Engine Punk

At the start, everything is clean. Watto's VW Imp is in the foreground while to the left is the Class 7 winning Beetle of Joe and Gary Browning The Camel Classic was postponed from February this year but the wait was worth it for many forestry sections were now available, having been out of bounds to all for some time. Representing the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain, Mr Graham Beddoe and I weighed up our chumrade’s machinery on the morning of the trial and marvelled at the high standards of preparation. After a slap-up binge at The Borough Arms, we set off in the Arkley-MG for Hustyn, an old MCC hill on the edge of St Breock Downs. The original section was metalled long ago. Legend has it a doctor insisted upon it to make his life easier visiting patients. Today’s Hustyn lies in the woods to the south and was part of a network of sections for this year’s Camel Classic, beginning with a holding control at the top of the first section where successful climbers pop out of t...

Early morning scrutineering in the car park at The Borough Arms For this year's Camel Classic, I was passengered by none other than the redoubtable Nigel Cowling, who is usually marshalling somewhere or marking out trials sections. He'd bounced for Simon Riddell when he owned my car so knew what it was capable of. He also has extensive navigating experience. A feature of the Camel Classic, which is organised by the Camel Vale Motor Club, is the large number of entries from the Stroud area. I have found that Stroudians(?) are drawn to the area even for our Hillman Imp club meets so regard Stroudites(?) as honorary Bodminians (not to be confused with Bodminium, which is a rare isotype of Kryptonite). After scrutineering at The Borough Arms, we had to wait until a start time of 0942. This year the car classes ran in numerical order, whereas last year the Class 8s started first. Just like last year, though, it all ran very well to time but we had plenty of time to admire th...

At the start, our Arkley-MG and Troll of Terry and Bob Hart look very clean I missed out on my fix of motorsport this year and, determined put that right, I have bought the Arkley-MG Midget that Ray Goodright campaigned for many years. More about that little car later as a Vintage Thing. I have entered the Exeter Trial and the long-distance classic trials are really my favourite. However, it seemed a good idea to enter a local one-day trial beforehand to get used to the car, especially if I could persuade Adrian Booth to be my passenger. The event we plumped for was the Camel Classic, run by the Camel Vale Motor Club, on 2 nd December 2018. This is run under ACTC rules and eligible for MCC members. The class structure is the same so we were running in Class 7. The format is not like an MCC trial, despite some of the hills being familiar to us. The sections are marked out with numbered poles starting with 12 at the bottom and 1 at the top. Getting the furthest up the ...