A Northumberland Visit - Saturday

We decided to just have a weekend of biking & on the Northumbria TRF FB page, there was a note about a planned ride for the Saturday, so a quick reply saw us leaving the house at 6am, all packed up & ready to play... 2 hours later we're parked in a layby near Belsay, waiting for a random number of people to turn up for a ride out. Kevin & Mark turned up first, a hesitant but warm welcome amongst strangers, then the chat started about each others bikes... (3 KTM's, a 250, 350 & a 400), A CRF 250 & the old DR... always a good ground breaker...

Simon turned up last having had problems with his GPS setup, so that was the gang, 5 of us, some bikes, mud oh & a couple of river crossings!!

KTM Club...

The first lane was just across the road, straight into muddy ruts between some fields covered in the usual eerie Northumberland mist... lots of dancing around trying to keep the bike upright saw us back on tarmac, a few more lanes saw us at a junction where a load of roadworks was going on, nobody was sure whether the lane at the end was open, so I headed down to look, slurry & some major roadworks greeted me, then the road workers so I turned around & we missed out the lane, which now looks like it's been built over anyway...

A lane or a slurry pit??

From here several more good muddy lanes were ridden before our first two rivers. The first was an easy traverse, the second turned out to be too deep to cross!!

Kev waded across to check the depth, but as we had 3 KTM's with us, we bailed... another quick detour...

Lucy lining up for the first of the days rivers...

Kev going fishing???

A bit of a snack in a village & some boot draining time for Kev had us on our way again, narrowly avoiding helping the local villagers to get their christmas tree up on the green!!

Boot draining & sock wringing times

Next up was a bit of a river epic, two rivers next to each other, with a little island between them, the first saw most of us across, but Lucy dropped her bike in & completely submerged it!! Oh shit... we ran in to get the bike out, then a bit of time draining the engine & airbox of water, get the bike upside down, dry the spark plug etc & she started... phew!!

The second river turned out to be too deep to cross again, so a return through the first saw us back into the lanes again... another lesson learned, the KTM tool kit needs a sponge!!

Yep It's pretty deep!

Drain that airbox again!!

The day finished up with Lucy having a second dunking, this getting a lot more damp than the first time, Kev had the nut that holds his rear shock together drop off after the last river, so limp home for some spanner work tomorrow, the remaining four headed back to Ogle to return to the layby via our first lane of the day, from here, Simon & Mark headed back home, Lucy & I headed back to the Lakes, Lucy for a hot shower & me for some beer!!

Another fab day out on bikes, some great new people, some pretty different lanes compared to the Lakes stuff & a lot of smiles & laughter!!

Oh & Lucy has designed a KTM sponge, patent pending!! ;-), contact us for the sales hotline now...

 

 Simon has done a great YouTube vid, for all of the river crossings... happy days!! Cheers for this Simon...