Sunday 4 February 2007 - Old Great North Road (short run)

An excellent ride, despite what turned out to be a very hot day, with a bit of disjointed riding... Doug, Rees, Whisperer, Stephe and Darrell set off from the pumping station at around 8am, and the sun was rising even as we started our own climb up the hill to Ten Mile Hollow.



We were thinking about doing Spiders, but ultimately the pace was too slow to allow us back home at a civil hour. Whisperer took a responsible approach to playing silly buggers (in the absence of Brian, who - of course - is the best person to play silly buggers with), and led the charge up and down any tricky looking bits, while Darrell demonstrated new found confidence on the new bike, and gave the technical sections a fair shot (but we didn't get any decent photos of him doing so!):



There was a lot of 'wheelie dropping' off the excellent OGNR ledges, but - inevitably - we managed a pinch flat on Rees' beast, and while we were fixing the bike, Doug was off with Darrell taking in the view:



All in all, a good solid ride, with the heat making even the normally relatively staid technical bits more challenging...



Rees' run of bad luck continued on the way back down the big drop to the cars, when he collected a stick in the rear wheel (in the same way, and at the same point as Doug's recent spectacular dismount), and managed to break five spokes (a new record!), but was still able to (slowly) ride out.

On the way out, Doug checked out some of the old walls / roadworks, including a cute 'stitched together' version of the site, and this 'standard' version:



The 500m vertical bitumen track at the end was a sign that it was all over too soon. But, it was still very good to clear some of the cobwebs out from the recent even shorter rides in any case.

Profile and map snapshot below, and here's where you can find the full collection of photos for the ride...