The 2019 (90th) Exeter Trial

Contemplating the route card over Christmas

I have just been plotting with my mud brother, the irrepressible Lee Peck, about the forthcoming 90th Exeter Trial.

The 90th!

Lee's Christmas shopping in Oxford. I had barely woken up as I am trying to bank sleep before the excitement of the festive season begins - Christmas, New Year, Exeter Trial. There is a LOT about which to get excited.

Lee will be passengering me in my recently acquired Arkley-MG Midget, running in Class 7. We'll be starting from Sourton Cross near Okehampton and as this is only the second outing with this car, after the Camel Classic earlier this month, we are out for the crack and a Finisher's certificate.

So what's new? Anything more than that is a bonus.

Shiny new trials car

The Arkley was owned by Ray Goodwright for many years and has been developed for much of that time by another mud brother, Adrian Booth. Age bought it last year and brought it back to life with lots of new panels. He competed in it last and his first event in the rebuilt car was the 89th Exeter Trial.

Before I can get to my new car I have to find a way around this fierce creature

Binky (aka Rob Robinson-Collins) is bouncing for the equally irrepressible Dave Turner in Dave's BMW Z3. They are also starting from Sourton and it will be good to see these other mud brothers. Dave is practically an honorary team member and dubbed Algy for a while as Rob and I were Candid Provocateurs (aka Team Robert or also Binky and Ginger - your brave boys, in a trials car or outfit, somewhere over England).

Binks still has the Allard but is at something of crossroads with it. We broke a perch bolt on the 2018 Land's End and when he removed the one on the other side that had a rusty crack through it as well. It's a well known design fault and weakness and Rob, being an engineer and only able to operate in terms of just right is good enough, was faced with a dilemma. Should he keep the car original or eradicate the weakness?

Meanwhile he's bought a Honda XLR650 sidecar outfit so we should be ought on that for the 2019 Land's End. In brackets we have put weather permitting after the 2018 affair but - as Lee points out - it's a late Easter next year so tee shirts and shorts, sun hats and Factor 100 sunblock will be the order of the event of that dusty scorching event, he said hopefully....

In the meantime, we intend to keep the roof down as much as possible so we can join in the banter with all our other mud brothers and sisters on next month's convivial classic trial.