Sunday 25th May 2008 and we get back to normality after the previous weekend's Wild Boar 24 Hour Race at Grizedale Forest, Cumbria. Or at least that's what the poor old Gollum thought. Huh.

As the bodies appeared one by one, an eerie feeling of déjà vu, or in other words , "oh, bollocks" began to creep through his brain. Reason for that was simple, and fourfold. 1 - Terry H texted to say he'd meet the rest of us up at Thrunton Woods. 2 - Steve "Skippy" B turned up, grinning from ear to ear. 3 - Steve "Skippy Two" W arrived, grinning from... And finally, 4 - Jason arrived, grinning.

So of all the Club members that could have turned out on this cool, windy but otherwise great riding day, the only ones who did were 50 percent of Team MidAirCrisis, fresh from their famous performance in the Lakes. You may ask "where's the harm in that, Golly?" at which point I may well respond "the bu@@ers will run me ragged today coz they're still high as kites!".

So it proved, and I have photographic evidence, some of which is displayed here.

Anyway, we met Terry as planned at the Low Spot and started the ride around 10:15am. As is the norm now, because we park low, we need to ride high to get anywhere. At least the little tarmac road offers no rolling resistance, and without a headwind or driving rain it's not that bad. I suppose. What it always means, however, is that me and fellow punys then have to start the real climb up the fireroad totally knackered, and only 15 minutes in!

However, today I did my best to keep these blokes in sight although they didn't make it easy. When we got up to the top of our normal climb, Terry kept going straight up front rather than taking the left we normally use up to the Crags. As it happened, it cut off a nasty little deep-rutted click so that was good. Usually they don't let you up this bit for bees nesting (I kid you not). It deposits you between Long Crag and Coe Crags.

There's a hard way and an easy way to go through a fence There they go!

After a little breather we turned left to get back on track, that is onto the singletrack that runs atop the Crags for the whole length of them. My suggestion that I should lead off with my new rear-facing camera went down well, as they all scarpered away ahead of me! And they didn't stop until we'd all reached the foot of the gnarly drop at the eastern end of the trail where it begins to head down to the river.

That grin again

After another break there, I managed to explain exactly what "behind me" meant, and here you'll find, eventually, a video snippet marking the next section. The quality of the clip leaves a lot to be desired. Mainly, I hope, because I had the camera mounted under my saddle for rearward action, just for a change. I did that because it's a bit heavy for the Golly Bonce, but I won't do it again as the shocks coming through the frame degrade its performance far too much. And the only sound it picks up is the sound of a Gollum constantly breaking wind, not really what you want to accompany an action sequence.

On the subject of this thing, it's an Oregon Action Cam, and if the results don't improve dramatically when mounted on my fully suspended helmet, or other part of my manly anatomy, I'll be savagely criticising MBR or MBUK, whichever gave the thing a great write-up last year.

We all got down to the water OK suffering only the odd stutter, then Terry led us on the short fireroad lift up Coe Hill to the drop off westward again . This is a lovely stretch of narrow singletrack running in the shadow of the Crags  with gorse bushes trying to rip your feet out of their cleats, but today also having a secondary function - that of brushing the Wild Boar crap off Skippy's filthy Stumpjumper.

Next section is long, thin, flat and sandy with high sides to snag pedals on in places, before it dumps you at the foot of A Big Hill. Turning north here produces a mile or two of steady, rough climb until you reach sanctuary at the summit of Callaly Crag. And it was here, at a stone circle shelter, that we decided to get out of the wind around midday and have our nosh.

We joined a retired couple of walkers and their dog and Terry took up conversation with them, mainly centred on the pleasure to me had in Majorca. The rest of us ate. Unusually, we managed to get a picture taken with all of us in it, thanks to these kind folk, so here's Northumberland's raw beauty (!).

Back to the bikes after 15 minutes or so, only to find Jason's leg making an awful creaking sound. Oh, sorry, it wasn't his leg but the newly-repaired Whyte E-5 which was making horrible noises from somewhere about it's carbon swinging arm. Didn't sound too clever, especially as he only just got it back after yet another bearing rebuild job at a Scottish-sounding cycle shop in Newcastle, but there's no way we were gonna let him carry the thing around the rest of the Woods, so he led off! Here's the damage.

We chased him along the trail and over to the Oil Tank, then back onto fireroad again to begin the search for a new section or three. And thanks to Terry and his excellent memory, we managed to do exactly that, christening another three new bits as well as completing some of his favourite ones. One nice smooth singletrack drop gave us the opportunity for some more camera testing, a bit more successful this time with the smoother terrain. We do, however, have a real problem keeping the group bunched up behind the camera to maximise it's effect, and on this short burst it all went to hell when the cameraman ran out of safe trailside ground to ride on while letting the others overtake! Not quite the result we'd planned, but we'll work on our acting careers and maybe spend a bit more on video kit.

What's terry up to here? Steve W finds peace doing trackstands

now they're all at it! There's a hole in the trees - Go!

We hauled ass back up to the Top car park before Terry again ushered us up fields anew. This one brought back all of Golly's memories from the previous Sunday morning when he walked almost all of the steepest fireroads in Grizedale, repeating the exercise here as the Famous Four naffed off and left him. All familiar stuff. I did catch them up again at the top, but only because they wanted a unanimous verdict on what to do next. And this is where we began our payoff, with almost everything else pointing downwards to the cars. But not only did we find another few juicy bits from Terry's Dim and Distant but another chunk of untried. It was on one of these where Steve B managed to tip himself over the front of the bike just as we started the descent!. He got as much sympathy as anyone does - we shot off and left him lying in a heap! That was on the final steep drop to the last fireroad which was followed by the excellent singletrack run along the stream back to the cars at 2:05 pm.

Great ride, four hours, lovely dry, grippy trails at last and fortunately at least as much down as up. Must learn how to climb like the other MidAirCrisis squirrels.

Just for the record, here's how my bruises from the Wild Boar are coming along

Poor test videos - one    two    three    four    all about 5 to 8 MB - right click and Save As...

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