Another Thursday night for the foolhardy, or hardy fools of NMBC. 13th December 2007 and Terry H arrived at Gollum's around 6.50pm to give him the hurry-up. We left the Cave at 7.05 with no-one else showing, to see who might be approaching from the opposite end of the Great Lime Road on this somewhat raw (I mean, bl@@dy freezing) frosty evening. Having already ridden to work at South Shields and back today, the Gollum was a wee bit lethargic and looking forward to a nice, compact tour around the local scenery. Not easy to persuade the other Terry to take it easy though, unless he's under the weather.

At the meeting point, the oncoming lights revealed Arthur, Keith and the Speedian. And Arthur had some BIG NEWS. No, not that Keith had reverted to wearing his Arctic shorts again. He'd only gone and got himself a Decathlon RockRider 9.1, same as Gollum's most recent acquisition, which just happened to be his mount for work and this ride! Arthur's current MTB is a Gary Fisher hardtail but he's been fancying a squidgy back end for a while now, and decided to investigate the French brand at their store in Sheffield. Being just as impressed as Golly had been, he had no hesitation in buying one of the wee beasties, and we may well see it out next Thursday if not sooner.

Anyway, this ride was no different to any other in as much as it would be good to find a deviation or two from the normal routes we take. We started behind Holystone but heading west on the farm bridleway towards the A19. Gollum led down through the side of the Swallows estate at Hadrian Park and managed to find a short stretch of singletrack that terry H hadn't been on before! This dumped us at the top of Silverlink Business Park and we cut through to the waggonway back north to Cobalt. Over the road we should have  continued up either the tarmac or parallel gravel bridleway but Gollum had other ideas, ducking under an low tree and vanishing up the side of the gravel path. The rest followed, having little option as they didn't know where he would pop out again. By the time we reached the road to Proctor & Gamble we were all torn to shreds as the route had been totally overgrown since Golly last used it a few summers ago. Fool. Keith was last tom emerge and we guessed that his exposed shins would be in a right old state, but he'd just taken his time and physically abused every young sapling in his way. Chances are there's a great big open archway under there now!

We attacked the Silverlink Sundial Hill, Terry H making it up there almost before the others got a wheel on the grass, and after a short break for a photo attempt plunged off the top into the almost invisible bushes below the north face. The Two Terry's survived with a scare each, Arthur took the scenic route down, and Keith and Ian succumbed to the darkness and popped themselves off their bikes (Specialized, you see - unstable) before remounting near the bottom. All good, clean fun torment.

Time to head north on the waggonway to Shiremoor, crossing the Earsdon road and trotting up to the railway crossing behind Backworth. We had a few choices here - follow the current detours around a few fields where they're building even more new houses for no-one to afford, cross the tracks and run up the edge to the next crossing as we've done a couple of times before, or - follow the Gollum. Unfortunately for Arthur, Gollum led off er, em, up the middle of the railway line itself, proclaiming the sleepers to be "smooth and well filled-in". And they were, for the first few hundred metres. But then things got a bit lumpy, forcing Gollum and Terry to jump over to the side of the track instead. Sadly for Arthur, he was too far back to see them do this and continued up the hard stuff, hardtail and all, and you can guess the rest.

Regrouping at the next crossing, Ian produced a MAP! We scoured it looking for the gate that stood in front of us, for all the world looking like a bridleway entrance, but the map showed nothing. So we rode past the scrapyard on road then into the fields to Holywell, giving Terry H another chance to burn some surplus energy. Must be great. Reaching the next farm at West Field, Golly led away towards Seghill Reclamation site onto another dual/singletrack we hadn't covered before. However, this put us on more familiar singletrack between the tip and the Dene, with Terry once more leading us out to Seaton Delaval.

We crossed the edge of P&G and headed for East Cramlington, taking to the famous Spoon track where we stopped for a few more hopeless photos,

No way for a grown Speedian to act!

then we hustled over to the Disco under the Spine Road for a short rest and natter.

Spectacular for an underpass, eh? a bit lighter Snack time

This put us in no-man's land as far as off-roading goes, so to put a better top on the ride for Terry's sake, Gollum led across the High Pit road near the Bay Horse onto Crammy's cycle path network. Arthur discovered exactly how icy the edge of the kerb was as his head tried to burrow down to Oz. That'll hurt in the morning. However, like all big, brave, embarrassed NMBC men he just remounted and carried on.

We toured up the path as far as the top of our John's estate (who is John? I hear you ask!) before cutting over the top then through to the town centre where we carefully eased our way along the icy bits and onto the nice cycleway descent from the old village centre down to BogHouses. Terry strode away up the hill, dragging us up with him but some way behind, and from the Spine Road at the Bedlington turn we followed the old road down to the fields around Low Horton Farm after crossing the narrow road bridge. We skirted the Golf Course and hit the under-tree bridleway to Newsham, then by road down to the sea front at South Beach. From there it was a pleasant enough cruise, albeit a bit cool by now for tired bodies, down the Sustrans Dunes path. We left Terry at St Mary's Lighthouse as he shot down the road to Whitley Bay while the other four chose to cut the corner off by traversing the Beehive Road back to Earsdon and home.

At a rough estimate a few of us must have nudged 30 miles in three and a half hours. Bit late getting home were Arthur, Ian and Keith, sorry fellas.

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