some promising results

after a not so good overall score on 'the welsh', i made a concerted effort at the ryedale and kielder rallies, which although resulted in a 4th= and 2nd (to zippy) in class respectively, they were not as challenging as the welsh, it has to be said. however, everyone was in same boat as it were, so the race was on and still all good training and certainly a lot of fun!

ryedale, near pickering on the yorkshire dales, was a mission to get to. london was at a standstill so what should have been a straight forward journey to muswell hill via shoreditch took the best part of 2 hours. once jolyon and i were on the way proper, it still took another hour to get past the m25 and onto the m1.....all in all it meant that a journey that should have taken 3-4 hours took more than 6!!

greeted by a big jago and ben smile, we arrived in the dark, 1130pm, just in time to pitch tents and have a natter with the team who were well into their beers by this time. while they trundled off into the night to try their skills at horn blowing - hang on that sounds queer, i mean, odd....some lads had made what sounded like a hunting horn out of some of their spare parts!!!

a mix of fast fire roads, tracks and a couple of great specials, combined with some pretty impressive downpours, thunder and fork lightening,  made for a brilliant couple of days riding in 'heartbeat' country!

some of the desert rose team

who's this bloke?

however, not everyone made it to the end; sean's bike died on day 1, ben overcooked it and bashed his knee on a tree so was out on day 1 and jago decided to enter the romaniacs; so he had to win some brownie points, so since he had lucy and kids in tow, he headed to the beach on sunday!

the kielder rally last weekend was even more of a mission with 800 miles traveling and 300 miles of racing in 2 days!! chobe was about to drop her litter, so i had to chase the builder to finish his work before fiona could move into the cottage to look after chobe - the builder was behind schedule as he's put petrol in his diesel car(!) so to make up time he worked through wednesday night, all of thursday and when i arrived at midnight he was was still there plastering! so i started cleaning until 0230hrs at which point he said he had to drive back to london as he had a new job to start friday morning! polish builders, you gotta love them for their hard work.

needless to say the place was a mess, so i had my work cut out. had to get the whelping basket etc set up etc as once the puppies arrived i would have no time to do anything. by the time i had finished, with fiona's help - mum collected her from malmsbury - i took off at about 1630hrs, just in time for friday's rush hour! the first 100 miles took 3 hours, so once past stoke on trent the road was clear and i had a lovely journey past the lake district while chasing the setting sun. hanging a right at carlisle, i was nearly there, the countryside up there is stunning!

even at 2230hrs it was still light, so got to hear zippy's stories about the romaniacs; he'd only arrived home at 0100hrs that morning and was now in northumberland.....patsy drives her team hard ; )

apparently patsy bike building is better than her cooking.....according to zippy.....ouch!!

the route was very similar to the previous year, although a lot less road work from the campsite which was great. 2 laps per day and each lap included 3 non-obligatory 'rally plus' sections and 1 timed special meant plenty of variety for the smaller bikes (sub 525cc, although i think lyndon road all on his 990!). the second day followed the same course; it was not reversed which was a shame. with two days of glorious sunshine, we had a jolly time!

zippy showing the benefit of a belt!

sporting a shirt made of bamboo curtousy of ben norman who jollied the founder, David Gordon, into supporting me, cheers mate!!

the welsh, 2 day enduro

'the welsh' was celebrating it's 60th year of this formidable 2 day rally enduro across central wales starting in llandrindon wells and circling around to rhayader. deep in the welsh hills, 3 timed special stages, along the 180 mile daily route. 600 bikes started at 8am, 4 bikes at a time, including a large number of side-cars - there was barely enough room for a two-wheeled machine at times, i have no idea how they made it round??!! (i've had to find random photos of the event to give you an idea)

i arrived early on wednesday morning so that we could scrutineer the bikes and walk some of the special stages. nothing looked too technical provided it did not rain, but i was in the welsh hills and rain it probably would! zippy, patsy, ross, sean, gary (goggles), chris and myself were all competing. camped on the a section of grass next to the lake in the edge of town, i woke at 5am to heavy rain and it showed no signs of letting up much before my start time at around 10am. b@£$ocks! so the day started, and i did not return until 9 hours later and there was no respite on this timecard event.

i cocked up the first special, as soon as i hit the very soft mud i rode like a novice!! it was a bit like doing a 100m sprint with no warm up, arms pumped, lungs throbbing, pathetic..... oh well, 2 more tests to make up for it. to be honest, the liaisons were harder than the specials, in fact the next 2 specials were a lot of fun; essentially 2 motocross circuits. the first was what i would call a proper motocross track, the second was laid out as one on the side of a grassy hill, so where the first you could ride hard into the corners without the risk of sliding, the second was very slippery and i slid out of 4 corners on my lap!!

due to the rain, the biggest challenge was yet to come, the river crossings along the section called strata florida. horror stories of raging torrents turning over bikes and riders were realised and as i crossed i was met with a scene from a war film, bikes scattered everywhere, upended trying to drain the engines and airboxes of water.

unlike other events i had competed in, when the day ended, you only had 20 minutes to clean and prep your bike before returning it to parc ferme for day 2. although i managed to scrape off a lot of mud, my only real issue were twisted handle bars after a rather spectacular jump while traveling down hill on a goat track.....i did not land very well!

day 2 started out dry as we repeated the previous day's route in reverse. where i had lost about 50 mins on the liaisons before, i did not drop any time. apparantly the conditions we had experienced were worse than they had been in years, so a fair number of riders had pulled out at the end of the first day!!

ross had a clutch problem, so in the short amount of time between leaving parc ferme and starting, under zippy's guidance from the sidelines, we laid the bike over and replaced all the clutch plates. patsy soon joined to lend a hand as i had to shoot off to the start. but in the space of about 20 minutes, ross was back on two wheels, awesome!!

all in all it was a great weekend, 17 hours of racing, with championship riders like tom sagar racing past at blistering speed and i mean seriously fast!!!! everyone of the desert rose team completed the event and it was great preparation for ross, as he was soon to tackle the infamous romaniacs......

5 months to dakar!!

last 2 months gone in a flash, a lot of riding, training, work has been intense, chobe's pregnancy and preparation..... still awaiting news on dakar application, although jago received his confirmation letter today which is fantastic and plans are afoot for the dakar bike.....hush hush for the moment though ;-p i have at times been thinking perhaps i've taken on a little too much, haha!!

but this is a simple explanation for the lack of blogging, combined with the introduction of twitter - which you may have noticed updates the blog, as well as linked-in, facebook and twitter itself of course!!

so, way back in june i competed in the welsh 2 day rally, did a another day on the sands of dunkirk, in july i competed in the 2 day ryedale and the 2 day kielder rallies. and weekend rallies mean hundreds of miles and hours in the car before 2 days of racing.

hardly seen my dakar partner jago. between us, we've got our work cut out to fit our normal lives around the dakar prep. but he is also about to take his family away on an adventure of a lifetime. lucy and jago have invested in a 6 wheel truck that is being pimped out to provide seriously comfortable accommodation, from kids bunks to shower rooms, as they travel around south america for a couple of years, inspiring!! i'll send some photos/ links to jago's blog....

we last raced together at the ryedale, but for only a day, as he took the opportunity to join ross noble and zippy on the romaniacs and completed it within the time, an amazing achievement considering the obstacles they faced including a hill called 'jonny what the f***!' check it out!! the event is 5 days, 1 day is a crazy 800m obstacle course to sort out starting orders, followed by 4 very long 10 plus hour days in the romanian mountains, which although beautiful, incredibly technical!