Half a dozen innertubes, Cullen’s brake pads, Paul’s helmet (and whoever’s fence post it was), a selection of spokes, XTR rear mech, elderly Crud Guards, chain links, Mars Elite fork seals, Marin shock mount bushings plus the small matter of Stuart’s spine and Robin’s morale. Not a bad casualty list considering an unlucky 13 of us set out on Saturday for the Forum’s first big blind date ride.

For a start – despite everyone’s concern – the ultralight Trek STP made it round in one piece and Robin only collapsed into a coma 100yds from the van. SIS’s new banana Go-Bars were pronounced a success – if a little synthetic tasting and sweet for some – and the Fairholmes cafe was still dishing out the pies to make up for Kev being denied his mid-ride refuelling in Hope.

Our local route guides (cheers, Jon, Paul, Kev) kept us clear of the worst of the flood damage, but the months of rain had made a lot of the rocky sections even toothier than normal (hence the high puncture count) making for some hectic technical descents. Still the sky went a sort of limp blue occasionally to make up for the drizzle that chased us home from Edale cross, and we even managed a sightseeing stop on the broken road at Mam tor.

It might have taken us over 200 e-mails to get the ball rolling but we had riders turning up from Epping, Manchester, Harrogate, Leeds as well as the Glossop, Hayfield and Sheffield locals. Most of us had never met before, and there was a fair spread of riding abilities and rigs but we had an absolute blast over some excellent trails.
We’ll certainly be doing it again (once we’ve recovered) and all it’ll take to organise an outing in your own area is to get a posting up on the Forum with a location or a date and take it from there.

In the meantime, thanks for everyone who turned up, thanks to Jon and Kev for mucking out the stables for the southers and thanks to the anonymous rambler who advised “be careful, you don’t want to crash”. The only question remaining is where was Brian Blessed’s Cat?