Thrunton Woods is a Forest just to the north of Rothbury in central Northumberland. Another paradise for walkers (me no likee) but also has plenty for the MTB enthusiast. There's plenty of easy fire roads for the meek and mild, but you can go tree bashing or rock plunging to your heart's content (or failure).

We get up there about once a month and so far this year the ground has been a wee bit claggy (that's sticky anywhere south of the Tyne). Still good fun, but the Crags are very hard work and getting down can be scary. After descending from the Black Crags there's a short swoopy section under the trees, pretty dark in there but John, Jason and I had a brilliant race through it down to the stream. You just have to remember to duck! I'll put some GPS mappings on here someday.

Sunday 10th July 2005

Geography Lessons changed forever!

Those of us who had no sleep on the night of Saturday 9th July due to 18 year old female fish offspring returning from Big Market at 3.15am would have seen Sunday turn from a grey early morning into a fabulous sun-drenched day. Far too hot for mountaineering with a 40lb backpack, but here we were doing it again. Terry was just about to leave to pick up Jason and Andy about 9.45am when the phone rang. It was Andrew, Tall One and Head of Geography from the Gollum's place of work asking if MidAirCrisis were carrying passengers on today's flight. Too right we were, all comers very welcome, so we arranged to meet him at Thrunton Woods at 11.00am. After a frantic dash to John's at Cramlington, the four of us were off to rendezvous with the Big Guy arriving at Thrunton's car park just as he was getting ready to leave, cursing the MidAirMen. 

All's well that ends well, and of the five of us (Andy, Jason, John, Andrew and self) crawled up the Green/Red trails for what seemed mile after mile in the ever-increasing heat approaching midday. The MidAirMeanies had forsaken their full-face helmets for this gentle troll around the woods so as not to scare off the visitor. The visitor who had come fully prepared with a full slick rear tyre, a real tarmac-hugging tread. Unfortunately, the only tarmac it would see today was already left way behind at the carpark entrance.
Regardless of that, and a missing middle chainring (sorry Andrew, forgot to take a look
at the problem) Andrew, known henceforth as Big Andy as opposed to Little Andy, was as quick as anybody pushing the massive but featherweight Trek 8000 up the steepening fireroads as we searched for the path to Heaven.     This was a long time coming, but we had some fun on the way watching as Little Andy suffered absolute hell with his clipless pedals but collected about ten varieties of fern and gorse bush for his rockery, one for each excursion he took into the scenery.     Towards the end of the ride he was becoming quite frustrated at sailing over the handlebars, but at least learned a valuable lesson - clipless = useless. 

Big Andy had his moments, one in particular where his back wheel got higher than his
head on one steep rocky descent. As close as he got to a real . Once you hit the Black Crags    and the trail that runs along behind them, there are plenty of decent rock gardens    to smithereen yourself on but he managed to avoid total wipeout.    What he didn't avoid was the famed Pedal Bite, and here's the proof. 

John was enjoying himself on the holidaying David's kindly loaned Kona Coiler Dee Lux, the second time he'd been able to try out the Coiler's plush suspension on some mean terrain.     His Saracen has served well as a way in to MTBing, but it's time out on the rough will be limited now only by John's finances (and the small task of convincing Angie, his better half, that he NEEDS  a beastie - as we all did!).

  Up on the Crags, your fave MidAirCrisis Mob pulled off a sensational cliff rescue. Here's Jason saving a naked suicider    but then he sneezed..."well, I HAD him!" 
Here's a short vid of the distressed young lady and a photo   of the technique used by MidAirCrisis to avert a mid air crisis. Good job we had a BFG with us!

We'd shared our banana lunch with zillions of flies just below the summit of the ridge, when Golly had discovered that his Factor 15 Sun Cream did a fairly good job of keeping the blighters at bay. The only other way was to travel at plus 5mph, but that was impossible on the way up (Andy tries to ride it - 2MB vid) where help was needed to lift the last few bikes over the final rock steps. 
When at last we reached the downhill sections the temperature felt intense - actually
only 25 degrees but for the two of us wearing body armour it was like the surface of
Mercury. The breeze was good at speed and we really plunged down the crevasses leading down to the river.   We paused for Golly to stage a re-run to demonstrate to Big Andy how to tackle a rocky descent faster than a pedestrian. Luckily he stayed on board. Here's Big Andy finishing the most savage of the drops.    The last section of downhill takes you through the trees and under a thick canopy of low branches and fallen evergreens,     where Tall People hit their heads bringing them down on the backs of following Gollums. Thanks, Andrew. Ouch. That wasn't the worst of the damage, though, as once again, with only metres to the safety of the fireroads, Little Andy once more became a victim of the Clipless Curse, this time being launched into a mudbath on a tight right hander when he couldn't get a steadying foot down.    He was pretty happy that the remaining trail was all fireroad and as you would expect led the rest up the hills very easily.

The total distance clocked by Golly's instrument was only 8 miles, but if you travelled
that far up something like Everest you'd know you'd been in a fight. All in it was a
half decent ride,   and Big Andrew was heard talking about a buying full susser more than once! Short vid down into the valley. Here's a look of satisfaction at the end of a hard grind...

11th December 05 ride    29th October 2006 ride