I see it's been almost a year since my last post. Then I did herald the arrival of the mountainbikedurham.com website.

Obviously things have been delayed somewhat.

In the meantime check out this website for details of some great riding in the North East of England.

http://www.visitnortheastengland.com/mtb/

You can even win an iPod!







http://www.visitnortheastengland.com/mtb/

Mountain Bike Durham is not well....

So after not posting for months and months I decide to post to say that I'm working on a new website - www.mountainbikedurham.com which will be up and running very very soon!

In the meantime here is a short film about the dangers of the sport:

Make some noise...

Out this morning with youngest daughter on trailer bike and old friends G & F and their daughter on her bike. G took us on a circular off-road route from Seaham , taking in South Hetton, Murton and Dawdon. There seems to be a lot of new off road tracks in that area and they seem worthy of further exploration.

Joined the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) today - they do a lot of work around rights of way access and trail building. I've added a link to their website so take a look and join.

Concert for Diana on telly tonight. P Diddy shouted out: "If you miss Princess Diana - make some noise!" Priceless.

Google Maps 2

So I've taken the plunge with Picasa. Installed on PC that only has a few pictures on it reducing my worries about privacy greatly!

And I have tried out adding a photo to the Google map for the Cassop Vale route, and it seems to work!

This is a "good thing" : it resolves many of the problems that I had encountered when trying to work out how to mtb routes here. Using Google maps means that these can be viewed easily, linked to, printed off easily, turned into jpeg relatively easily and you can even get directions to any point on it, meaning that for loops the "start" can be anywhere you want it to be.

This whole project is taking a lot longer than I ever imagined but now I feel some progress has been made.

Progress with maps!

Yes! Managed to sort out that Google MyMaps difficulty I was experiencing. Think I have that sorted now.

I want to include some photos in the maps so I'm thinking that Picasa may be the way to go. MyMaps won't let me upload from PC just a url. I am a little concerned about privacy issues and what it will do to my photos so I need to read a little more about this before I commit fully!

I've mapped the Cassop Vale route. Have a look at the first draft - its without descriptions yet. I will add these in text , with map references and photos. I'll also paste a written description in as a post ( unless a better way is found). That will mean that there's two ways of viewing the route.

I've got a load more pictures to add to the Great Glen Way post - I got copies of M's today. He is back up there over next few days repeating the route by boat (you know what I mean).

Wot no biking? Coffee, ID Cards & Dinosaurs

Bank Holiday Weekend: Family trip to London - in dreadful weather. We stayed with my brother and his family. It was really good to see spend some them. Went to Redbridge Green Fair. It was very wet and soggy - but did find out about the anti-ID card campaign. Also picked up some Zapatista Coffee, which I'm told is "excellent". More info here .

At the Green Fair looked over some Metropolitan Police bikes with my brother. There was a very "keen" community support officer who gave us a guided tour of the bikes. Much amusement! After dishing out some police balloons to the kids he then promptly gave chase to our group (on foot) and informed us that he was going to take them away from aforementioned children as there was a health and safety issue! Result - 1 child in tears and an important lesson learned no doubt.

Took in the Natural History Museum which was absolutely heaving - but worth the visit. Dinosaurs are good - if you get the chance go see.

Also got to the Doctor Who shop in East Ham - kids loved it and we spent a fortune.

No biking done but did discuss a future trip to Scotland with brother - likely to be in October.

As you can see the pictures in the header didn't work out as I hoped so I reverted to the basic! Oh and no progress on the google maps yet!

Starting out .....

The first posting on my first blog! As they say around these parts "Whey aye!".

I've had a germ of an idea for about a year now to share details of some routes in and around County Durham for mountain bikers. Perhaps I'll be the only one who ever reads this ( and if so then so be it!) but if even one other person gets out on their bike and comes home with a grin on their face as a result of visiting this blog then I'll have achieved what I set out to do.

I've yet to work out quite how to paste up route maps but no doubt I'll find a way. I'll add some photos to illustrate things.

I guess I'll also put some other stuff in here too. Music and politics probably. And the odd rant about something which probably no-one else would find in the slightest irritating - isn't that what bloggers do?.

I'm off to Scotland in the morning to ride the Great Glen Cycle Way. I've wanted to ride that for a few years and at long last it's all organised. Its not particularly tough but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll post if I can.

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