crossings thrown in for good measure. No wet feet, however, as we either used bridges, stepping stones or fords with very low water levels, luckily.

We got back to the cars around 2:45pm after this 26 miler in ever-increasing temperatures. A nice run out with plenty of stops for rest, snacking and sightseeing - good ride, Derek, cheers.

LATE UPDATE:

Sunday night and Derek discovers some movement of internal organs after his rumble with the rock - back to the Docs on Monday!.

Monday morning and Golly crippled with gut pains, spends night in Rake Lane Hospital but diagnosed as muscle strain caused by lifting bike over fences (incorrectly!).

Here's the Photo Gallery - two sets of pics muxed ip.  Videos to come (I always say that!)

Here's the data and route map from Paul's GPS device:-

Summary Data
Total Time (h:m:s)	5:10:12	11:37 pace
Moving Time (h:m:s)	3:19:13	7:28 pace
Distance (mi )	26.67
Moving Speed (mph)	8.0 avg.	29.5 max.
Elevation Gain (ft)	+1,870 / -1,870
Temperature (°F)	55.8°F avg.	59°F high
Wind Speed ( mph)	W   5.5 avg.	W   8.1 max.

 

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