2020 Launceston Trial

Best picture of the day. I love the dappled lighting effect on this and it's a red/amber/green! Photo : Graham Beddoe

This year’s Launceston Trial was supposed to have occurred on 9^th February but Storm Ciara span out of the Atlantic and the Launceston and North Cornwall Motor Club postponed the trial to 15^th March. The weather on the day was wet to begin with but dried up in the afternoon and was even sunny by the end of the trial.

Class 7 line up of Phillip Thomas, Francis Thomas with their Dutton Meloses and Steven Ball with his Marlin.

The Launceston Trial is a single venue trial and when I travelled to Lew Woods with Mr Graham Beddoe through the backroads, it was raining and had been for some time. Water was running off the waterlogged fields and onto the road. Conditions once in the woods were very wet.

After scrutineering and signing on, we received a beautifully executed map of the woods, similar to last year’s. I believe the map was the work of Warin Kelly.

Arkley-MG and the Torum of Simon Oates at the start. note all the bikes sheltering in the tanilising shed. It was pissing down

The first section, Zak’s Track, looked rather daunting. My memory from last year was of an easy start to proceedings but in the event we managed to get away from the restart.

The third one was called The Short One and had been singled out for inclusion on the Tamar Trial. This was where we had the shenanigans getting Mike Warnes’ rather splendidly modified Smart Roadster out of the section. We didn’t have that sort of issue on the Launceston this time. I was pleased to have got away from the start line.

This was a feat beyond me for the next section, Simon’s Folly. I gather that after I fruitlessly dug some big holes on the start line, the marshals moved it back a bit. I managed to get the car to move but only sideways into a tree. I had to be hauled out by a band of marshals and my fellow competitors….

James Shallcross was the only entrant in Class 1 and went well despite a slipping clutch. The Anglia estate of Paul Gillo is world famous on the Cornish trialling scene

I found the claggy, muddy sections very difficult to negotiate and on Section 7, Eastcott Down, I was finding tree roots that snagged me off into the undergrowth. We made our own exits that suited nobody else.

On Section 10, Rip n Roar, I got confused as I approached the start line. The canes marking the hill begin at 12 so when I saw a pole with 10 on it, I thought I was already on the section. There were two restart lines on yellow and a higher, red one for the Class 8s. I took this to be a restart box and stopped without any wheels astride any line. Dick Bolt pithily showed me the error of my ways but we got away alright and carried on out of the section without any outside assistance. This was a much better effort than last year when we ventured off sideways into the brush before having to be inched back and forth until we could be turned around by Dick and his long-suffering fellow marshals. I’d blanked this from memory until revisiting it a year later.

Graham with a Vintage Thing that was not on the entry list

This vague feeling of putting in a better performance than last year stayed with us for a while although we didn’t make any really memorable climbs. Graham and I high fived only twice during the day.

Sections 11 and 12, Norman’s Stump and Stumps R Us, were challenging and typically stumpy but, thankfully we had no restarts.

On Norman's Stump, Simon Oates had suffered a rear axle failure on his Torum. After a brief commiseration we managed to tow him some of the way out but at last the gradient proved too much and the Arkley-MG just span its wheels. I should have taken a picture of the Torum afterwards. Simon couldn't see where we were going because we'd sprayed his car with mud.

Cross flow powered Cannon TRS of Matt Johnston and Fugitive of Duncan Stephens. Photo : Graham Beddoe

Lunch was one of the best meals in a bap that I’ve ever had. Oxo's produce the Hunter’s Chicken bap, which had a bit of everything in it plus cheese! I will have to look out for this again.

We got further round Section 14, the Esses, than before but on Section 15, The Bank, we couldn’t get up the bank. Again.

There was a small queue on Section 16, Ashley’s Short Cut. This began in some leaf mould before crossing a forestry track and heading up between trees and over tree roots. After looping around at the top, you then came gingerly down the section again but at least you were doing it forwards and not in reverse.

I need to pay more attention to the bikes but this was mostly all that we saw of them

I fell into conversation with Norton Selwood who was bouncing for Craig Allen in his green Beetle. We watched the other Class 7s go up, father and son rivals Francis and Phillip Thomas in their pair of Dutton Meloses and then Steve Ball in his Marlin. They all had their work cut out and span their wheels right from the start before disappearing into the trees.

Norton asked me what tyre pressures I was using. I was down to 10psi by then but he strongly advised going down to about 6. I compromised on 8 because we didn’t have too many expendable rear tyres. I was using up the old ones with damaged sidewalls and keeping the better ones for the drive home, which involved a short stretch of the A30.

Going down to 8psi made a noticeable difference, however. We got away alright and manged to burn our way through the leaf mould to bounce across the forestry track. We were climbing really well when I misread the section and went the wrong way! Nigel Cowling popped out of the ground – like he does – and said we could have cleaned it. I think he was right. He seemed more annoyed on my behalf than I was.

The old Mountain Goat Anglia estate is a veteran of many a Land's End Trial. Good to see it out again although I heard someone say its back axle was playing up. Still finished the course though.

There was then a long drive back over to the Eastcott end of the forest and maybe I should have put some more air in the tyres for the in between section jaunt. By the time we looped back east again to come to Nigel’s Nip, we had a flat tyre. Norton said, “Why don’t you try it with it flat?” With nothing to lose, we gave it a go and put in a reasonable climb but I changed the tyre for the next one.

Phil Brooking found us doing this as he was leaving. He’d been marshalling on Simon’s Folly, scene of our ignominious hole digging, and had been one of the marshals that had pulled us out. He was grinning away, having had a great day out. He’d taken a particular interest in the MX5s competing. The green one of Nick Symons had blown its new engine and Lee Fallaize had tried to get his white one up a tree. He’d narrowed the wing and bent a lower control arm in the process but was still carrying on.

Duncan Stephens prays to the patron saint of inner tubes

Our second go at Rip n Roar went much better and was one of those high five moments.

Section 20, Nearly There, started off well but by the second pole we were slipping sideways off the course again and lost momentum. I couldn’t see any tree roots that had snagged us so what happened remains a mystery.

The final section, Up and Over and Across, was familiar to us from last year. There was an audience of all our fellow competitors that had gone before and, when we pitched up, Craig and Norton attending to a puncture on their Beetle.

We made it to the start line and got off it! The trick seemed to be to slip the clutch and not use too much revs. We also crossed the forestry track about two thirds the way up to the restart line and nearly made it to the restart. Judging by the wheel tracks, many people had succumbed here. We slithered back down to the crossway track, parked up and joined the spectators.

Lee Fallaize did a great climb in his wounded MX5 and Ashley Clarke in his red “Wazda” MX5 did one of the best getaways we’d seen all day. It took him a while to pull off the start line and much more than 6 seconds but he bleddy did it, much to our delight.

The sunsets on another trial (perhaps for some time...) Photo : Graham Beddoe

In the sunshine at the end we decided that the learning points were that 8psi was the maximum we should consider and that it would be worth pumping them up in between sections to get a better mileage out of potentially damaged tyres. Or meterage. We’d also been experimenting with selecting second on some of the non-competitive stretches of track between sections. I feel the car has sufficient torque to pull a higher first gear. Some of the time I gingerly throttled back and the wheels gripped instead of spinning. However, it still makes forward progress when spinning its tyres.

I had approached the event as a practice for the forthcoming Land’s End but that has now been postponed to September so I am glad I got my fix of motorsport while I could.

You'd be amazed by a Wazda. I know we were.