Once more a dry day awaited for whoever deemed it a good day for a bike ride. Sunday 31st August 2008, and Gollum even rose early from his pit to allow time to fit his new cycle computer to the Trek Fuel EX8 for today's outing to Guisborough Woods. 09:15 dawned as he opened the garage door and began to lay out his tools. Then a very strange thing indeed happened. Jason arrived! Yep, it's usually much closer to ten past ride time when he shows his face, but here he was, bright and even early. This was Jay's first ride back after missing three Sundays with the family holidays and he was raring to go. However, the Whyte E5 wasn't. It now had a stripped rear wheel spindle, courtesy of a wee bit of overtightening when he put his new Mavic Crossmax SLRs on the Beastie to make it even lighter than a Factory bike.

So it was a case of trying to bodge up a fix. That meant, finally, sawing off the standard quick release lever from one of the Gollum's wheels (eh?) but after a half hour's work and some jiggery-pokery it did the job. Just as Golly was going to restart his own job, "got any Stan's No-Tubes fluid?" emitted from Jason's gob. Job stopped again. Golly had a good whinge about the cost of providing latex for everybody else, but produced the required fix again and was finally allowed to do his own job, at last. A few other bodies began to drift in nearer 10:00 - a pair of Chris's - D and K, and Young Derek, our "medium" shirt model. We got the bikes stacked aboard, and Chris K kindly offered the use of his motor as we still had at least two bodies to collect. One of those turned out to have his own car with him - Mick H waiting patiently somewhere on the A19. So at 10:10am we set off to collect a new rider with no transport at the Regent Centre Metro, Gosforth. We arrived about 10:20 and hovered around waiting for an appearance. At 10:25 Golly took a saunter along to ASDA through the Metro Station, but there was nobody in sight with a bike, so at 10:30 we called it quits, as Mick had now been waiting quite a while. Here's Golly looking for new riders -

On the way out of Gosforth the Gollum realised we had one unnecessary car now, so a swift diversion to Chris K's in Jesmond got rid of his, leaving five of us in the van. Around 20 minutes later we zoomed past Mick sat in an A19 lay-by,  and we were off at last. The Cleveland Hills popped into view as we neared Teesside and they were - no, not shrouded in that famous grey smog - but bathed in sunshine! Unfortunately, Gollum managed to direct driver Jason past our proper turn-off and we ended up going the Pretty Way through Great Ayton. That was much nicer than scything along the A174/171 into Guisborough but it did add another half hour to the normally quick trip.

Mick's nice Intense Spider

We started the ride very late, around 12:30pm, and straight away somebody was in trouble. That was wee Chris D, who was about to have "one of those days" when the legs just wouldn't catch up with the brain. To make matters worse, Golly sent the group the wrong way right at the start, so the initial sharp but short climb away from the Visitor Centre turned into a long, hard one that pushed Chris further into the mire. He continued having problems all day but stuck with it, and as you'll see on a downhill video later, that beaming smile was still there underneath the overall gloom. He even managed to complete the climb up to the Monument when he had no juice left in the tank at all, so well done Chris for sticking to it quietly - some just moan and complain all day! We all have off-days sometimes, so we can share your pain. And bravery was also shown by Derek and Chris K, who aren't normally "into" some of the drops they conquered today. Casualties today, or victims at least, were everyone except the Gollum, somehow, but luckily not too much blood was spilled, more a case of honour and pride lost.

Chris up the Nab - hard work! and lunch at the top

synchronised bike lifting Cook's Monument just over that hill, Chris!

no smile here though wait for me!

Evil Drop after the Monument High Speed Descent! Dodgy Chute

This is what Golly sat on after the previous downhill - ouch! CommitTea (Chris K must have been leaning back!)

Just what you don't want all over your face

We'd taken three maps from the local club's web site, but to start with they didn't add up, so we did a good bit of too-ing and fro-ing as we tried to join the dots. The usual spots were covered eventually - the Secret Trail, Highcliffe Nab, Captain Cook's Monument and the Quarry. So were a lot of others as our net spread wider. By now you'll know what my memory can be like (who am I again?) so I'm keeping this short. Once we'd done playing in the quarry we headed, or thought we headed, for Aireyholme Farm, but true to form we ended up at Fletchers farm some miles away. However, they just happened to have an outdoor Tea Garden so it got a unanimous vote, and we settled down for a long cup of coffee. Well, actually I mean it took a long time to arrive. A very long time. But it was very pleasant sitting out there in the sun, although the bees were awful close to the Gollum near the stream.

Homeward Bound They're still not waiting for me!

The joint was being run by a young lad, probably just left school, who I reckon wasn't just taking orders and serving, but knocking the stuff up aswell. Anyway, it gave us the chance to hold another rare NMBC Committee meeting. Nothing of significance ever emerges from these, other than the odd bit of chauvinistic lechery and tales of daring descents. Today, however, one serious thought was put forward. That was about our ride starts, and here it is in black:-

ALL RIDES WILL START AT THE GOLLUM'S PLACE IN HOLYSTONE, NE12. Now you may think that's great for Yours Truly, and I suppose it is - I can lay in bed until the rest of you are gathered outside and rise to suit myself. If only. It just happens to be that I'm almost smack in the middle of our riding membership, so it's less painful for the whole mob if we do it this way. The main reason for it's proposal, however (and it was NOT MY IDEA) was to prevent any further wastes of time and effort like this morning's fiasco when we expected to find a new rider waiting but he couldn't be arsed to turn up or let us know he wasn't coming. Proposal carried unanimously. We did actually try this out a year ago but I got soft again and started offering to collect people who didn't have transport. End of.

We left the farm shop headed for Roseberry Topping, roughly, after taking instructions from the tea boy. Unfortunately, we managed to overshoot back into Guisborough's suburbs, and it needed Derek to chat up a very attractive blonde sunbather to discover our error. That was backed up by Chris K's GPS so we did an about-turn but Pinchinthorpe and the Visitor Centre were only a mile or so back.

According to Gollum's new French bike PC, we covered 24.38 miles today, so we doubled the distance we were expecting to travel by following one of the printed routes. And it was hot and hard. So was the ride.

Vidz:   Jay1    ChrisK&MickH    ChrisD1    Derek&ChrisK    Jay2    MickH    ChrisD2    ChrisK    ChrisK2    Mick2

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