5^th. An ominous amount of snow in Lordstones car park had Simon and Oz waving matching white flags of surrender before we’d even started, unfortunately the flags were camouflaged against the snow, so I couldn’t see them. Heading toward The Fronts it gradually became apparent this would be no ordinary day, being basically pedal, pedal, pedal, fall off. The drifts were deep and unexpected, filling hidden hollows and halting progress in a most comical manner, we continued in this fashion to the gate and surveyed the next section of track. I don’t know why we expected it to be any better and it wasn’t, a bit of reconsideration was employed, to the relief of certain members, and we quite literally retraced our steps along the track. Rather than waste a while day, an idea was mooted, namely ride the Cleveland Masters Downhill course in the snow. Duly we pushed our bikes up the track, noting the tricky bits where we would be falling off on the way down. Reaching the top the full force of the wind hit us, giving the incentive to begin the descent without procrastination, suffice to say we reached the bottom without serious injury but many unscheduled dunkings in the snow. It wasn’t long before we were dripping on the café floor, rewarding ourselves for travelling the grand total of two miles.

17^th. The Christmas Dinner Ride. And a long while since our pitiful attempt at riding over a fortnight ago, so everything felt harder than it ought to have, especially for Chris, who has been an infrequent Terra Trailblazer this year, preferring to spend his time on cruise ships being waited on hand and foot or sat in the control room being waited on hand and foot. Arnesgill Ridge still had patches of frozen snow, which were easier to ride on than the slightly thawed mud which constituted most of the tracks, we arrived at Swainby Shooting House feeling the pace a little, more to do with the grabby nature of the mud than anything else. A banana stop was proposed while the ever-youthful Simon attempted to break the ice on a small pond before turning his attention to a dead rabbit. Refreshed we pressed on to Limekiln Bank and Clain Wood, where the temperature was at least 10 degrees higher than it had been on the tops. Another waiting for Chris session saw Simon attempting to impress a flock of sheep with his tree-climbing ability, they remained distinctly under whelmed, finding grass more interesting than a 29 year old pubescent. Hitting tarmac for the first time in the ride we made our way up Scugdale to the road’s end at Scugdale Hall, preparing for the big push up the bridleway through Barker’s Crags before remounting to battle our way through assorted peat bogs until Brian’s Pond. All that remained was to retrace our tyre tracks over Carlton Bank and down the gliding club access road we’d panted our way up a few hours earlier, soon we were tucking into our Christmas dinners, the cold and mud and peat swamps erased from our memories by plate after plate of food.

29^th. The last ride of the year is upon us and we decided to make it an easy one, a single ascent, from Clay Bank car park up Carr Ridge, followed by a nice, flat, blast along the old rail track to The Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge. And that’s how it went, no mechanicals, no punctures, no falls, no submissions, the only problem was the amount of people in the pub. Obviously working off the xmas excess is in vogue this holiday season, in fact it took us so long to be served there was a real possibility of finishing the ride in the dark. The steak sandwich and chips is well worth the wait though, it was getting a bit dusky when we reached the car park but not a problem at all. Another year over and looking back it’s not been a bad one, we’ve been a few different places and had a few laughs along the way. I think the overriding memory of 2008 will be mud, the trails were in winter condition by September and the rain kept coming.