2019 Exeter Trial
I got up Simms. I broke a halfshaft. Everybody was brilliant. I had a great time.
That's the executive summary of this year's event. For a more detailed account, please read on.
Essentially the plan was this - meet Lee Peck (Mr Heritage Motorsport) at Okehampton to start from Betty Cottle's, get a feel for the car in my second event with it since the Camel Classic, make it to the finish at Torbay, meet up with my trialling family over the Club Supper, spin a few yarns, recount more tales of derring-do over a hearty breakfast, swing by Betty's again so Lee could pick up his truck (did you see what I did there?) and then drop the Arkley-MG back to Adrian Booth's workshop for another chinwag and perhaps a brew.
I got the first bit right. I also met a few familiar faces at the Okehampton start. Pete Adams was there with his two boys, Shaun and Scott. Their naturally aspirated diesel 205 now packs an LSD so it will be interesting to hear how that helps them. Shani was photographing machinery at Simms this year but they will probably be on the Cox-Triumph outfit again for the LET.
I successfully intercepted Binky who was navigating for Dave Turner in the Davester's BMW Z3. This car hasn't seen much trials action for the last two years so Dave was interested to see how it would perform after a couple of tweaks that resulted from his policy of continuous improvement.
Binky said he had completed the upgrade to the split-axle IFS on the Candidi Provocatores Allard. Next job is bearing on the back axle and with that it would be fit for the LET We also discussed again using his recently acquired outfit. I really must get up to sunny Andover for a play with it.
The temperature dropped throughout the night and we saw the best ever will-o'-the-wisp on the A303. It was exactly like a ghostly shrouded figure from Scooby Doo. It came at us with its hideous mouth and eyes agape and rose over the bonnet, stretching out its arms as we approached.
The journey to the Hayne's Museum at Sparkford was otherwise uneventful although the gate on the Ford gearbox foxed me on the special test at Haske. To engage reverse you have move the lever forward. Whose idea was that? On everything else I have, you pull the gear lever backwards for reverse. Rest assured, no other Class 7 entrants will be troubled by my time.
Lee makes an excellent navigator. Years of driving experience mean he delivers bite sized chunks of the route card and not too early, not too late but just right.
Further conviviality ensured at Haynes when we caught up with Brian Partridge, Stuart Palmer (he of Austin Ulsteroid fame) and Ray and Hannah Ferguson who were in their supercharged Liege.
The first stage, Redscrip, was a new one to me with a holding control at Yarcombe beforehand to prevent vehicles holding up traffic on A30 as they turned right into a narrow lane. We emerged afterwards back onto the A30 but immediately opposite the gate for Underdown. Underdown is memorable for its descending approach. It would make an excellent section coming up. This year we even had a marshal to warn us about getting beached across the ruts in the forestry track.
By now we had standardised on rear tyre pressures of 14 psi. We had been running on the main roads at 25 in the front and 30 at the back and this helped the little car sit nicely at higher cruising speeds. Between the observed sections, 20 in the fronts and 25 in the rears was a good compromise.
There was a long delay at Normans Hump. The recovery tractor serving this section and Clinton got stuck and Land Rovers had be drafted in where required.
Class 7s had a restart on Normans Hump and I am pleased to say that we got away without selecting reverse by accident. The Arkley's hydraulic handbrake is a great help on restarts. The track as very bumpy though and I strayed off course a bit. The ruts threw me off course and I put to flight some marshals who should have been well out of harms way in the bushes. I decided that, as the Arkley seemed to find grip, I didn't need so much beans and took to relying on its useful gobs of torque to get us up the hills more sedately after that.
Clinton had a restart for Class 8s only. Lee was giving me lots of useful advice and he said you just want to float over the restart area so I visualised the will-o'-the-wisp and had an our of body experience.
In our frantic climb of Normans Hump, the indicators became hazard flashers when the should have been off. Fortunately, this had happened before on a little get together run by the Cornish Traction Preservation Club and Adrian Booth twigged that the whisker that makes contact against the, er, contacts in the switch had got bent. A quick flick with a grubby thumbnail and we could indicate to our fellow users again.
Waterloo seemed to catch a few out on the first bend but our little car didn't seem to struggle although a tree root wrong footed it briefly.
Stretes was a forestry track on the hills above Sidmouth except they've removed all the trees around it. It has a very long approach and we recognised where other sections had once been along the way. After looping around, we had the next special test at Core Hill, which went a bit better than the last one, and then a long descent to metalled roads again via some vicious cross track drainage channels.
Passaford Lane featured a rutted approach in a sunken track across a field and a restart for classes 3,4 and 5 but not us in Class 7. The exit route is quite twisty and entertaining but upon emerging at the summit we were rewarded with the most spectacular views along Branscombe Bay as the sun started to come up and the road back into Sidmouth took us down Peak Hill, a very early Exeter hill.
Lee said he really liked T junctions. "They are so unambiguous. You have to stop and you can only go either left or right."
I knew zactly what he meant. Give me a tea junction, I mean a T junction, any day over "Continue along A road for 8.57 miles when obscure right just before 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' sign."
Okay so I made that up but you get the idea.
By the time we got to Crealy was just about light and we had made up time from the earlier delays. Kingswell 1 and 2 had been abandoned so our next hill was Tillerton Steep.
I particularly wanted to get off the restart line on Tillerton as it was almost impossible with the Allard but I'd learnt a lot by watching Binky. He could manage to position the car so that it stopped at an angle across the opposing cambers. Once the flag of the restart marshals went down, he had the front wheels pointing down hill slightly and this meant that we had a critical bit of forward movement that helped us get away. Waggling the front wheels also helped us get going if we got really stuck.
In the event, I wasn't put to the test.
There was a long delay at the holding control that prevented too much congestion on the lane leading to Tillerton and, as we sat there for about an hour, word came back to us that the bikes had been having bog problems getting up and being recovered.
Dribs and drabs of bikes and then cars came passed us, as they set off for Fingle having completed the section and Brian Partridge and Richard Nikel pulled up beside us at one point to gleefully tell us that the restart for Class 8 and 7 had been scratched.
Tillerton was still a challenge, though, and I was delighted to get to the top.
Fingle is an old favourite. It goes on and on and has many sharp bends and drainage channels that can punish any complacency. After the first hairpin, the right hand rut was deeply cut out so we climbed up at an angle with most of the weight on the right wheels. Lee reckoned it was far worse last year and we managed to keep going although it looked like a number of cars had taken the higher corners too tightly resulting in the inner wheel hooking up on a drainage channel.
Wooston Steep soon followed and we had out next restart. The little Arkley-MG dug in beautifully and we got away cleanly. I had to be careful on the way out because the track was narrow and descended sharply at on point with a sheer drop on the left.
After the noise and diff tests, I began to notice an increasing enthusiasm on my navigator's part for T junctions. Lee began pronouncing them as Tea junctions and it was a natural progression from there to TEA and CAKE junctions. Note the capitals.
Fortunately for us, we had to make a 30 minute scheduled rest stop at Ilsington Parish Hall and I think the parishioners cakes were better than ever this year. We both had to have enormous slices of succulent fruit cake with cherries in it and an amazing chocolate cake covered in white chocolate stars.
We were clean so far.
Simms was the one hill I wanted to get up most of all. As part of the Candidi Provocatores, we made it to the start line twice only to be told that the hill was being pulled and to use the escape route and carry on to the next section. In 2016, we broke a halfshaft. In 2015, we hit a bump so hard it stopped us dead. But in 2014 we cleared it!
We chatted to people walking back up to the village as we waited our turn. Lee recruited some potential members for the MCC. He really is an ambassador for the sport. The general opinion from the spectators was not to ease off until we at the very top. So many had been caught out within a few feet of the section ends boards. Maybe the route card instructions to stop promptly at the top wrong footed them.
This year Class 7s had a restart very low after the right hand bend at the foot of the hill. "Don't be too cautious," said Lee. "We've got to make the restart box." He hunkered down and braced his feet close to the seat for some serious bouncing. "It'll be rocky! 14 psi is gonna be fine! We've got two good spare tyres and plenty of inner tubes! It's time to bank some of those spares if we need to!"
I let the clutch out gently to approach our restart and the Arkley-MG dug in. "Straighten up as much as you can," said my mudbrother. "A little higher - front wheels out, rear wheels in, that's it!"
We sat there and took in the view. This place is steeped in history. The atmosphere is electric. You can't hear once the engine's going but any spectator will tell you - the crowd is noisily enthusiastic. Even the trees would be cheering us on.
The flag had gone down and the engine fluffed ever so slightly. I eased off the line using the sweet spot I'd found during the night and we were away. There's another sweet spot just beneath where the engine really comes on cam and using that we gained some momentum. When we hit the bumps I goosed it a bit more and we began to fly. The bumps threatened to push us off to either side but Normans Hump had shown me the importance of keeping the plot straight and we managed to keep it going up the middle. We became airborne a couple of times but I don't think we had all wheels off the ground and having got the plot going we had enough momentum to carry us over the final bombhole. We were clear so far at the top of Simms!
Now I could hear the cheering....
And who should be there but non other than Nigel Cowling who had passengered in the Arkley-MG bacakalong. I'd bumped into him at Okehampton and here he was again. "I told you what a great car it was!" he said.
We'd blown a tyre near the top so quickly changed it at the top using the splendid hydraulic and electric ram Professor Booth had developed for it. He wants it back for the blown Midget he's building but I would really like a replica please, Age.
There was another long wait for Tipley and the light was going by the time we crossed the road from Lenda Lane holding control. Unsuccessful competitors had to come back down the hill and squeeze passed the hopeful yet to attempt the hill. There's not much room and the culvert taking the stream under the track had collapsed. The marshals - members of the BSA Front Wheel Drive Club no less - had put some timbers in the stream to fill the gap but they kept floating about and needed constant re-adjustment.
In fact these guys really had their work cut out. the delay was because Tipley was being a bastard. Car number 150, the Peugeot 206 of Dick Feather and Andy Westlake, ended up on its side. That took some sorting out. then number 148 went up the BMW 318 of Tom Moore and Abi Eakers went up but soon came back down again with some splendid reversing lights.
Blinking in LED envy, we took up position and when the start marshal said, "Gentlemen, in your own time," we naturally wondered to whom he was speaking.
Off we went! God it was rough, rougher than anything we had encountered so far. I reckon it beat anything we'd seen on the sole Edinburgh trial that the Candid Provocateurs rocked up to.
The only way was up and we got passed the restart box and went on and on, crashing over the rocks until it smoothed pout a bit. Then we turned a corner and it got worse again! worse than ever! And about twenty feet from the section end boards the drive stopped driving.
It wasn't another puncture. It was the nearside driveshaft. that far up the hill there was no recovery either. We couldn't move and the marshals must have assumed we had cleared the section because a Beetle soon came up behind us but we weren't going anywhere.
Well, we weren't until the all-terrain BSA owners joined us. With Lee and two of them on the front recovery strop and the rest pushing they heaved us up by degrees, on the count of three, in short bursts of a few feet at a time - with me in the car using the hydraulic handbrake to stop any rolling back when they took a breather.
At last, with a final superhuman effort they heaved me and the Arkley over the last hump and we more or less rolled into a gateway to a field.
The Beetle crew were able to get going again, having claimed a baulk. I suppose it was rather flattering that the marshals thought we out of the section.
Lee and I did a post mortem. Age had kitted us out with a spare shaft and we even had another prop. Lee had the shaft out in no time and it wasn't good news - the shaft had broken at the inner most end. A little stump remained in the diff and we couldn't get it out.
We ran through our options. The first thing was to get back to relative civilisation in the form of metalled roads. By now we had been joined by Simon Woodall and Barbara Selkirk in their Beach Buggy and Simon said he could tow us back down the exit track.
Cain and Abel. What a ride that was! The hydraulic handbrake helped to keep the tow rope taut without locking up our front wheels but I still had to steer with just the one hand.
Simon got us to the road but carried on until we got to the first settlement so we could describe our position to someone on a phone and get recovered. This village was Liverton and although the roads are narrow we found a wide bit close to a junction.
I called up the AA and they came quite quickly but the patrolman said he couldn't help us because we had obvious been involved in competition. This had never been an issue on three previous occasions - twice with the Allard and once with the Triumph-Cox outfit - but the patrolman assured us that if he called a relay truck to us the driver would never take us on board.
We couldn't raise anyone with a trailer and as by now it was getting dark and getting colder I decide to bite the bullet and use the recovery firm the patrolman recommended - Yalberton Autos.
The AA left and Lee helped replace the chain on one of the bikes some kids were riding. They'd been spectating at Simms and had ridden them up the hill in the dark after everyone had gone home. They commiserated with us and Lee did his ambassador for the sport thing again. Maybe they will be joining us in the lists of entrants one day. Wouldn't that be great?
Within another hour, Yalberton Autos arrived and loaded us up without any trouble.
Our original plan had been to finish at Torbay and carouse with everyone at the club supper before falling into bed at the hotel. Come the morning we would join other reprobates like Binky, Dave Turner, Dennis Greenslade and Richard and Barbara Uren who tend to do their own thing after the trial. then I would take Lee back to his truck parked at Betty Cottle's in sunny Okehampton before heading back to Adrian Booth's workshop where the Arkley currently lives.
The new plan was get recovered to Age's workshop, blag a lift to my place to get my Micra keys, and then get Lee back to his truck.
What happened was - we got back to Age's and he questioned my parentage for clearing Simms. He'd been spectating there and all his mudbrothers had been taking the rise out of him for NOT clearing it last year! Oh dear.
Age leant us his Corsa so there was a quick and cat bewildering visit to my house and instead of Betty Cottle's we went to Torbay where we just the end of the club supper. In fact the bar was on the point of closing and we hadn't had any refreshment since Ilsington.
So, when Kathy Martin and Celia Walton suggested a pub nearby we joined them and their entourage.
Kathy had received a Triple at the supper and was in the mood to celebrate. Celia had been marshalling on Waterloo, which had caught a lot of people out this year. George Osborn was also there and I met Dave Middleditch at last.
MCC members had taken over the Torbay Premier Inn so we watched vids of trial on laptops and wondered what we could have done differently.
Lee said full bore attack was the only way to approach a section like Tipley and it was just bad luck that we snapped a shaft. The vid shows a puff of dust as the offside rear tyre blows just near the top of Simms. A pair of shafts made of En24 steel should do the trick and he knows someone who can help get some. Top banana!
I didn't wake up until half nine and Lee was away soundo. We gave Kathy a knock and she appeared at her door in full mountain bike active wear, bright eyed and bushy tailed, having been riding round the town on her push bike.
"I need to get fit," she said.
Let's just think about this. Kathy had just completed an all night long-distance trial on a motorcycle (albeit her ride was the capable Humphrey) and had cleared all the hills again having been presented the night before with a Triple. And she wanted to get fit - that's like even fitter....
Anyway enough of that nonsense.
We caught up with Binks and Dave over a health conscious fry up. Dave was a bit disappointed with his performance but he hadn't been out in the Z3 for two years. Dennis said Tipley was "Evil!" Too right.
I wondered aloud why they had kept Tipley in when they had scratched Kinsgwell. From memory there wasn't much to Kingswell. It's more of a holding control than a challenging MCC section. The general opinion was that they didn't want to reduce the numbers of sections any further.
I had a quick chat with the Belgian crew of Alain Deneyer and Gunther Van Den Brande. They had prepared a 1303 Beetle but came in their old one in the end, the one they rebuilt in the nick of time to compete last year.
After another chinwag with Kathy, I took my mudbrother Lee back up to Okehampton to pickup his truck (I'm doing it again if you didn't see what I did earlier).
Despite the mechanical failure, we'd had a great time and everyone had ended up roughly where they'd needed to be at the end.
Lee will be entered in the 2019 LET so will be getting a wriggle on with the latest Kraken.
I went back to Doublebois to see Adrian again for an enthusiastic brew and planning session. We had another look at the axle but the diff is going to have to come out to get the broken end out.
That axle won't come apart until we have new shafts to put in it but my mudbrothers Age and Lee are already on the case.
So, lot's of LFE - Learning From Experience - and I am really looking forward to the 2019 LET at Easter, whether it be on three wheels (Binky's new outfit) or four (the Allard or the Arkley).
That's the executive summary of this year's event. For a more detailed account, please read on.
Essentially the plan was this - meet Lee Peck (Mr Heritage Motorsport) at Okehampton to start from Betty Cottle's, get a feel for the car in my second event with it since the Camel Classic, make it to the finish at Torbay, meet up with my trialling family over the Club Supper, spin a few yarns, recount more tales of derring-do over a hearty breakfast, swing by Betty's again so Lee could pick up his truck (did you see what I did there?) and then drop the Arkley-MG back to Adrian Booth's workshop for another chinwag and perhaps a brew.
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| Scrutineering at Betty Cottle's. The pub is much cosier inside |
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| The Peugeot 205 of Pete Adams and his boys. I like these cars a lot but perhaps should take more pictures with people in. I spent a lot of time yapping with dudes like Pete, though. |
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| That's a 23 inch front wheel on this Hinda XL250 |
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| This Suzuki SP370 was probably my favourite out of the bikes that started from Okehampton |
The journey to the Hayne's Museum at Sparkford was otherwise uneventful although the gate on the Ford gearbox foxed me on the special test at Haske. To engage reverse you have move the lever forward. Whose idea was that? On everything else I have, you pull the gear lever backwards for reverse. Rest assured, no other Class 7 entrants will be troubled by my time.
Lee makes an excellent navigator. Years of driving experience mean he delivers bite sized chunks of the route card and not too early, not too late but just right.
Further conviviality ensured at Haynes when we caught up with Brian Partridge, Stuart Palmer (he of Austin Ulsteroid fame) and Ray and Hannah Ferguson who were in their supercharged Liege.
The first stage, Redscrip, was a new one to me with a holding control at Yarcombe beforehand to prevent vehicles holding up traffic on A30 as they turned right into a narrow lane. We emerged afterwards back onto the A30 but immediately opposite the gate for Underdown. Underdown is memorable for its descending approach. It would make an excellent section coming up. This year we even had a marshal to warn us about getting beached across the ruts in the forestry track.
By now we had standardised on rear tyre pressures of 14 psi. We had been running on the main roads at 25 in the front and 30 at the back and this helped the little car sit nicely at higher cruising speeds. Between the observed sections, 20 in the fronts and 25 in the rears was a good compromise.
 |
Brad Mason was riding this cheeky little Kurz RT1, all 50cc of it. I am really interested to see how he got on.
|
As we approached Hangmans Stone, I foolishly tried to clean the screen with the washer jets but the water froze and we had to pull over after I had to drive using a postage stamp sized clear area of the screen and sixth and seventh senses cranked up to maximum.
There was a long delay at Normans Hump. The recovery tractor serving this section and Clinton got stuck and Land Rovers had be drafted in where required.
Class 7s had a restart on Normans Hump and I am pleased to say that we got away without selecting reverse by accident. The Arkley's hydraulic handbrake is a great help on restarts. The track as very bumpy though and I strayed off course a bit. The ruts threw me off course and I put to flight some marshals who should have been well out of harms way in the bushes. I decided that, as the Arkley seemed to find grip, I didn't need so much beans and took to relying on its useful gobs of torque to get us up the hills more sedately after that.
Clinton had a restart for Class 8s only. Lee was giving me lots of useful advice and he said you just want to float over the restart area so I visualised the will-o'-the-wisp and had an our of body experience.
In our frantic climb of Normans Hump, the indicators became hazard flashers when the should have been off. Fortunately, this had happened before on a little get together run by the Cornish Traction Preservation Club and Adrian Booth twigged that the whisker that makes contact against the, er, contacts in the switch had got bent. A quick flick with a grubby thumbnail and we could indicate to our fellow users again.
Waterloo seemed to catch a few out on the first bend but our little car didn't seem to struggle although a tree root wrong footed it briefly.
Stretes was a forestry track on the hills above Sidmouth except they've removed all the trees around it. It has a very long approach and we recognised where other sections had once been along the way. After looping around, we had the next special test at Core Hill, which went a bit better than the last one, and then a long descent to metalled roads again via some vicious cross track drainage channels.
 |
| Lee hides from the dawn as he pretends to pump up the tyres after Passaford Lane. |
Lee said he really liked T junctions. "They are so unambiguous. You have to stop and you can only go either left or right."
I knew zactly what he meant. Give me a tea junction, I mean a T junction, any day over "Continue along A road for 8.57 miles when obscure right just before 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' sign."
Okay so I made that up but you get the idea.
By the time we got to Crealy was just about light and we had made up time from the earlier delays. Kingswell 1 and 2 had been abandoned so our next hill was Tillerton Steep.
 |
| Starsky and Hutch Volvo 360 of Martin Bell and Brook Bonome at Crealy |
In the event, I wasn't put to the test.
 |
| We're hoping they'll let us into the big house. What a wasted opportunity. The landed gentry could have thrown open their doors to us as we waited to be summoned to perform on Tillerton Steep |
Dribs and drabs of bikes and then cars came passed us, as they set off for Fingle having completed the section and Brian Partridge and Richard Nikel pulled up beside us at one point to gleefully tell us that the restart for Class 8 and 7 had been scratched.
Tillerton was still a challenge, though, and I was delighted to get to the top.
 |
| Ryan Tonkin shows off his fluency in Veedub with the Belgian crew. |
Wooston Steep soon followed and we had out next restart. The little Arkley-MG dug in beautifully and we got away cleanly. I had to be careful on the way out because the track was narrow and descended sharply at on point with a sheer drop on the left.
After the noise and diff tests, I began to notice an increasing enthusiasm on my navigator's part for T junctions. Lee began pronouncing them as Tea junctions and it was a natural progression from there to TEA and CAKE junctions. Note the capitals.
Fortunately for us, we had to make a 30 minute scheduled rest stop at Ilsington Parish Hall and I think the parishioners cakes were better than ever this year. We both had to have enormous slices of succulent fruit cake with cherries in it and an amazing chocolate cake covered in white chocolate stars.
We were clean so far.
Simms was the one hill I wanted to get up most of all. As part of the Candidi Provocatores, we made it to the start line twice only to be told that the hill was being pulled and to use the escape route and carry on to the next section. In 2016, we broke a halfshaft. In 2015, we hit a bump so hard it stopped us dead. But in 2014 we cleared it!
We chatted to people walking back up to the village as we waited our turn. Lee recruited some potential members for the MCC. He really is an ambassador for the sport. The general opinion from the spectators was not to ease off until we at the very top. So many had been caught out within a few feet of the section ends boards. Maybe the route card instructions to stop promptly at the top wrong footed them.
This year Class 7s had a restart very low after the right hand bend at the foot of the hill. "Don't be too cautious," said Lee. "We've got to make the restart box." He hunkered down and braced his feet close to the seat for some serious bouncing. "It'll be rocky! 14 psi is gonna be fine! We've got two good spare tyres and plenty of inner tubes! It's time to bank some of those spares if we need to!"
I let the clutch out gently to approach our restart and the Arkley-MG dug in. "Straighten up as much as you can," said my mudbrother. "A little higher - front wheels out, rear wheels in, that's it!"
We sat there and took in the view. This place is steeped in history. The atmosphere is electric. You can't hear once the engine's going but any spectator will tell you - the crowd is noisily enthusiastic. Even the trees would be cheering us on.
The flag had gone down and the engine fluffed ever so slightly. I eased off the line using the sweet spot I'd found during the night and we were away. There's another sweet spot just beneath where the engine really comes on cam and using that we gained some momentum. When we hit the bumps I goosed it a bit more and we began to fly. The bumps threatened to push us off to either side but Normans Hump had shown me the importance of keeping the plot straight and we managed to keep it going up the middle. We became airborne a couple of times but I don't think we had all wheels off the ground and having got the plot going we had enough momentum to carry us over the final bombhole. We were clear so far at the top of Simms!
Now I could hear the cheering....
And who should be there but non other than Nigel Cowling who had passengered in the Arkley-MG bacakalong. I'd bumped into him at Okehampton and here he was again. "I told you what a great car it was!" he said.
We'd blown a tyre near the top so quickly changed it at the top using the splendid hydraulic and electric ram Professor Booth had developed for it. He wants it back for the blown Midget he's building but I would really like a replica please, Age.
There was another long wait for Tipley and the light was going by the time we crossed the road from Lenda Lane holding control. Unsuccessful competitors had to come back down the hill and squeeze passed the hopeful yet to attempt the hill. There's not much room and the culvert taking the stream under the track had collapsed. The marshals - members of the BSA Front Wheel Drive Club no less - had put some timbers in the stream to fill the gap but they kept floating about and needed constant re-adjustment.
In fact these guys really had their work cut out. the delay was because Tipley was being a bastard. Car number 150, the Peugeot 206 of Dick Feather and Andy Westlake, ended up on its side. That took some sorting out. then number 148 went up the BMW 318 of Tom Moore and Abi Eakers went up but soon came back down again with some splendid reversing lights.
Blinking in LED envy, we took up position and when the start marshal said, "Gentlemen, in your own time," we naturally wondered to whom he was speaking.
We didn't have a restart but Class 8 did. "Don't forget to keep going at the restart box," said Lee. "Float through it!"
Off we went! God it was rough, rougher than anything we had encountered so far. I reckon it beat anything we'd seen on the sole Edinburgh trial that the Candid Provocateurs rocked up to.
The only way was up and we got passed the restart box and went on and on, crashing over the rocks until it smoothed pout a bit. Then we turned a corner and it got worse again! worse than ever! And about twenty feet from the section end boards the drive stopped driving.
It wasn't another puncture. It was the nearside driveshaft. that far up the hill there was no recovery either. We couldn't move and the marshals must have assumed we had cleared the section because a Beetle soon came up behind us but we weren't going anywhere.
Well, we weren't until the all-terrain BSA owners joined us. With Lee and two of them on the front recovery strop and the rest pushing they heaved us up by degrees, on the count of three, in short bursts of a few feet at a time - with me in the car using the hydraulic handbrake to stop any rolling back when they took a breather.
At last, with a final superhuman effort they heaved me and the Arkley over the last hump and we more or less rolled into a gateway to a field.
The Beetle crew were able to get going again, having claimed a baulk. I suppose it was rather flattering that the marshals thought we out of the section.
 |
| Like a snapped carrot |
We ran through our options. The first thing was to get back to relative civilisation in the form of metalled roads. By now we had been joined by Simon Woodall and Barbara Selkirk in their Beach Buggy and Simon said he could tow us back down the exit track.
Cain and Abel. What a ride that was! The hydraulic handbrake helped to keep the tow rope taut without locking up our front wheels but I still had to steer with just the one hand.
Simon got us to the road but carried on until we got to the first settlement so we could describe our position to someone on a phone and get recovered. This village was Liverton and although the roads are narrow we found a wide bit close to a junction.
I called up the AA and they came quite quickly but the patrolman said he couldn't help us because we had obvious been involved in competition. This had never been an issue on three previous occasions - twice with the Allard and once with the Triumph-Cox outfit - but the patrolman assured us that if he called a relay truck to us the driver would never take us on board.
We couldn't raise anyone with a trailer and as by now it was getting dark and getting colder I decide to bite the bullet and use the recovery firm the patrolman recommended - Yalberton Autos.
The AA left and Lee helped replace the chain on one of the bikes some kids were riding. They'd been spectating at Simms and had ridden them up the hill in the dark after everyone had gone home. They commiserated with us and Lee did his ambassador for the sport thing again. Maybe they will be joining us in the lists of entrants one day. Wouldn't that be great?
Within another hour, Yalberton Autos arrived and loaded us up without any trouble.
Our original plan had been to finish at Torbay and carouse with everyone at the club supper before falling into bed at the hotel. Come the morning we would join other reprobates like Binky, Dave Turner, Dennis Greenslade and Richard and Barbara Uren who tend to do their own thing after the trial. then I would take Lee back to his truck parked at Betty Cottle's in sunny Okehampton before heading back to Adrian Booth's workshop where the Arkley currently lives.
The new plan was get recovered to Age's workshop, blag a lift to my place to get my Micra keys, and then get Lee back to his truck.
What happened was - we got back to Age's and he questioned my parentage for clearing Simms. He'd been spectating there and all his mudbrothers had been taking the rise out of him for NOT clearing it last year! Oh dear.
Age leant us his Corsa so there was a quick and cat bewildering visit to my house and instead of Betty Cottle's we went to Torbay where we just the end of the club supper. In fact the bar was on the point of closing and we hadn't had any refreshment since Ilsington.
So, when Kathy Martin and Celia Walton suggested a pub nearby we joined them and their entourage.
Kathy had received a Triple at the supper and was in the mood to celebrate. Celia had been marshalling on Waterloo, which had caught a lot of people out this year. George Osborn was also there and I met Dave Middleditch at last.
MCC members had taken over the Torbay Premier Inn so we watched vids of trial on laptops and wondered what we could have done differently.
Lee said full bore attack was the only way to approach a section like Tipley and it was just bad luck that we snapped a shaft. The vid shows a puff of dust as the offside rear tyre blows just near the top of Simms. A pair of shafts made of En24 steel should do the trick and he knows someone who can help get some. Top banana!
I didn't wake up until half nine and Lee was away soundo. We gave Kathy a knock and she appeared at her door in full mountain bike active wear, bright eyed and bushy tailed, having been riding round the town on her push bike.
"I need to get fit," she said.
Let's just think about this. Kathy had just completed an all night long-distance trial on a motorcycle (albeit her ride was the capable Humphrey) and had cleared all the hills again having been presented the night before with a Triple. And she wanted to get fit - that's like even fitter....
Anyway enough of that nonsense.
We caught up with Binks and Dave over a health conscious fry up. Dave was a bit disappointed with his performance but he hadn't been out in the Z3 for two years. Dennis said Tipley was "Evil!" Too right.
I wondered aloud why they had kept Tipley in when they had scratched Kinsgwell. From memory there wasn't much to Kingswell. It's more of a holding control than a challenging MCC section. The general opinion was that they didn't want to reduce the numbers of sections any further.
I had a quick chat with the Belgian crew of Alain Deneyer and Gunther Van Den Brande. They had prepared a 1303 Beetle but came in their old one in the end, the one they rebuilt in the nick of time to compete last year.
After another chinwag with Kathy, I took my mudbrother Lee back up to Okehampton to pickup his truck (I'm doing it again if you didn't see what I did earlier).
Despite the mechanical failure, we'd had a great time and everyone had ended up roughly where they'd needed to be at the end.
Lee will be entered in the 2019 LET so will be getting a wriggle on with the latest Kraken.
I went back to Doublebois to see Adrian again for an enthusiastic brew and planning session. We had another look at the axle but the diff is going to have to come out to get the broken end out.
That axle won't come apart until we have new shafts to put in it but my mudbrothers Age and Lee are already on the case.
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| Adrian didn't seem too disheartened that I'd broken his old car. |
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