I leave home at 9 o'clock from London on Tuesday night to head for an Enduro starting on Thursday morning. Camper is loaded to the gills with bike and all things Glastonbury. I get to Andover late, have a cup of tea with uncle Stephen then get my head down. Up at 6.30 to try and beat the queues going into Glastonbury. Yeah right.. The roads are solid and it takes a long time to get into the appropriately named East 17 field.. Once there I pull the CRF250X out of the campers garage and get away from the Glasto site as quick as possible. Uncle Stephen meets me at Warminster, is late as usual but we are all still on time to make scruitineering in Llandindod Wells for 6pm.
The welsh 2 Day enduro is the biggest traditional time card enduro in the UK and has been running for 58 years. Each day the competitors travel about 180 miles over a mixture of road, trail and forestry going. On the Thursday you do a lap in one direction then it is reversed on the Friday. The event is always massively oversubscribed and even getting an entry is a bit of a result! 2009 is my 6th attempt, so far I have an unblemished run. 5 starts and 5 finishes all on Honda CRF250Xs. I usually ride in one of the middle club-man classes but this year am in the slightly slower group as we have a few guys with us this year desperate to get a finish, my wee brother is one of them. Sportsman class it is, number 133.
When we get there the sun is shining and spirits are high. The last 2 years have been wet. The difference between a wet and dry Welsh are massive. Basically a fun challenging trail ride in the dry but a f**ker in the wet. At scruitineering most of us are not allowed to proceed as we have the wrong colour numbers and backgrounds on so we have a bit of messing about to get sorted out. The bikes are parked overnight with all the 500 other bikes and we are not allowed to touch them until 15 minutes before our start times in the morning. We all head back to the hotel, offload our gear and head to the bar. After dinner we get to bed for an early start.
When the alarm goes off at 6 something brother James is not so happy, apparently I have snored and farted all night long. He must have been in someone else's room.. The breakfast lady doesn't like the sound of my squeaky boots, but the bacon and eggs go down well.
After messing around with our final bits and pieces, getting camel backs filled, goggles sorted etc., it is now about 8.30 and a man at a desk allows us to take our bikes out of parc ferme quietly. I'm sitting with Ian Beattie and his brother Mark, both old friends from school. Big Stephen Wilson my cousin is with his friends Josh Toogood and Keith Hillier. Brother James has his friend David Wilson with us. We have set up 3 teams of 3 members to try to keep it interesting. The other member of James Dennison Trailer team is Rod Veck, he has headed off with the earlier numbers.
If you are not sure about how enduros work, you are not alone, it can all same strangely complicated. They start at number 1 and send you off in number order 4 riders per minute. You then have, in the case of this one, 12 check points to make throughout the day an allocated amount of time after you start. If you manage to get in at exactly the right time your result is determined by the shortest time taken to complete a number of small Special tests throughout the day. These tend to take around 5 minutes each and are basically a big motocross track in most cases. So the goal is to go "clean" on time and then go like stink round the special tests without falling off.
On my minute, 8.42 I have myself, Mark Beattie and a guy called Steve. Everyone says hello before we line up. At 8.42 the whistle is blown, we all start our engines first time and set off following orange arrows for day 1. After 15 minutes of road we quickly find ourselves at the first special test. We line in in a queue, when the light goes green we are off. If we had been really competitive we would have walked the special tests the day before, but, no, each corner and drop was brand new! I had a good run round, I was blowing a bit due to not having had a warm up of any sort but everyone pulled up behind me at the end and seemed to have enjoyed it. I think even James now had a bit more of an idea of what the day had in store. There were 2 more special tests on day 1 which I was happy with how I got round them.
Of the 12 checks of the day about 3 of them were tight on time. This meant no time for repairs or cups of tea, just get your balls out and go as fast as possible. If the weather had been wet we may have had something to worry about but because the ground was so dry I arrived at every checkpoint with loads of time to spare. When this happens you have to wait until your allocated time comes up then have your time card marked at the appropriate time. This allows you to take your helmet off, have a Mars bar and talk crap for a bit. To be honest this is one of the best features of the Welsh 2 day. Waiting around at checks talking to friends and people you don't know is one of the highlights. On day 2 the Michael Jackson sick texts were the talk of the day..
Most people have service crews with them who wait in their vans along the road with fuel and tools etc. We have always just relied on the 2 local fuel stations on the road. Most of us are on Hondas so we don't tend to need repairs (it is true, they are reliable). This year the 2nd little filling station at the side of the road had no petrol so there was a bit of nervousness on trying to make it to Rhyadar. The newer CRF250 X which Mark was riding had a slightly smaller fuel tank which was running out a bit early.
By the end of the day poor Ian Beattie was out. He had popped out his knee and was in agony. Brother Mark was not very sympathetic! This was Ian's 3rd try to get a finish and 3rd DNF. Shit luck. Brother James had only dropped a few minutes on one of the checks and was doing good. Steve from our minute this morning had disappeared early in the day, we heard that he had broken his collar bone. David Wilson's CRF valves were stretching and the bike was not going good. All the rest of us were going well and had had a great first day. We filled the bikes with fuel, lubed the chains and put them back in the parc ferme at about 5pm.
Dr Stephen Wilson joined us this evening to help cure Ian's knee with a hot bath and loads of salt. Brother James nearly cried he was laughing so much. We had a good dinner in the pub and got to bed at the Commodore early-ish. The weather forecast was showing that the Friday was going to be a wet one, this would make it a completely different day. Apparently the snoring farting guy had been back in our room for the night.... really??
Same again for day 2 less a little of one of the checks and only 2 special tests instead of 3. I think about 150 miles instead of 170 on the Thursday. David Wilson had managed to get his bike running right thanks to some help from Ian Beattie's now redundant bike! One of the early checks would have been a nightmare in the wet, fortunately it was lovely and dry and flowed beautifully. Everything did really until about 1 pm. I was under a tree putting on my tiny Tucano rain coat. James pulled up to exclaim that he had cleaned the previous check. He had done well considering there had been a couple of big climbs with bodies and bikes strewn everywhere. It had been a tad risky finding a clean line up through them! He then wondered why I had not told him to bring a rain coat. He is 40 next year, what do you think?? Young Josh who's 21 has given up and gone home. The oldies will have to finish it for him.
Every year our favourite check is called Strata Florida. In sportsman they allow you 25 minutes to complete it. It is ride-able whatever the weather as it is basically all rocks and river crossings. Both days in both directions are always fun. 2 main things to be careful of are, going too fast.. there are rocks everywhere if you fall it usually is going to hurt, and not to drop your bike in the river. Day 1 had been fine, but on day 2 after one of the rivers Keith was sitting stopped after one of them. I shouted that I couldn't help as I had no tools and felt crap. Then about 500 yards later I came over the brow of a hill to see a KTM upside down at the side of the track and a large Camo clad man on all fours crawling into the undergrowth to die.. Uncle Stephen had had a big one and was not looking good. We gathered him up and got him off the track. He was mushed. Fortunately Keith arrived soon and my conscience cleared! If he hadn't been wearing full body armour he would have been in hospital. Despite my fears he did manage to finish the day even though he was in a lot of pain.
The one check from last gave us a sample of the 2 previous years and a bit of a sample of what a wet Welsh can be like. Long muddy ruts, slippy climbs, wet bogs etc. At the end of the check no one was waiting, this is a good indication that it has been tough, they have had no spare time. I was about 7 minutes early. Mark joined me about a minute before the clock turned to our time. We were clean again. The last check was a fun run back to Landrindod Wells on and off road. We handed in our time cards and and congratulated each other.
After the big clear up and sort out we all loaded up and said our goodbyes. After Fish and Chips I climbed into the excellent bed of Stephens new truck and headed to Glastonbury... Another story for another day..
Dennison Trailers was the winning team in our group, James Dennison, David Wilson and Rod Veck. Well done to them. Mark Beattie was 2nd in Sportsman just beating me into 3rd (bugger!) Thanks to Gordon for collecting my trophy from the evening prize giving. I have now had 6 finishes in a row on Honda CRF250X. A fantastic bike!
