Friday
The van was packed and I was ready to ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ as they say in my business, I’d ‘googled’ the journey, 4hrs and 20 mins it said, no bloody chance as I arrived nearly 6hrs later! The traffic coming up was horrendous and at one point on the A30 just after I started out, it took me 30 mins to do 4 miles due to all the holiday makers going back home! More hold ups on the M5 followed and I was starting to panic as to weather I was going to actually make the end of signing on which closed at 6pm. After crossing the severn bridge (£10.90 to get into Wales, what the f*ck is that all about then) the traffic eased and I was a lot happier. I finally arrived at Knighton with 45 mins to spare and done all the necessary.
Picking up my timecard and having a look at the time checks for tomorrow it looks as though us clubman (well saying that, half the clubman field at the BEC ride at expert level when they’re back home) are to do 2 laps of 55 miles with over 6 hrs of riding with 4 special tests thrown in, long day tomorrow then!
Most of the competitors along with me who aren’t in B&B are parked up in an industrial estate, and the camper vans, transits, motor homes, canopy’s and awnings litter the car park, it’s a great atmosphere and anybody’s willing to have a chat if you want to strike up conversation or two.
A bit later on I toddled off into town and picked up a Chinese take away, not the best I’ve had, but when you’re a bit ‘Hank Marvin’(sorry that means starving) I bloody would have eaten a plate of fried slugs if you’d given them to me, I was that hungry!
So all fed and watered I went off to kip and looking forward to tomorrow hoping that everything goes to plan.
Saturday
I woke up early about 6.30am, so I got plenty of time to get myself ready and psyche myself up for the days proceedings. After putting out a message on the Adrenaline trip forum the previous week for some help with getting my fuel out to the service areas, I met up with Dan Lawry from Kingston & DMCC who’d kindly offered me some help as his dad Pete and mate Rob were doing the re-fueling on 2 out of the 3 service stops which were way out miles into the forest. I had a quick chat, handed over my fuel and went back to get changed.
So at precisely 10.11am and with the weather overcast and a forecast of rain to come, I kicked the little ’gasser’ into life and I was off and running for the knighton enduro. There is no way I can describe 55 miles of any course, too much to remember, but you’ll get the general idea of it as we go along.
After a few hundred yards of field it was out onto the road and along some country lanes for a few miles before traveling up some green lanes and into some fields, before coming out again onto the road for another short blast and then turning into yet more fields where I arrived at the 1st special test.
Not much to say about the special test, really disappointing as all it was were 2 or 3 big fields that were slippery as hell and more suited to grass tracking than enduro bikes. Ok they might have been on a slope, but that was it! I did ok, didn’t make any mistakes and for me it took about 6 mins.
After this it was back out onto the road for a short while before the real stuff began!
Here we go then as I entered the forest, this is what I’d come for to get some decent riding time on a tough course, and boy I was not disappointed.
Immediately I was faced with a long slippery rutted section with roots and mud which meandered through the woods up and down with some tight sections to ride through as well before arriving at the 1st time check where I was met buy Pete to stick some fuel in. I was up on time by about 5 mins so took a quick breather before heading out again to check no 2. So the 1st check was quite slack and with the 40 mins they give you to do it in, it was probably because they didn’t want anybody going berserk on the road in order to keep to time.
Now the fun really begun as we were in the forest proper and we had about 50 mins to complete the next check. Roots, roots, and more roots, tree stumps, logs, broken trees, sloppy mud, more sloppy mud, ruts that were either knee deep with mud or half way up your back wheel with water, in fact some of the ruts seem to go on forever. The hills going up were either slippery with mud and stones or just one long rut! The downhills weren’t any better and on some occasions I had to put my nuts on the tank and paddle down them because they were so steep and treacherous. It was never ending, and even when you got onto a fire road which were about 2 miles long, you couldn’t rest as you were going nearly flat out to try and keep on time! Scary stuff that! I couldn’t believe the length of some of the slippery, mud covered stoney hills as you just kept going up and up and up climbing through the forest and I was pinning the little gasser all the way in order to make it to the top.
This place is vast, I’ve never seen a wood so bloody big with such a demanding course, but hey, this is the British champs so it ain’t going to be no picnic is it?
One section in particular consisted of what seemed like ten thousand logs, branches and sticks just laying there on the floor, you couldn’t even see the gaps between them, there were so many, it was like a carpet! This went on for about a mile or so, very tricky when wet!
I made it to the 2nd check with a minute to spare, so still on time but now it was on to the massive 55 min 3rd check and the longest stage of all.
It had now started to p*ss down with rain, so that could only mean one thing, things would get more difficult from now on and that’s how it turned out to be. Even when I was pinning it along the fire roads up to 70mph (110 kmh it said on the speedo) at times I just couldn’t see through my goggles as the rain was that heavy and it felt like my cheeks were being stabbed with pins as it drove into my face. The woods had became so cut up that anything and everything just seemed like ’one hell of a job’ to get through.
I arrived at the 3rd check 6 mins down. Rob was there to re-fuel me and off I went again.
A few more miles past before I arrived at the 2nd special test, and guess what? More grass fields except this time there was more of them! I stalled it twice and came off twice as well on the icy like slippery grass, so not a good test for me that one.
Onto the 4th check I went then and kept on time (still 6 mins down) and made the 5th check on time as well, so after my 1st lap I’d only lost 6 mins and I was well chuffed with that but I knew I had to do it all again and this time it would be a lot worse due to the rain that had fallen.
Onto my 2nd lap then and things became extremely difficult from here on in, at times it felt like torture as every bit of track in the woods was an effort to ride as the forest just became like an ice rink in places and the ruts had now filled with water and the roots had become exposed. I’ve never done so much ’paddling’ at such event, I should have bought my canoe! I mean I consider myself to be quite fit for my age but by after about 4 hours of relentless tiring riding, I was starting to struggle and I couldn’t wait for the next check to arrive.
I started getting cross rutted, getting stuck on a few roots and hills and having silly little offs and every time I picked the bike up it just seemed to get heavier.
I did 2 more special tests and they went ok for me without any mishaps, but when you’re dog tired it’s not that easy to go like a madman and keep concentration, those champ boys are on a different planet as they had to ride 3 laps of this course today and 6 tests.
I did the Greymare event back in January and that was tough, but if you times that by 10, that’s what you got today.
After finishing my 2nd lap and then going back on the road for about 5-6 miles or so back into Knighton and up to the last time check and with over 6 hours riding under my belt, I finally finished 21 mins down. So the last lap was really tough and I’d lost 15 mins on that one. A tad disappointing but it was hard and the event had claimed quite a few riders with DNF’s, so I was relieved in a way that I’d made it to the end. Bloody hell did I ache or what and I still got tomorrow to go yet.
Looking around the paddock everyone’s face said it all, Knackered!!! My bike was absolutely lagged, I mean lagged, strands of grass, sloppy mud, sticky peat, stones, bits of sticks, nothing that hasn’t happened before, but this was different as you just couldn’t take it home and pressure wash it, not a chance, so you had to try and clean it by hand, check things over and get it ready for the next day. That’s a shit job to do when your ‘cream crackered’, wet through with sweat and hungry!
At about 5pm and after a short rest and just as I started to clean the bike the heavens opened, b*llocks to that I thought, so I shoved it in the van hoping It wouldn’t rain in the morning and I could do it then.
A bit later on and after sorting out my right leg which nearly killed me when my thigh muscle went into a spasm which meant I couldn’t move for about 15 mins, I went and got some fish and chips, guzzled down 2 litres of energy drink and hit the sack. Roll on Sunday!
Sunday
Last night it rained for about 7-8 hours solid, God knows what state the course was going to be in today then! After chatting to a few riders down at where our time checks were posted up, rumor had it that some of the course had been cut out today due to the conditions, so things could be a bit easier today then, we’ll see? Mind you we only had to do 1 lap of 55 miles today, so in effect it would just be like doing a normal race, albeit a hard one.
I did manage to get quite a bit of crap off the bike this morning as I’d been up since 6.30am and everything seemed to be in order so no worries there.
Now then, what happened next was bloody well ‘sods law’. Just after 9am and with an hour to go before my start time I went to get some breakfast from the catering van but they were bloody well shut! Do they have different opening times in Wales or what then? With not enough time to make the trip into town I had to go without and make do with a few chocolate bars and energy gel bars, not good if you’re gonna ride half way round the county of Powys on a tough enduro course.
After getting changed into fresh riding gear, I headed for the start and waited for the clock to tick over to 10.11am so I could be on my way. I fired her up and off I went across the field and out onto the road, the country lanes and then the green lanes before arriving at the 1st special test. With the overnight rain that we’d had, the grassy fields that held the test had just become twice as worst as yesterday and I had a job to get going properly as I concentrated on just staying upright and not making any mistakes, it was like riding on glass in places, very tricky. Finished ok, no mistakes, so now it was back onto the road for a short while before turning up into a field and entering the woods.
The first part of the course was much the same as yesterday, but as I entered the woods for the 1st time I came to an abrupt halt as a thick branch had shot straight through my back wheel and had managed to spline itself through my spokes stopping me dead. Try as I might I couldn’t pull the bloody thing out and I thought I’d be there for days when suddenly out of nowhere came some spectators who helped me jack the wheel up and pull out the offending bit of wood.
I carried on and made it to my 1st check with about 5 mins to spare where I was met by Pete who put some fuel in for us.
I knew from yesterday that from here on in it was going to get hard, but how hard was the question? especially if the organizers had managed to cut out parts of the course and put in new routes, and with today’s checks being just 2 mins slower than yesterdays, a lot of riders would have a job staying clean on time.
A lot of the course that we rode today that we’d ridden yesterday was twice as worse, the ruts were muddier, the ruts filled with water had became deeper and the roots had become exposed so much that some of them just seem to be sticking up in the air like a sore thumb. But, and this is a big but, quite a bit of the track in the forest had been cut and more fire roads put in place instead which obviously made the time between checks quicker, And this made one hell of a difference today and I stayed on time throughout and never lost a minute. Don’t get me wrong, it was still tough today and I still had a few little ’offs’ and got stuck a couple of times on tree roots, but after Saturday, today just seemed like a hard 3hr race and not an extreme one and we only had to do 1 lap today which made a hell of difference too.
At the 3rd check Rob put some fuel in for me and then it was off to do another special test which again was as slippery as hell on the grass covered fields. I think in some ways I took it far too easy as I had one eye on just trying not to make any mistakes which could cost me a finish, So I wasn’t particularly fast.
Onto check 4 and I arrived still up on time, so I was pleased with that and now all I had to do was hold it together on one more special test (there were 3 today), do about another 10 miles, and I’d be home and dry. Again thinking about finishing and not having to risk anything, I did the ‘special’ ok, stayed upright and didn’t make any mistakes.
Now it was back onto the country lanes, minor roads and then the main road which led back into the town of Knighton to check no 5 and the finish area.
A great feeling as I crossed the line and well pleased that I’d done my first 2 day BEC.
A big thanks to Dan Lawry from Kingston DMCC for getting in touch, and his dad Pete and mate Rob who were there for me in the ’middle of nowhere’ deep in the forest to help me with the re-fueling.
Thanks also to Thor motorcycles who supplied me with a full spares kit and plastics.
What an event that was and a great experience and I’m really glad I made the trip.
To top it off the little ’gasser’ never missed a beat all weekend and she ran brilliantly.
Didn’t disgrace myself on the Saturday results but no so good on the Sunday seeing as less started, but overall pleased to finish.
Saturday Finishing position: 12/17 (clubman E1) 28/55 (clubman)
Sunday Finishing position: 12/14 (clubman E1) 30/39 (clubman)
The van was packed and I was ready to ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ as they say in my business, I’d ‘googled’ the journey, 4hrs and 20 mins it said, no bloody chance as I arrived nearly 6hrs later! The traffic coming up was horrendous and at one point on the A30 just after I started out, it took me 30 mins to do 4 miles due to all the holiday makers going back home! More hold ups on the M5 followed and I was starting to panic as to weather I was going to actually make the end of signing on which closed at 6pm. After crossing the severn bridge (£10.90 to get into Wales, what the f*ck is that all about then) the traffic eased and I was a lot happier. I finally arrived at Knighton with 45 mins to spare and done all the necessary.
Picking up my timecard and having a look at the time checks for tomorrow it looks as though us clubman (well saying that, half the clubman field at the BEC ride at expert level when they’re back home) are to do 2 laps of 55 miles with over 6 hrs of riding with 4 special tests thrown in, long day tomorrow then!
Most of the competitors along with me who aren’t in B&B are parked up in an industrial estate, and the camper vans, transits, motor homes, canopy’s and awnings litter the car park, it’s a great atmosphere and anybody’s willing to have a chat if you want to strike up conversation or two.
A bit later on I toddled off into town and picked up a Chinese take away, not the best I’ve had, but when you’re a bit ‘Hank Marvin’(sorry that means starving) I bloody would have eaten a plate of fried slugs if you’d given them to me, I was that hungry!
So all fed and watered I went off to kip and looking forward to tomorrow hoping that everything goes to plan.
Saturday
I woke up early about 6.30am, so I got plenty of time to get myself ready and psyche myself up for the days proceedings. After putting out a message on the Adrenaline trip forum the previous week for some help with getting my fuel out to the service areas, I met up with Dan Lawry from Kingston & DMCC who’d kindly offered me some help as his dad Pete and mate Rob were doing the re-fueling on 2 out of the 3 service stops which were way out miles into the forest. I had a quick chat, handed over my fuel and went back to get changed.
So at precisely 10.11am and with the weather overcast and a forecast of rain to come, I kicked the little ’gasser’ into life and I was off and running for the knighton enduro. There is no way I can describe 55 miles of any course, too much to remember, but you’ll get the general idea of it as we go along.
After a few hundred yards of field it was out onto the road and along some country lanes for a few miles before traveling up some green lanes and into some fields, before coming out again onto the road for another short blast and then turning into yet more fields where I arrived at the 1st special test.
Not much to say about the special test, really disappointing as all it was were 2 or 3 big fields that were slippery as hell and more suited to grass tracking than enduro bikes. Ok they might have been on a slope, but that was it! I did ok, didn’t make any mistakes and for me it took about 6 mins.
After this it was back out onto the road for a short while before the real stuff began!
Here we go then as I entered the forest, this is what I’d come for to get some decent riding time on a tough course, and boy I was not disappointed.
Immediately I was faced with a long slippery rutted section with roots and mud which meandered through the woods up and down with some tight sections to ride through as well before arriving at the 1st time check where I was met buy Pete to stick some fuel in. I was up on time by about 5 mins so took a quick breather before heading out again to check no 2. So the 1st check was quite slack and with the 40 mins they give you to do it in, it was probably because they didn’t want anybody going berserk on the road in order to keep to time.
Now the fun really begun as we were in the forest proper and we had about 50 mins to complete the next check. Roots, roots, and more roots, tree stumps, logs, broken trees, sloppy mud, more sloppy mud, ruts that were either knee deep with mud or half way up your back wheel with water, in fact some of the ruts seem to go on forever. The hills going up were either slippery with mud and stones or just one long rut! The downhills weren’t any better and on some occasions I had to put my nuts on the tank and paddle down them because they were so steep and treacherous. It was never ending, and even when you got onto a fire road which were about 2 miles long, you couldn’t rest as you were going nearly flat out to try and keep on time! Scary stuff that! I couldn’t believe the length of some of the slippery, mud covered stoney hills as you just kept going up and up and up climbing through the forest and I was pinning the little gasser all the way in order to make it to the top.
This place is vast, I’ve never seen a wood so bloody big with such a demanding course, but hey, this is the British champs so it ain’t going to be no picnic is it?
One section in particular consisted of what seemed like ten thousand logs, branches and sticks just laying there on the floor, you couldn’t even see the gaps between them, there were so many, it was like a carpet! This went on for about a mile or so, very tricky when wet!
I made it to the 2nd check with a minute to spare, so still on time but now it was on to the massive 55 min 3rd check and the longest stage of all.
It had now started to p*ss down with rain, so that could only mean one thing, things would get more difficult from now on and that’s how it turned out to be. Even when I was pinning it along the fire roads up to 70mph (110 kmh it said on the speedo) at times I just couldn’t see through my goggles as the rain was that heavy and it felt like my cheeks were being stabbed with pins as it drove into my face. The woods had became so cut up that anything and everything just seemed like ’one hell of a job’ to get through.
I arrived at the 3rd check 6 mins down. Rob was there to re-fuel me and off I went again.
A few more miles past before I arrived at the 2nd special test, and guess what? More grass fields except this time there was more of them! I stalled it twice and came off twice as well on the icy like slippery grass, so not a good test for me that one.
Onto the 4th check I went then and kept on time (still 6 mins down) and made the 5th check on time as well, so after my 1st lap I’d only lost 6 mins and I was well chuffed with that but I knew I had to do it all again and this time it would be a lot worse due to the rain that had fallen.
Onto my 2nd lap then and things became extremely difficult from here on in, at times it felt like torture as every bit of track in the woods was an effort to ride as the forest just became like an ice rink in places and the ruts had now filled with water and the roots had become exposed. I’ve never done so much ’paddling’ at such event, I should have bought my canoe! I mean I consider myself to be quite fit for my age but by after about 4 hours of relentless tiring riding, I was starting to struggle and I couldn’t wait for the next check to arrive.
I started getting cross rutted, getting stuck on a few roots and hills and having silly little offs and every time I picked the bike up it just seemed to get heavier.
I did 2 more special tests and they went ok for me without any mishaps, but when you’re dog tired it’s not that easy to go like a madman and keep concentration, those champ boys are on a different planet as they had to ride 3 laps of this course today and 6 tests.
I did the Greymare event back in January and that was tough, but if you times that by 10, that’s what you got today.
After finishing my 2nd lap and then going back on the road for about 5-6 miles or so back into Knighton and up to the last time check and with over 6 hours riding under my belt, I finally finished 21 mins down. So the last lap was really tough and I’d lost 15 mins on that one. A tad disappointing but it was hard and the event had claimed quite a few riders with DNF’s, so I was relieved in a way that I’d made it to the end. Bloody hell did I ache or what and I still got tomorrow to go yet.
Looking around the paddock everyone’s face said it all, Knackered!!! My bike was absolutely lagged, I mean lagged, strands of grass, sloppy mud, sticky peat, stones, bits of sticks, nothing that hasn’t happened before, but this was different as you just couldn’t take it home and pressure wash it, not a chance, so you had to try and clean it by hand, check things over and get it ready for the next day. That’s a shit job to do when your ‘cream crackered’, wet through with sweat and hungry!
At about 5pm and after a short rest and just as I started to clean the bike the heavens opened, b*llocks to that I thought, so I shoved it in the van hoping It wouldn’t rain in the morning and I could do it then.
A bit later on and after sorting out my right leg which nearly killed me when my thigh muscle went into a spasm which meant I couldn’t move for about 15 mins, I went and got some fish and chips, guzzled down 2 litres of energy drink and hit the sack. Roll on Sunday!
Sunday
Last night it rained for about 7-8 hours solid, God knows what state the course was going to be in today then! After chatting to a few riders down at where our time checks were posted up, rumor had it that some of the course had been cut out today due to the conditions, so things could be a bit easier today then, we’ll see? Mind you we only had to do 1 lap of 55 miles today, so in effect it would just be like doing a normal race, albeit a hard one.
I did manage to get quite a bit of crap off the bike this morning as I’d been up since 6.30am and everything seemed to be in order so no worries there.
Now then, what happened next was bloody well ‘sods law’. Just after 9am and with an hour to go before my start time I went to get some breakfast from the catering van but they were bloody well shut! Do they have different opening times in Wales or what then? With not enough time to make the trip into town I had to go without and make do with a few chocolate bars and energy gel bars, not good if you’re gonna ride half way round the county of Powys on a tough enduro course.
After getting changed into fresh riding gear, I headed for the start and waited for the clock to tick over to 10.11am so I could be on my way. I fired her up and off I went across the field and out onto the road, the country lanes and then the green lanes before arriving at the 1st special test. With the overnight rain that we’d had, the grassy fields that held the test had just become twice as worst as yesterday and I had a job to get going properly as I concentrated on just staying upright and not making any mistakes, it was like riding on glass in places, very tricky. Finished ok, no mistakes, so now it was back onto the road for a short while before turning up into a field and entering the woods.
The first part of the course was much the same as yesterday, but as I entered the woods for the 1st time I came to an abrupt halt as a thick branch had shot straight through my back wheel and had managed to spline itself through my spokes stopping me dead. Try as I might I couldn’t pull the bloody thing out and I thought I’d be there for days when suddenly out of nowhere came some spectators who helped me jack the wheel up and pull out the offending bit of wood.
I carried on and made it to my 1st check with about 5 mins to spare where I was met by Pete who put some fuel in for us.
I knew from yesterday that from here on in it was going to get hard, but how hard was the question? especially if the organizers had managed to cut out parts of the course and put in new routes, and with today’s checks being just 2 mins slower than yesterdays, a lot of riders would have a job staying clean on time.
A lot of the course that we rode today that we’d ridden yesterday was twice as worse, the ruts were muddier, the ruts filled with water had became deeper and the roots had become exposed so much that some of them just seem to be sticking up in the air like a sore thumb. But, and this is a big but, quite a bit of the track in the forest had been cut and more fire roads put in place instead which obviously made the time between checks quicker, And this made one hell of a difference today and I stayed on time throughout and never lost a minute. Don’t get me wrong, it was still tough today and I still had a few little ’offs’ and got stuck a couple of times on tree roots, but after Saturday, today just seemed like a hard 3hr race and not an extreme one and we only had to do 1 lap today which made a hell of difference too.
At the 3rd check Rob put some fuel in for me and then it was off to do another special test which again was as slippery as hell on the grass covered fields. I think in some ways I took it far too easy as I had one eye on just trying not to make any mistakes which could cost me a finish, So I wasn’t particularly fast.
Onto check 4 and I arrived still up on time, so I was pleased with that and now all I had to do was hold it together on one more special test (there were 3 today), do about another 10 miles, and I’d be home and dry. Again thinking about finishing and not having to risk anything, I did the ‘special’ ok, stayed upright and didn’t make any mistakes.
Now it was back onto the country lanes, minor roads and then the main road which led back into the town of Knighton to check no 5 and the finish area.
A great feeling as I crossed the line and well pleased that I’d done my first 2 day BEC.
A big thanks to Dan Lawry from Kingston DMCC for getting in touch, and his dad Pete and mate Rob who were there for me in the ’middle of nowhere’ deep in the forest to help me with the re-fueling.
Thanks also to Thor motorcycles who supplied me with a full spares kit and plastics.
What an event that was and a great experience and I’m really glad I made the trip.
To top it off the little ’gasser’ never missed a beat all weekend and she ran brilliantly.
Didn’t disgrace myself on the Saturday results but no so good on the Sunday seeing as less started, but overall pleased to finish.
Saturday Finishing position: 12/17 (clubman E1) 28/55 (clubman)
Sunday Finishing position: 12/14 (clubman E1) 30/39 (clubman)
