Chopwell Charge - led by Chris and Tim

A pretty good turnout, with only one conspicuous absentee - Ian A.

Chris D
Tim
Pete
Jay
Matt
Alan
Steve S
Mark
Alex
???
Justin
Peter
Ritchy
Pixie
Terry

What a glorious night this was for sunbathing. Fairly hot for blasting through windless trails though, and one or two suffered in the heat. With a pretty good turnout, two big vans, a big car and a little one left the Cave around 1910, so thanks to Steven S, Peter and Mark for laying on the transport, strange not having the GollyMobile around to chuck the old half-eaten sarnies and banana skins into, that's a first. And a welcome return for Alex and his pal (name please Alex? - rules is rules!) who also turned up at the Cave and followed us over to the Dark Side. Meeting us at Lintzford lay-bye were Pete, Jay, Matt, Chris D and Tim who'd found their own way there.

The ride started at about eight with 15 of us now present and Chris pulling us all up from Lintzford into Chopwell Wood, with his plan being an immediate and rapid push for the very top. He more-or-less got his way aside from Terry whining about which was the easiest path and getting his way, turning right just behind the gate and heading for the Eagle. When we gathered there shortly afterwards Chris was pleasantly surprised at how dry the skinny singletrack climb was and led again as we continued the comparatively gentle (ha, ha) rise to the car park.

Matt left us there as he'd been lurking in the woods for a few hours already so headed off home. Chris led with as fast Peter and Tim in tow to start the outer anti-clockwise ride around the edge and there was hardly any letup until we reached the coal truck bridleway and that nasty little final click which caught out all of us. Tim then led the remainder up the final climb to the Farm before pausing at the start of the Golf Course run. It was half way through here that "incidents" occurred - Mark stopped with soft tyres prompting the release of some of Terry's newly-refreshed reserves of gas (thanks to Tim for buying the latest batch of 300 CO2 canisters - get your cash in asap if you ordered some) and while we were parked sorting that out Ritchy took a bout of heat stroke, but none of us would stroke him better.

With Marks' tyres a bit firmer (rock hard, actually! dunno how he manages.) we proceeded over the tangled roots but hadn't travelled far when we came upon Jay with one of those unmentionables he "never gets", Giant Reign upside down and wheel off. Out comes the gas again and we were soon ready to move on. Actually not really "soon" as we'd been there a while now, and that had prompted Chris to return from the far end like the splendid Ride Leader he is, to see what was up. A few of us turned back as it was hardly worth the effort continuing when everyone else was now waiting back where we started. Chris and Jay went in the opposite direction and it was a good five minutes before they and Alex rejoined the main party so I don't know what went on in the mean time.

That left Tim up front as he led us up to the Farm again and it was he and Terry who got the best start down the Root Run for the first proper race of the night.  Plenty of stories to tell way down at the bottom as the team arrived there in clumps, gasping and grinning. It was definitely cooler coming down-over but not much chance to dissipate heat with all the race tactics and action going on. Chris took over at the Boulders with Terry behind as we hit the first of many skinnies through the trees, this was taking us down Chris K's Chaos trail, fast and furious action once more. None of this was helping Ritchy to cool down much but he stuck with it as we rattled down and cruised up each of the climbs in turn to get our height back.

With the ground bone dry except for a very small number of heavily-sheltered mud patches I was sure impressed by the progress of the hardtails, particularly Pete as he was never far off the front during the many frenetic blasts that Chris and Tim had been plotting over recent months. You couldn't ask for better action or much more entertaining trails than the ones we covered tonight, just superb. Along the way, on the longest, fastest, wiggliest of the lot, a recovering Ritchy managed to knock down a fully grown tree with his left shoulder and a few more of us took bark rubbings as we tried to hang on to Chris' tail at more-or-less ten tenths through this heavily wooded section. Great to witness the Irishman's Mongoose tail sliding out on the tighter corners. And great to be caught in a Chris 'n Tim sarnie time after time to give the Hitman and its newly-repaired Crossmax rear wheel a good workout.

With Alan missing a good few rides lately it was also quite surprising to see him up at the front so often, but he was flying as was Justin with the squeaky Trek. Normally Alex would have been out there aswell but he was patiently shepherding his mate around on another hardtail so quite a bit more reserved than normal, luckily! The other quiet members seemed to be Steve on his new Black Orange and Pixie on the Orange Turner (eh?) who were hovering mid-pack most of the night so I don't know if they were involved in anything off-piste. This small world of ours did, however, bring Pete and Steve together as they do have business dealings but weren't aware of each others Midaircrisis habits.

We took a well-earned pitstop at car park level, to its west where Terry and Chris trekked into the bush to sus out yet another new trail for our next visit, then it was off once more along a short stretch of fireroad until with the first signs of darkness creeping into the trees we hit yet another brilliant descent, with tight, tricky hairpin bends and plenty of whoops and roots, to say nothing of the many short stumps waiting to unseat the unwary. A good many shrieks and yells but nobody beaten to death by the branches yet.

Two more similar sections put the Middle Earth beings (e.g. the Gollum, with no lights) literally in she shade making it kind of extremely dangerous trying to keep pace with the man in front, but then we were into the less tree-covered sections to finish on with still enough light for maxxing out. We blasted down to Lintzford after a short play on the final chutes and got to the cars for about 2200 or so after a brilliant night's trekking.

Thanks to Chris and Tim for leading us around and taking the trouble to locate ever more undiscovered jollies for us.