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Slipping and sliding in Wales...

Dave, Ben and myself popped over the bridge and up to Pontypool for a Trial today... and I thought it was a very good trial. Ben and Dave may disagree though!! Ben did a lap and a half with me but was having trouble getting to grips with the very slippery conditions and 5'd a fair few of the double subs. By the time we got to the car for fuel at the punch card change he called it a day... we lost Dave after 5 sections and it turned out he had been off a few times and bent levers. He fitted a new one and promptly bent that and to make things worse, after a break, he had a go at a few more sections and broke his rear mudguard... he then also decided to call it a day before more important things got damaged!!!
Although my least favorite terrain I actually enjoyed the challenge of thse testing and very slippery sections... although no doubt not performing well in the results I rode some of the muddy climbs and turns far better than I thought I would and only had 2 fives all day... and one of them was from going the wrong side of a marker!!...
** just had the results... I was 3rd in class, and forgot to sign on as an over 40!! But would have finished 3rd in that class anyway. Bloody good for me in mud!! Full results can be downloaded .. HERE **

Thanks all at the Pontypool club for a good day, not often you will hear me thank anyone for a muddy trial!!!!

Special delivery from SXS....

Steve Saunders was going past my place this morning so we met up and I acquired an Akrapovic front pipe and a TopTrialTeam graphics kit for my Beta..!! The pipe was fitted as soon as I got home as it looked too nice on the bench, the graphics kit will be changed once i rip off or wear out Steve's previously provided urban camo kit. As I am riding a trial in Wales tomorrow that may be sooner rather than later... I have been told it may get a little slick. My riding ability is bad enough as it is without throwing slippery stuff in the mix, and as I now have the 270 set up to go like a chainsaw I could be hitting the ground, tree's and rocks hard!!!
Images of new parts...

The front pipe went straight on, remove the 2 front bolts, save the gasket if you can and put a little grease on the orings inside the middle box to allow it to pop in easier... instant bling!!! It is lighter than the original and looks soooo much nicer. If you fancy any of the Beta Racing parts or the TTT graphics kit pop along to SXS and order, or call Steve to talk requirements.

Wrinkly Ninja rides again....

Mike last rode a trials bike around 20 something years ago.... so it seemed like a good idea to let him lose on my 270 and Ian Smith's 250 rev3's for the day! ... and he loved it. I sorted out my Raga replica helmet, old Forma boots and a pair of 661 gloves and we were away up the M5 to Cheltenham. We picked a good day as it turned out to be the warmest day so far, 22 degree's C and a lovely view across the race course over to the Brecon Beacons.
If we can get him out for a few more plays then I think some of the other lads may get some competition at the next event... he was having a good go at some nasty climbs and only had a couple of proper offs all day... one of which was on my 270 over the rock that you see in the picture to the left. After riding the 250 all day the 270 caught him out... an extra blip of the throttle had him off the back and the bike doing a ghost ride!!... he gave it back and said he prefers the little one thanks..!! After a ride down the track and through the woods and another good attempt at the hills we called it a day and popped to the Air Balloon pub at Birdlip to recount the day... 5 hours of great fun.... Piccy's of Mike having fun.

Saturday play on the rocks...

On the way up to the ride I popped into BVM's... and as you can see from my photo on the left I added another Jitsie shirt to my collection! I thought the white one may be a bit cooler to wear in the summer and the black kit I have has been very good, all I need to do now is get some r2w logo's put on them and I will almost look like I know what I am doing...!! Whilst in the shop I had a look at the TTT Hebo Beta gear that SXS is distributing over here... and bloody nice it is too. The quality is top notch and it looks very trick. They had also just recieved a batch of the TRW Jitsie gear... contact BVM if you fancy either.

Colin, Karl, Terry and Steve joined me for a little play up on the hill above Cheltenham racecourse on Saturday. The weather wasn't looking good for Sunday so we took the chance and was rewarded with sun and about 17 degrees c.. Warmest day of the year so far!
Steve was out on my old 2005 Beta, which still looks lovely in the TTT graphics kit and black plastics, and was riding very well. He had never ridden this type of rocky bits before so we had a teaching sessiom. I taught him all I knew about rock riding... Lasted about 8 minutes!!!! He was getting the hang of slowing down and using the front wheel to pop on top of the rocks and blip to the next one. After a while we moved to a 3 foot undercut step and tried the "kiss the front wheel off the top front face" method to get him onto the top without hitting the sump guard. His Dad, Terry, got a few good video moments of him hitting it too low and wrapping himself around the bars!!!

Colin and Karl had a late start owing to Karl's football game in the morning but they came up and had a good time. Little Karl is trying some very hard climbs on his little Auto Beta now and even when it goes wrong and he hits the deck a bit hard he jumps up for another go, like only kids can! Colin is also riding with much more confidence since his swap to the new Beta.. if we could only get Kev out to play again I think the two of them will push each other to improve quickly.
Burners couldn't join us for this ride as work got in the way but he only has two weeks to prepare for the SSDT now so hopefully he is at home getting the tired 2006 Beta ready... I don't think!!
images from aggshill today..

A pukka works bike....

Thanks to Michael Brown and his dad Steve I have a full image of his world championship TopTrialTeam Beta. Michael reports that he just rides it, so couldn't give me the full SP on the mods undertaken... but he is asking the team what he is allowed to tell me!!
Things I do know are... obviously it has a black frame & swinging arm and rear mudguard, Carbon fibre front mudguard and black carbon fibre headlight assembly. A programmable Leaonelli ignition system with a switch on the bars for choosing which program to run at any time, Beta racing clutch piston assembly, Beta racing triple clamps, Renthal Fatbars, Jitsie master cylinder covers, a very special one off (for the moment) silencer, Titanium front pipe, Raptor hangers and pegs... and the engine internals remain a mystery. My guess is that it is a 300 by the sound and the way it goes but it could just be very good tuning!!... click the image to the left for a full bike view.
Looks like Heath will have an Akropovic front pipe on his 270 Rev3 very soon...

St. Davids... day in Wales.

Misty and overcast, that is what greeted me at 7.30 as I left to visit the St. Davids British Championship trial. And apart from a few sunshine breaks it stayed that way all day... at least it was dry!!
The 12 sections had a good mixture of mud, water, roots and rocks and although only a few of them looked spectacular it was obvious it was going to be tough. And when I sat watching the second section on the first lap and saw Michael five it it appeared it may not be his day as almost all of his closest rivals cleaned or one'd it... but on the very next section he had a brilliant clean, getting all the way up the final hill climb in one go. Something that no one else achieved on that lap. His Beta really sounds meaty, and very clean. Still a 270 he tells me but I would have bet it was at least a 300!!
I spent the day wandering around the close sections to the car park, having learnt my lesson in previous years by walking miles to the furthest group and finding it a bit dark for photos. As it was I had to use a slower shutter speed and the flash almost all day so the pictures are not great, but I will sort them out and post them in a gallery on Monday evening.

Although Jarvis put up a fight it was the Mighty Atoms day... and Joe Baker won the experts by a fair margin. Jack Challoners 125 Beta wasn't ideal on the power sapping hills but he also had some great rides to get second in the expert class....
As I said, pictures soon... LINK TO THE GALLERY (more uploaded now!!)

Bangor World Round...

After 2 days I have managed to sort through some of the 700+ photos I took at the World Round in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Ben, Squancy, Burners and myself flew out on Friday and arrived back in Bristol at 5pm Monday. Burners had to dash back after the event on Sunday as his work insisted that he was in first thing Monday morning.. Sleazy Jet managed to delay our departure for several hours from Belfast... but it was warmer inside the airport.!!

For a quick write up on the weekend and links to the photo Gallery (updated Fri 11th April) have a click ... HERE

.. if you nick any of my photos for web or whatever use at least drop me an email or put a link to this site... I have no problems with it.

Another play in Gloucestershire...

Both Colin and myself decided against riding an event again this weekend and instead went up above Cheltenham race course for a play amongst the cotswold rockery. Dave and Ben were going to ride the Hawks club trial just up the road but as Dave has knackered his knee he decided to bring Ben along to join us.... I am glad I use METCHECK to see what weather we are going to get as the BBC site promised heavy rain all day. Metcheck gave rain on Saturday and by 6am Sunday the sun was going to be out... and they were spot on. All day sun with a little rolling cloud.
The nice thing about this surface is that it drains quick and is sometimes grippier when it is very slightly damp... as it was today. The bad point is that it can be so abrasive that your tyres last about 2 rides!!

Colin has only had one ride on his new 2008 Beta, but that was for 5 hours so he was ready to give the bike a bit more of a go today. He certainly is riding it with a lot more confidence than his previous bike and along with trying some nasty rocky climbs he was happy having a go at some rock sections... something he never fancied doing before. Although suffering from lack of rider fitness he was having a very good day and was well pleased come the end of play that he had tried and learnt new things. Like myself he spent 6 months without riding so todays 6 hour ride was a real test of muscles!!! It was only in the last hour that we both started to throw the bikes away a bit more.... the spirit was willing but the arm muscles had given up!!
Ben continues to improve and was trying anything that I set out. He is now willing to go through the barrier his mind has set for certain things and after watching me go up the quarry face half a dozen times he had a go.... and flew out the top for a clean. After that it was like a weight had been lifted and he was chucking himself up the climb and over bigger rocks for the rest of the day. .. I think we all overcame mental barriers today... I have been having problems doing drop-offs or popping over rocks as I am worried about my Back, Colin had new bike nerves and as mentioned Ben just needed to overstep his usual limit. A great day all around.. weather perfect, great riding and good campany.
Just after we got to the quarry a Police Mercedes rolled into the site... thinking we were going to be asked to move on we waited a while to see what was happening, they just sat there watching. I went over for a chat and the 2 guys were asking about the bike and both stated " we grew up watching Kickstart on TV!!" seems we have no worries about being there. They were looking to see if any stolen cars or bikes were around... nice to see anyway.

A collection of images from the nice sunny day are HERE.....

Kilkenny re-visted...

Been a long time since we visited the quarry at Kilkenny, and with the bad weather forecast it seemed like a safer bet being in a quarry rather than out in the open. Colin, Patrick, Karl, Craig and myself arrived at 10.30 and we were all a bit confused... all week we had been hearing about the blizzard conditions on the way and if anywhere in the west country is likely to get heavy snow it is Kilkenny, but nothing. Even the mud was not that muddy...!
In fact, as the day went on it all started to dry out very well and some parts were almost dusty by the time we left at 4.30pm. It was perfect, the rain had washed the lose stuff from the rocks and we had the place to ourselves. Colin was out on his new bike for the first time, a Beta 250 Rev3 2008, and celebrated by tipping himself off a cambered ledge right in front of us all. Sadly no camera too hand!!! But he found he had so much more confidence on it compared to his old Gasgas... So we are all fully Beta'd up now. Even Tony has his Gasser up for sale!!

Patrick was the Barry and Burners of the day... in the absence of those two. He was jumping all sorts of things and throwing the little 125 Beta up and across as many gaps as he could find. Crash of the day award was his... his dad mentioned that it would be a nice jump off the lip by the side of a little step. He got the take off perfect, but at about 10 feet off the ground he decided that it was time to let go of the bike.... it went off on it's own and Patrick hit the rocky ground arse first and slid down the hill. Not ideal if you want skin on your backside!! The bike flipped and the throttle stuck wide open for a fair while before I managed to get to it and loosen the throttle cable off... the kill switch didn't make any difference at that point! Patrick reckons his dad should now pay for a new throttle assembly as it was his idea to try the jump..!!
Karl, Colins young lad, was having a whale of a time skimming around on his Beta 50. Whale being the correct term at one point as he dived into one of the deep water areas and it drowned the bike!! We turned it upside down and drained the carb etc and eventually it fired up again, but kept stalling so a bit more work is required. But Karl rode almost non stop for the whole day and is coming on brilliantly... bouncing off things like only kids can do.

A couple of other riders turned up whilst we were there, both on 2006 Beta's. Scott and Paul are relatively new riders so we set out a couple of nice little sections to get them into turns and climbs. Both seemed to enjoy trying something new, although we did manage to have one of their bikes stuck in a tree at full throttle during the course of the afternoon!!! Hopefully we will meet up again as I gather you are from the Bristol area... and tell me to sod off if I ask you to try something too hard... !

I took a bunch of photos towards the latter part of the day and Patrick weighed in with a few shots of me riding as well... a rare thing indeed. Also I am glad to say that my new Jitsie T1 08 clothing survived another day of me making my own routes through trees and rocks!! All washed up a treat again, something I have had problems with in the past as the Cotswold stone is a very bright orange and tends to stain easily.

Images from the day... HERE

All season in one day... that'll be Wales then!

Barry, Stu, Burners, Ben, Malcolm and myself, all armed with Beta Rev3's, popped over to Abergavenny for a play on Sunday. And we arrived in bright sunshine, as has always been the way whenever we I have been to this location... but several changes in the weather would happen during the day. It drizzled, then sleeted, then sun and then more sleet before finaly the sun was out when we left to go home after nearly 6 hours of riding!!
One thing was obvious, there had been no other activity at this site since our last ride here around the end of last summer. Everything was covered in moss and leaves... and of course it was all muddy as well, perfect!! Not having ever been a fan of mud, it was going to be a fun day. And of course, now I have a 270 Beta with a fast action throttle and no flywheel weight fitted... even better. But against all expectations there were a lot of areas that were very ridable. Stu and Malcolm had come equiped with some section markers and were quick to act as clerk of the course setting out a few nasty little sections on muddy cambers and a root and rock climb.. amazingly I was the first to clean it but Burners was determined to do it straight after me, and he cleaned it as well. Barry was out for the first time in about 5 months so was a bit rusty but he soon got into the swing... Stu rides events almost every week so has a good idea on section setting for our level and it was nice to be able to work through the sections together and try to figure it all out. We moved around the woods setting different types of routes on various terrain and even found a step and climb in a dry spot under some large trees that was dusty!!

Burners now has a confirmed entry in the 2008 SSDT so finding him some rock sections was one requirement for the day... and at the end of the day when most of us were too knackered to hang on to the bikes any longer we pointed him at some bigger, and more slippery rocks. That is when I got the camera out!!! Up to that point we had all been too busy riding sections to bother with it much but the idea of Dave throwing himself up, down, across and sometimes into large bits of Welsh rock was just asking for the flash gun to come out and play!!! He didn't disappoint, to be honest a video camera would have done it more justice. You can't hear the sound of human hitting rock in a photo!!! Of course Barry and I were helping by pointing at the next hazard and suggesting that he was a poof if he didn't try it.... and can you do that again I missed it.
We all had a brilliant day with lots of laughs and no major breakages... a few lever ends and scratches. Ben and Malcolm tried a few things that wouldn't normaly be in their sections at events and got to grips with them and Barry, like myself, just needs time back out on the bike. A lack of transport is not helping but we can collect him whenever we go across the bridge. Rumour has it that the van may get repaired soon.. Other than a complete lack of ability my main problem is confidence. My back problems mean I think myself out of things these days, preferring a safer route. I am sure that after more time I will be happy to take a few chances again... but the main thing is that we all went home smilling.... and completely knackered!

A collection of images from the day, including a large selection of Daves antics, can be found ... HERE @ PHOTOBUCKET

Jitsie T1 08 clothing gets tested...
(and the model is definately not a size zero!!)

After 18 months or so using On&Off gear I finaly damaged the jeans enough that they looked a bit rough. Something to do with me falling onto rocks, trees and brambles i think!! For that 18 months it has been brilliant stuff and a huge thanks to Pete at JCTrials for sorting it out for me.

Now I am the proud owner of the new Jitsie T1 08 riding gear in black and white... called the Black Rail style. I certainly haven't got the body to be seen in a single layer of lycra anymore, if I ever did that is, and wanted something with a bit more substance to it. And long gone are the days when I owned Oxbow clothing that had flowers and fried eggs printed on it... in bright colours!!! It looked good on Dabill, Wiggy and Michael Brown ( Sheffield indoor only) so I wondered if it was flexible enough to fit my increasing frame!!...

First thoughts from a full day out in the rocks and mud of Wales (see above for ride report) ..... HERE

How fast will a K' Reg Vauxhaul get up the M5...?

... something I needed to find out on Saturday morning as I had recieved a call from Steve Saunders reporting that he has a brand new, only one in the UK, Beta Rev 4t 300... and did I fancy a ride on it!!! Yes, you did see that right... 300 Rev 4.
It had arrived at Steve's house on Friday and been run for all of 15 minutes before it was taken down to the woods and made available for me to ride.... which i did on and off all day!.

Report and pictures can be found .... Here, my day with a 300 rev 4t

.. Steve was at the venue to coach some relatively new riders in one of his very successful Trials Schools. Good to see them all enjoy it and they all improved through the day.
Images of those that attended..... HERE