Saturday is a fairly unusual day for us to ride on, but today was the occasion of the second  Waggonways to Health charity ride in aid of the Chris Lucas Trust. This is a dedicated biking Cancer Support charity and runs various events in the North east, including tomorrow's Great North Forest Bike Ride around the Gateshead area, which we are following but not actually signed up for due to an oversight. It is an event we've done for the past 5 or 6 years since it's inception. It's often wet, and so was today's much easier, shorter excursion.

Participating on behalf of MidAirCrisis/Newcastle MBC were Derek and his wife Pamela, and Mrs and Mr Gollum aka Janet and Terry. We set off under a very dull sky from the Gollum's cave at 9.35 for the short crawl along the Old Coast Road to Cobalt Business Park at Silverlink. However, the adventure kicked off even for Pam and Derek even before they arrived at their start point when, a few hundred metres short of the waiting Gollums, Derek's Cannondale hardtail launched itself off his bike rack to be dragged along the deck until he could jam on his battletrucks' anchors! Luckily there was only slight damage, most of it to the saddle, but it could have been so much worse if it had happened moments earlier on the A19, where Derek has been known to travel at 3 figure speeds! (shhhh! Sorry, Ocifer, hic).

Derek points out he scene of the incident ;

After we'd settled his nerves with a bit of amateur psychology we made our way very gently along to the event start in the car park opposite The Village Hotel on Cobalt Business Park. I guess there were around five hundred souls there on every conceivable make and type of bicycle. I can confidently announce that the corner shops are doing a roaring trade in "mountain bikes". Well, they've got two wheels with knobbly tyres on. Here's a camera shy Pamela -

So I tried again but she still managed to hide behind a plant!

We were released in batches of 15 by the Lord Mayor of North Tyneside after an embarrassing, but funny all the same, Nissan-style warm-up routine by the resident DJ safe in the back of her nice dry lorry. First set of hazards to avoid were the back wheels of the tiny kiddies and their mums, and the piles of doggy-doo all over the place.  Much easier to miss the broken glass as we headed south on the waggonway to North Shields. The pace was dictated by Mrs Gollum on her first serious bike ride. She was mounted on the good old Barracuda, specially prepared for the event with flat pedals, a lowered saddle and a wash and blow dry. So was the Barracuda.

When the first bunches of riders hit Royal Quays the first problems arose - one direction sign had been nicked from Percy Main, and others just weren't there at all, or weren't visible, leading to much confusion and little pockets of bikers travelling in all directions. It didn't get any better as we tried to circumnavigate the Marina but we four stayed with the proper route as posted on the Internet and looped back around past the Reclamation Plant to rejoin the tarmac waggonway back up towards Silverlink.

 

Shortly after there was even more confusion with no guiding signs or marshals anywhere near the Rising Sun Farm. Pot luck got most of the crowd back together but it didn't look good for stragglers and late starters. There were riders going in all directions and not many knew which way they should have been pointing. Derek and Terry fell foul of one particularly nasty, fat, foul-mouthed official who attempted, unsuccessfully of course, to prevent their use of a short, steep slope behind the Cinema at Silverlink retail Park when he shouted "not down the bl**dy hill" at the pair. They stopped at the bottom to wait for the girls and Terry shouted back to Humpty Dumpty "Did you just swear at me?" Fatso looked a bit perturbed at this point and proceeded to babble something about being fed up with his marshalling job and so on. Why did he volunteer then, I wonder?

 

That was the only real downer so far and we continued north again as if nowt had happened. We got as far as the main bridleway through the Rising Sun Country Park when Golly, who'd been lending Janet a helping hand by pushing her up the hilly bits, took it upon himself to launch her up the trail. He only succeeded in launching them both straight into a hawthorn bush. Luckily Janet's face missed the prickly stuff but poor old Gollum was worst affected by embarrassment - too many people saw it happen! Anyway, this is where both Pamela and Janet decided they were hot enough to do without their waterproof jackets, so off they came. About three metres further up the trail, the heavens opened and we all got a good soaking! The rain kept coming all the way back to the finish and the scenes at the check-in were so miserable and the queue so long we didn't even bother to collect our tee shirts. Give them to charity.

 My Better Half with a muddy back!

We got back to the Gollum's after covering, allegedly, 15 miles or so including the one from our pad to the start. A pretty good event, and very popular. Just a shame about the diabolical signage.

Derek doublechecks to see that the same thing doesn't happen on the way home!

***all times on photos are 17 minutes slow!

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