Hamsterley Forest

It was a crisp Sunday morning, as I set off to ride the few miles from my house to the start of my MTB ride. For my first ride I had wimped out slightly and had selected the Hamsterley forest loop, which wasn’t too far away, but would hopefully have enough interest for most people.

At the start it was difficult to work out how many were with the SOC, as every other car seemed to be laden down with mountain bikes. I recognised a few familiar faces, Dave having passed me on the last mile. Eventually the SOC crowd gathered, as the rest rode of into the forest. “It looks busy” commented someone, “Nah, We’ll see no-one once we get a mile from the car park” replied I.

Once Dave had sorted himself out, (why is it there is always someone who arrives at 5 past – it seems to be a natural law of the universe) we headed out past the visitors centre, and I tried to determine the colour of way marker to follow. We soon turned right, and up long twisty climb away from the road. Unsurprisingly, everyone soon stopped being cold. The trails seemed to climb and climb forever, witth only a few short descents, or flats interrupting occasionally.

There were some happy people when they eventually saw the fire road head downhill, only for me to shoot off up some muddy single track between the trees. I forget the comments but I’m sure they were not printable, and they were certainly unladylike. Nigel, who had been musing that his mud specific tyres were not much cop on forest trails, soon found out that they must have been manufactured by British Rail, as Hamsterley mud is the wrong kind of mud for them, and that they were pretty useless in the clarty stuff too.

Once past the muddy bit through the trees we stopped for a bit of lunch in a clearing, from which we had a fantastic view of the next two climbs. Once we had all scoffed our grub, Alistair whipped out his digital camera, to take a photo for the web site, and then showed the result to everybody.

The next descent was the real killer with a warning sign at the top, the front runners claim they rode down, but I walked down with Nigel, Dave, and Diane. Once across the ford, we headed along another fire road, where I received a few sarcastic comments as we passed a track heading uphill and carried along the flat. Never mind, normal service was resumed 100yds down the track at the next turn – yup uphill, and the lads were happy again.

It was at the top of this climb that Alistair, Ernie and James, decided to turn back and head off back to the car. The rest of us carried on. We were then treated to a cracking fireroad descent down to the ford where we rejoined the road. We were then passed by some other mountain bikers wearing shorts! Off up the hill we rode, turning after a few hundred yards, onto some muddy single track winding through the trees back towards the car park. It was on the last descent heading down to The Grove where one of the riders came a cropper and received a few facial cuts when he crashed. Back at the carpark we boosted the tea-van’s takings before we all headed off home.

It is at this point that I make humble apologies, as I cannot remember the name of the lad who crashed, but thanks to Bill, his mate, for ringing me later in the evening to let me know he had had a few stitches but was OK.

Thanks also to everyone else who came, and I’ll look forward to meeting you all again on my next ride.

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	Swaledale Outdoor Club

Hamsterley Forest

Gary Dawes