Land's End Trial 2010

This year's Land's End was the wettest for along time and not many cars got as far up Blue Hills 2 as Howard Clinton of Ponsanooth managed in this V8 Marlin. Even then he didn't make it, despite lighting up his tyres. I reckon I saw 12-15 cars get up during the whole afternoon. I left at about 1800 when cars were queuing up the opposite side of the valley. Bad weather had delayed proceedings and although I was togged up nicely against the wet I was getting cold, having been there from about 1200.

It rained very hard at one point so I laid off taking pictures for a while for fear of waterlogging my equipment (Oh Matron!) but as the sun came out so did my camera.

Regular readers of this blog may remember the exploits of the Team Robert trials team in previous Land's End Trials. Rob Robinson-Collins (who is commonly known as Binky to distinguish himself from me, Ginger) passengered Dave Turner in his Mazda MX-5 this year. This was their first time out and Dave said they actually had too much grip. He'd also supplied a modified diff to Dennis Greenslade and Sheree Tonkin who were in the only other MX-5 to compete. Dave's own diff remained unmodified but that's the trialling fraternity for you - generous almost to a fault.

Dave has now been made an honorary Robert in recognition of his endeavours and is now known as Algy.

However, Binky and Algy didn't get up Blue Hills 2. Considering the illustrious company who also failed the section, their subsequent ascent on the winch, which the crowd dubbed "The Haul of Shame", was not so ignominious as usual.

They were happy enough with a Finisher's Certificate and so were Dennis and Sheree, although apparently their alternator failed just after signing off at The Crossroads Motel at Scorrier.

The bikes did pretty well in view of the conditions. I would really like to look at Joe Stollery's Royal Enfield Constellation more closely. This looked like a Vintage Thing candidate but it was too wet for photos and there wasn't really the opportunity to quiz the pilot about his steed.

It's always good to see the sidecars work their way up Blue Hills 2. There's something heroic about their glorious struggle. In this case it's Simon & Deborah Eddy on their XR650 outfit. And - yes - they cleared the section in a short but magnificent flurry of successful chairs that ascended the hill. Many solos came acropper having just turned into the final corner despite the best efforts of the crowd to will them on. I think the MCC working party had put in an unlucky bump on the apex.

Blue Hills 2 has been straightened out a bit since last year and was muddied just out of the restart box. This box offered considerable choice of stopping points for the competitor but nearly everyone chose to take as long a run up as they could. Only those who got speed up quickly and managed to carry this through the bend and over the humps managed cleared the section, however.

I ran into Roger Ugalde, the clerk of the course, and he said he was pleased with the challenge of the trial this year. I knew a few entrants were concerned over the regularity section where they had to maintain a constant speed over a measured mile, because some wheel and tyre combinations could cause speedo errors.

"Whose idea was that? I asked him.

"Mine," he said, obviously very pleased he had created what I believe Micheal Heseltine used to call "creative tension".

And as we watched, the Bump and Grind team flew up Blue Hills in spectacular take no prisoners fashion, 1,2,3, just like that. This brought us most pleasure - seeing experts struggle a bit but succeed.