A bright light woke the Gollum from his slumbers this Sunday morning, 8th July 2007. He peeled the skin off one eyeball and peered at his bedroom window - the End of the World had come! Dragging the limp little body out of bed he moved the curtains aside to see - blue sky and sunshine!!! Crikey, this must be an omen - after the last forty days and forty nights how could it end up like this for MidAirCrisis Ride Day?

Anyway, he pulled on a fresh leotard (well, only worn for a few weeks) and sniffed the tap on his way to loading the trailer for the masses of riders expected out today. Picking Jason up dead on time at 9.40am, the pair proceeded to Cowgate to collect a new rider at 10.00. After a short drive around the roundabout twice we spotted him, innocent youth on full suspension look-alike, and pulled in to load him up. "Sorry, but I can't make it - something's come up, maybe next time" he said, very apologetically. Well, you can't help trouble, and he did have the decency to turn up there and explain - Good Lad! So we carried on up the road to Cramlington to find Derek watching John get ready under the sink in his garage. Don't ask.

A short time later we were headed north up the A1 to Belford to start a ride behind Derek. Rather than leave the trailer at Johns we kept it on to give Jason's delicate little bike a better chance of survival. We parked in Belford centre and prayed that the blue bits above wouldn't be soaked up by rain clouds. Minutes after mounting around 11.15 we were on rough dual farm roads and bridleways heading north in search of St Cuthbert's Cave. This is a cave with St Cuthbert in it. OK, I lied. He wasn't in when we got there.

The route there, however, is extremely enjoyable, and seemed to be permanently down hill, with forest on one side and the Cheviots on t'other. That's very strange, especially with Derek leading, knowing his mountain biking heritage. The trails were superb, and we stayed in 2-by-2 or even 4-by-1 formation most of the way to share the usual perverse banter and bad taste jokes. John was on the Kikapu with fresh enthusiasm for clipless pedals after experimenting with thinner socks. We could smell his experiment from 10 metres. Gollum had his new XTR SPDs on the Mutha and unbelievably they made just enough weight difference to dip it fractionally under the magical 25lb mark. Compared to the last couple of rides, two Thursday night local runs and one to Kielder on the slightly heavier Barracuda, it was bliss once more to be riding the DDG with a new sealer plug on the front Hayes disc brake master cylinder. Jason was on his Whyte again, now wearing it like a second carbon skin, while Derek had thought about bringing his singlespeed until he realised what we might make him do on the ride - and we did  (about which more later) - so he was again Specialized mounted.

Derek (aka SpiderMan) with his dinner

A few miles out we came across this little rock outcrop and Derek decided we had to get right up face-to-face. He'd just started up between the ferns when he stopped and bent down to the ground. We all retreated a bit not knowing what to expect. When he stood up he'd found a little friend! Placing the ikle birdie back down onto the ground, we watched it scamper off into the undergrowth, hopefully to find the rest of its family. Gives you a warm feeling, doesn't it? Be As One With The Universe, join Derek Nraitor on a Nature Trail. We reached the rock and the little cave below it thinking we'd got to St Cuthy's pad. But no, this was another cave, a bit smaller than the real thing. We used the drop back to the trail as our first "downhill event" of the day hoping for some fun and games, but we all got down safely, no drama. Half a mile up the track it was map reading time at which point Derek turned us back as we'd overshot a bridleway he'd been looking for.  Didn't really matter as anywhere looked good on this ride, but Derek had our course to Holy Island and a nice cuppa plotted well in advance.

A short while later we were on St Cuthbert's Way and approaching the famous cave. True or not, you could imagine the story of St Cuthbert's alleged stay here being absolutely true, although the place had no double glazing and the front door doesn't fit too well, so it would have been irritating in the winter. Jason suddenly developed an interest in archaeology and set about reading the ancient inscriptions on the cave walls, one in particular catching his attention. According to Jason, royalty must have been a guest of St Cuthbert for tea some time. The first word, especially, was difficult to read, but roughly translated by our local expert, the engraving said "King Roy was here", or something close to that.

Sultans of Style meet Cave of Cuthbert

After a short photo shoot it was time to follow Derek up the left hand side of the cave. This is fairly steep but he got within a few feet of the summit, impressively. The rest of us tried but could get no further, so a short push was needed to clear the top, after which it was jump-over-the-stile time to get back onto St Cuthbert's Way. We were now into Shiellow Wood where we witnessed the worst case of outright vandalism we've ever seen. We'd just moved through yet another gate when, for the sake of not having to unclip his feet from his SPDs, what did John do? He decided to lean on a great big fence post to keep his balance. The ancient hunk of tree wood  decided it had had met it's match and keeled over under the weight of the World Champion Creme Egg Eater! Unfortunately we'd left our post hole borer at home so we couldn't repair the damage. Sorry mister. It was in here somewhere that Terry was attacked not once, not twice, but three times on the back of the right calf by something horrible, with three nasty little blood clots in a triangle about an inch apart. Know of any flying snakes with three teeth? Here Derek discovered he'd lost his sunglasses! And Jason lost his bottle!

Emerging from the trees again there was a nice descent over Buckton Moor. At least I think that's where we were, can't remember now. Must get a GPS. Wherever it was, this was a tricky, grassy drop, and you either just went for it balls-out, or you concentrated on the ground a metre in front of you and slalomed through the sheepsh*t. Those taking the first option got down fractionally quicker, but wearing a khaki overcoat. Spell khaki whichever way you like.

We were back onto the fireroads through the forest now and it was Race Time. It doesn't take much more than an innocent gear change to provoke an instant reaction from the others under the right conditions, and these slightly downward tracks were just such conditions. The trigger on this occasion, however, was one of Jason's Hay Fever sneezes. Suddenly we weren't Tooling at Ten, but almost Flying at Forty! This was X-rated wheel-to-wheel combat with elbows out and legs spinning wildly, and rapidly heading downhill towards the coast. I was dead lucky to witness a very dramatic high speed rear wheel slide from Derek when he just nudged the central reservation. How he held onto the Stumpy, and without slowing down at all, I have no idea. Just wish I'd had the old Helmet Cam going, dammit! I glanced down at the computer when he slid and it said 32 mph. That would have hurt in the morning. Emerging from the trees we had another stretch of tarmac leading us to the final cruise down to the A1.

No Comment!

The main road wasn't much further but we had to wait and be sooo careful crossing it as there's an average of one car per second on a typical Sunday these days. When I were a lad it was two carts and a stagecoach a week. A nice little tarmac drop followed to our next bridleway, still on St Cuthbert's Way, through the fields and over the main East Coast railway line. Quite tricky when overgrown as it is now, (the fields, not the railway line) as there are loads of little six inch rocks lying hidden in the grass to throw your wheels off-track, with entertaining results! There were plenty of cars around when we got to the end of the Causeway aswell, but most  gave us plenty of leeway as they overtook us. The Causeway and in fact the whole of the three mile stretch to the Tea Shop was covered at a steady speed of 17 mph, solely because of the tailwind all the way, so Derek got his cuppa a little earlier than he expected. He also got his sunglasses back as they were under his helmet. We'd watched him scratching his bonce for the last few miles but didn't know why!

As the weather was so good, so much so that we all got burnt a little, we decided to stay all day. However, we would have had to swim back to the mainland with the bikes in our teeth, and while the other three could no doubt manage that, puny little Gollum would have drowned within yards of leaving the shore, so we got down to the main business of the day instead. You thought this was a bike ride, didn't you, Dear Reader? Well, you're not wrong, but it was also the third Committee meeting of the Newcastle Mountain Bike Club with all but one (Andy) of the Founders present. Top of the agenda was "who's getting the teas?" followed by "who's getting the cakes?" and then "where's the bog?". Getting that important business out of the way first, we then had a discussion about Club facilities and finances, with John being proposed, seconded and ordered to become Treasurer by Jason. Just got to find some treasure for him now and we're set.

The Big Man elects his Committee Members Johnny's winking again!

The same bloke (Jason) has managed to find us a big money sponsor and we'll be holding the next meeting on the QE2 somewhere in the Mediterranean. Cheers, Jay. More details later. We also discussed our smoking ban, the application of suntan lotion, and that young lady who just walked past us two minutes after her chest did. The things you have to get through in committee time, very tedious.

Once we were all slightly pink from the now violent rays of the sun, we pushed off at Derek's behest and headed for the Castle. Very difficult squeezing past the dozy pedestrians, millions of them. It looked like the Annual General Meeting of the British Obesity Society, with one or two notable female exceptions. Just approaching the Castle, Jason got a flat rear tyre. No accident this. Gollum had stuck a fork through his back tyre as we were leaving the cafe to give himself more rest time. We enjoyed a very entertaining sunbathe while Jason set about repairing the damage, and here he is showing just why he doesn't work for Steve Peat's race team:

21 MB .wmv vid (right click and save before running)

When the glue had set just before midnight, we threaded our way up the cobblestones to the Castle door and spent a while admiring the landscape, and other sights, before descending again to play skittles with the crowds once more. But still the Gollum wasn't finished. He needed more recovery time before his wiry little spindles were rewound enough to carry him back off the island, so he led down the cobblers and pulled up at the ice cream van below. First in the queue, how so? I'll tell you how - sick squid for 3 ninety-nines and a Golly lolly! At least that soaked up the shrapnel and he wouldn't have to carry it all the way back to Belford. It was quite pleasant sitting on the verge in the sunshine. The queue which then formed at the van also kept Golly on the verge.

The still winking!

We'd reached the point where the tide was about to come in so we just had to tear ourselves away. So off we crept, avoiding contact with the humanoids where possible, and out onto the road to the causeway again. Now, however, the wind was directly in our faces, just as feared. However, it was the Gollum who led off fearlessly, maintaining 13 to 14mph all the way to the mainland with Derek on his tail, where he promptly fell off on jumping the kerb to the bridleway south. We proceeded along the shore between the concrete blocks to retrace our steps in search of Jason's lost water bottle. Now this was where the ride started to harden. Deep, rock-strewn grass paths and a relentless uphill slope got our hearts pumping at double-time. There was a short tarmac burst again to break it up a little before we climbed again to reach the A1 at the Lowick turn, slightly less busy than it was a few hours earlier.

We dived over the road, sprinted into Fenwick and turned immediately south, headed back to the Kyloe Hills once more. This time, however, Derek took a slight diversion. He'd pointed the revised route out to Terry when riding  past it in the distance on the way out. It looked good, along the fringe of the Woods again. But it proved extremely hard work, and mainly for the Gollum whose skinny little Maxxis Larssen tyres were as grippy as Jason's inner tubes all the way to the fireroad miles to the south. This part of the landscape was far and away the wettest we'd come across all day, and was simply unrideable without decent tyre knobs. Derek and Jason had big knobs. Johns and Gollums were much smaller and they both suffered because of it. Size matters. Just managed to catch Jason being helped out of a very sticky situation before we got widely spaced out in the trees. And as punishment, Derek got stung here by what looked like a wasp.

We were now back into the woods, much to our relief, and we could get back to the serious business of racing again. In fact, we raced so hard once we'd crested the high point of Kyloe Wood that we again overshot our turn and had to backtrack a quarter mile. You forget everything in the heat of battle! And it isn't that often that you top 37 mph on a rough forest road. We left the Woods on St Cuthbert's Way again and stopped for a short snack break before returning to the top of the hill above the Cave. Gollum arrived last at the top to find the other three about to dismount to get down the fairly steep and technical slope. Stopping only to glance over the edge, down he plunged, weaving between the outcrops of rock. At the bottom, feeling a wee bit lucky to get away with it, he shouted at the others to wait until he had the camera ready, so here's the rest of the MidAirMen descending.

8 MB .mpg vid

Since he started trekking with us Derek has certainly discovered his own Dark Side, and his recent rock drop at Dalby, followed by this much bigger one today which is really severe looking from the top, have converted him into a real "go anywhere" rider, at his own admission. Everyone has their limits, but unless you push the envelope a little you'll never discover where that is. MidAirCrisis isn't just our name, it's become our philosophy!

Jason explains how "nice" these sheep are - oh,oh!

Once more we sped back to where we'd come from two abreast, and quite quickly. It was good to get back to Belford and recover from the heavy, final part of the ride, but overall it was simply superb, the weather being a real bonus, the conversation hilarious and as usual very entertaining. The real low point was having to suffer Jason spraying his Hay Fever and last night's Vindaloo all over us every couple of minutes, poor soul. We called into the garage at Adderstone where he managed to buy a chemical fix.

John's and Terry's bike PCs averaged the ride at 34 miles. Jason's said about 56 kilometres. Top speed of Terry's 38.7mph, 3 hrs 55 mins rolling time, average speed 8.7 mph. Roll on the next one like this!!!

Join us for it, whadya waitin' for?

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