Had it not been for the unexpected appearance of new man Lee today, there would only have been three of us (Chris D, Tim and Terry K) for this trip, destined for Mabie Forest. Lee's from North Shields and has a spanking Trek Remedy 9, and is also possibly going to prove useful in removing overhanging branches for us little lads.

We waited around until 0845 to give any stragglers a chance to turn up for a lift, half expecting at least one more, but the only extra body was Stevie B, just here to collect his spare Stumpy but having family commitments today.

Now it would have been pretty sad for just four of us to trek all the way up to the Stanes, the trails generally providing more entertainment with a few more riders. We've seen a steady decline in the popularity of the Trail Centre outings, particularly our traditionally more favoured Scottish ones so I'll not cave in to pressure again to do an unplanned one just because one or two individuals think we should. They've been proven to have it all wrong. What we'll probably do is about one every six or seven weeks and see if that increases the demand.

So, turning the GollyMobile westwards, we four decided to see which way it wanted to go. Then Tim suggested Grizedale, where we haven't been for some time. However, as attractive as that idea sounded, it is a little further out than we wanted to go under the circumstances, so we split the difference and plumped for Whinlatter.

Starting the ride around 1100, we'd done only the first section of the Altura Trail when Terry realised he was travelling faster than he expected to be. Reason for that was he'd left his CamelBak in the van! So back he trolled for it while the spring chickens had a rest. Time to climb up that brilliant off-camber and now quite slippery first hill singletrack and take a minute or two at the top to recover. It's a shame there's still that top section of firebreak road to crawl up. It may be just as hard on singletrack but it's sure more interesting. maybe in the years ahead they can do something about it.

It seems to take forever to get around the appropriately named "slog" and get a few downward facing dips to give the legs a bit of a rest, but before you know it you've conquered the climbs and are then presented with that super roller coaster of a hillside back down all the way to the Visitor Centre. Just prior to that, however, on the only other decent downhill stretch through the rooty Tarbarrel Moss, it was Terry who ruined our safety record. Losing concentration for a microsecond, he allowed the way-too-hard front tyre to take a root parallel wise and down he went like a sack of shingle. Only lost a few seconds though, in case someone ran into him from behind. Fortunately not only was he wearing the old full face helmet today, but also leg armour which deflected the direct hit away from his right kneecap. Reaching the fireroad, Tim had Terry's bike upside down, pointing to a hissing sound from the rear! Turning the unexpected air leak groundwards, it sealed almost immediately, praise to the great Tubeless God and Uncle Stan. We took the opportunity to let some air out of that rock hard front to avoid any further unexpected slippage.

At the head of the final downhill section we sent the cameraman ahead just for a change and managed to grab a few frames of video with Tim, Chris and Lee plummeting down the jumps and berms of the Big Dipper, although as usual you just don't get the real impression of speed through a distant camera lens.

With the others all surviving that unscathed we arrived at the bottom where we crossed the road outside the Visitor Centre car park and dived through to the start of the South Loop, but stopped at the handy and most welcome wooden bench for nosh. No wind at all and plenty of blue bits overhead but cool air temperatures made it just about perfect. Lee hadn't done much biking recently and was feeling the climbs, but on the downs he rocked on that lovely lightweight Remedy, saving tyre wear by keeping it up in the air. Time to climb again, initially up fireroad and then the undulating singletrack with plenty to maintain interest between the upward kicks.

We were joined up top by a group from NEFA who we learned have all but given up on trailbuilding at Chopwell, and indirectly they were responsible for our second physical mishap of the day. With Terry following them off the top at a safe distance, the MidAirCrisis Mob soon got wound up to race speed thanks to Tim's hot breath on the back of the Gollum's neck on the fairly rough, boulder-strewn descent. So far so good, but rounding a blind lefthander with an 18 inch dropoff awaiting, Terry suddenly found two foreign bikers stopped in the middle of the trail and again taking his eyes off the terrain for a glance up at them managed to tip off the Trek and bang that fragile, ligament-free shoulder yet again. "Oh, dear" he was heard to utter.

Again the recovery was immediate (well, strangers were watching!) but only a few hundred metres further on with Tim out front, he yelled something and pulled over off the side of the trail. Puncture! Well, not really, just a sudden lack of air in his tubeless rear tyre. We set to work fettling it while Chris led Lee down to the end of the section for a spot of sunbathing. Joining up again a few minutes later we stomped the final downhill loops and stopped long enough to exchange grins before cruising down to the road again.

We re-entered the car park and up to the start of the trails again to see if the new Blue was as promised. It was! This is just like the unexpected thrills available on Betty Blue at Glentress - you just wouldn't expect so much entertainment on a kiddie trail. We managed yet another frantic race down the shorter of the Blue routes, stopping only to console Lee who'd managed to comply with an unwritten MAC law - you must fall on your first outing! His right knee took the hit but he was OK to continue thrashing. We lopped off the final bit (the "gentle" climb put Terry off) because our car park ticket had just expired! We got back to base around 1515, stowed the bikes in our new horizontal stacking format and hit the cafe for some sticky carrot cake and ridiculously hot coffee. Home just before 1800.

pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5 pic6 pic7 and finally the Christmas Tree we took out of Tim's back tyre - his homemade substitute for Stan's fluid seems to work, no? (sorry it's blurred, but you get the idea of its size from the adjacent blades of grass).