26th July 2025

Today was an early start, I left Bradford at 4.30am with a light dusting of snow which was still blowing in the wind. Read more about the fa fa fa slots free. I had to first head off up north to collect my passenger for the day, Vickie Hunter who lives near Lancaster, the team complete we headed off down south on the M6 to Telford.

The trial was a round of the MSA and BTRDA championships and held at Buildwas off-road leisure centre.

There were 29 starters and 3 non-starters. The facilities were excellent, hard standing car park, proper toilets, buttie van … and by this time sunshine. Utopia!!

All the paperwork completed and scrutineering done there was a bit of time to stand about an do the usual bit of “gassing”, just glancing at the car I noticed a funny line on the A-frame at the front … Aaaarrrgh, a crack!!!! Bu##er, how did I miss that? Would it hold out for the day or would it collapse in a heap, mid-section or in a hole …?? That put a damper on the day, heart in mouth we started around 10.30, gingerly off to the first hill with 5psi (the pressure for the day) in the rear tyres.

This was a new venue for Sporting trials, so with the new regulation tyres and a new venue, C of C Pat Henson had a lot of variables to deal with. We had 3 rounds of 8 hills to attempt. Apart from 2 very muddy sections (more like pottery clay) the rest were very dry, on hard semi frozen soil twisting in and around trees. The sections were quite narrow in places, which these days is what we try to avoid (pole dodging) but considering the dry ground conditions there was no other choice.

Quite a lot of the sections traversed deep Land Rover ruts (big gulleys to our cars), they needed a bit of “pace” to get over them, but not so much as to break the A-frame?

Unfortunately we finished right down in 21st place on 62pts, purely down to “pilot error”, I think stressing about the crack, not being able to charge at some of the hills for fear of wheelie(ing) at the top and the suspension collapsing when it landed, and lack of concentration due to tiredness (I missed a 9 gate out) and on the very last section just brushed an 11 marker on the easiest section ever. You can’t afford to make those kind of basic errors on what was a fairly close, low scoring day, at least we finished.

As ever in trials it’s a case of “if only”. But it was what it was, still a very good event and very enjoyable.

We got packed up and headed straight of as we were on a time limit, Vickie had to be back as she had a romantic meal booked with her BF Tony.

 

The top ten were,

Jerome Fack 18 pts

Alan Ede 23 Live Axle

Josh Veale 23 Live Axle

Bryan Walker 25 Top Northerner.

John Fack 29

Andy Wilks 29

Steve Courts 31

Peter Fensom 35

Alistair Moffat 37

Boyd Webster 37 2nd Northerner