Sunday 7th December was a cold one, but the sky was clear and blue as rider after rider turned up for this trip to Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire. In fact, we had to send 30 or more home.
Ok, I lied. Straight up, however, I must thank Iain and Steve W. Iain for saying "yes" when asked if he fancied using his beautiful Mercedes Vito Combi van with it's five seats and cavernous loadspace, and Steve who carried two other riders in his 206 Dinky toy. Using two five-seater vans kept the shared costs almost reasonable under our new fuel subsidy rules. Just to clarify this (and I had NOWT to do with it - blame the Chrises, Mick and others!) drivers don't pay and the total cost is shared between all passengers depending on fuel consumption of each vehicle, which seems to meet with approval from the current membership, and as Chris K pointed out it may help to induce people to offer their cars if they pay nowt (other than wear and tear, of course).
As expected it took an age to first decide on the transport and then to load it all up. We pulled away from Holystone around 9:15 with the following bodies aboard: Ainis, Chris D, Chris K, Craig, Iain, Ian M, Jon, Michael, Mick, Steve B, Steve W, Tim and Terry K. Manic Mick even RODE up to Holystone from his Seaburn home, finding the cycle paths between almost unrideable due to black ice! And Crazy Craig delivered his Specialized Enduro to the Gollum's cave the night before and took a taxi across from his Kenton home! Goodness, you'd think we were paying performance-related bonuses on these rides. Chris D turned up in a Trance, I mean ON one, with his new Giant X1, a lovely little bike getting it's first proper trail outing today.
We took it fairly easy down to Yorkshire and eased into Dalby Forest Park at about 10:45 to start the ride at 11:05. Michael, Tim and Golly allowed the rest to climb the first hill behind, I think, Mick, preferring instead to meet them at Go Ape! How appropriate. Once onto the hillside here it was immediately obvious that the threat of a soggy, boggy, chain-destroying gloop was completely unfounded. This was going to be an extremely difficult excursion on solid, deeply-rutted ice. After we'd grouped at the top of Ape hill, only Steve W, as usual As One with the Universe, was brave enough to take the lead, and it proved to be pretty intense, with the Gollum becoming the first faller of the day about 25 metres into the trail trying to keep up with him.
As Steve led and the others followed there were a great many such falls, thankfully none life-threatening. Main reason for this was simply that conditions did not allow the usual rip-it-up high speed antics, and it took massive levels of concentration to stay upright. Those like Steve lucky enough to have reasonable upper body strength probably handled it best. Some of us lesser mortals were to really feel arm pump and shoulder stress as the trails were conquered.
Under the trees it was almost business as usual with the tracks in their normal state, if a wee bit firmer than in summertime. Here we had a chance to wind it up a little and memories of previous cat-and-mouse chases between Steve B and Gollum came flooding back into Golly's tiny brain, but the fast stretches were a bit short knowing you had to ease off as the tree cover came to an end. Still good though, considering how difficult this was to be overall.
We followed the Red Trail avoiding the little Black offshots, even more pointless with the ground this hard, although Jon tackled a couple of them and managed nicely. Once more poor Michael fell for his pal Steve W's promise of an "easy" ride and suffered a little on the fairly heavyweight six-inch travel Marin. I couldn't help but notice that as dodgy as it was, Craig was still taking air at every opportunity while most of us were busily sampling soft landings in the snow, with Ian M chasing the record for offs!
After we'd got to the Freeride Area and had our overdue lunch stop, Steve W decided that Michael's bike was indeed no match for the many lighter ones on display and the pair made their way back to the car and home early. It was Tim who took the front on the way out and fairly blasted away down the tricky descent and that nasty little jump that cost a few bruises on our last visit. Like Craig he was airborne down here and riding just behind him was extremely entertaining!
There's a bit of fireroad climbing to do after this bit before you get to the treats, and just as we hit it didn't Craig do something silly? Yep, he managed to find the famed Dalby Thorn and get himself a puncture! We fixed that reasonably quickly as no-one would light a fire and a bit further on we chose to stick in a couple of Black bits. The first divided the party as Golly mistakenly took the Black to be the Red! Next up was a definite Black stretch which was anything but difficult as it's completely flat and smooth singletrack (apart from the flooded bits) but today it presented a whole series of obstacles in the shape of fallen trees. We tackled most of them successfully, moving them out of the way and sort-of securing them, but here I must issue a stern warning:
If you go down to the Woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the Woods today
You'll hardly believe your eyes
For every tree that ever was down
Is now a trap just waiting to crown you
Cat-a-pults are waiting to bash your h-e-a-d in.
Or, as Chris D later coined - it;s a MidAirMousetrap!
The next bit yet again divided the crew, with the sensible ones opting for Red and the crackerjacks Black. Time for Stevie B to demonstrate how easy it is to embarrass yourself - Craig just happened to have his camera ready for this one!
And just to finish off with on this, the final decent stretch of downward-pointing soil, Gollum surely lined himself up to be nominated for this year's MidAirCrisis Lucky B@stard Award when he tackled the end bit to the right of the fallen Steve's bike and between it and the tree in the picture above. He managed to negotiate the roots and the two foot drop behind them but then the Trek decided to speed up somewhat, firing the idiot towards the fireroad.
But he hadn't seen that metre-high timber retaining wall ahead and at the very last minute those spindly, aged arms just managed to heave the front up enough to survive the landing as he flopped onto the fireroad, ending up in the snowfield beyond with the others covering their eyes to hide the almost certain carnage they expected. I must pay homage to the engineers and designers at Fox Racing Shox for producing the Float RL 130 forks which absolutely must have saved my teeth and probably another helmet from destruction here.
There wasn't much more to do now as, when we got to the next split in the trail, the two Chrises partnered up again, very sensibly, to decree that we should call a halt and return to the Visitor Centre before the onset of darkness. It was 3:00pm and the sky was clear and blue as it had been all day, but they made absolutely the right decision. Jon and Iain seemed the steadiest all day from what I saw, while Ainis had a whale of a time on the raised Dolomite sections at the end, which still had deep new snow on them and just wouldn't allow fast cornering. It looked like we were the only loons venturing this far out today, as there were no fresh tyre tracks ahead of us.
To get back quickly we were forced to do the last five miles on tarmac, or what is normally tarmac. We got back to the cars as darkness did indeed descend while we loaded up at 3:30pm, frozen to the marrow. We took a splendid Chip Stop at Thirsk and got back to the Toon for some time after 7:00, and really I should congratulate everyone for staying in one piece. We've done snowy and icy rides for years but this was a really hard one due to the formation of the ice ruts. What a squad!
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