My Lands End Trial Adventure

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

The narrow road veers left, and heads steeply down into a valley. Ahead and to the right, the Atlantic Ocean shimmers in holiday-brochure blue. Directly in front across the valley, a steep white path rises up the hillside, lined on each side with the tiny figures of on-lookers.
I have seen this sight twice before: and each time get a feeling that is 90 per cent excitement and 10 per cent sickness. Pulling over to the side, I kill the engine of my 300 cc Beta X-Trainer motorcycle and, faintly over the sound of wind and waves, can hear the distant sound of cheering and an engine’s roar. A small dark speck is climbing the steep path, with a plume of dust behind it.
This is the Lands End Trial. Welcome to Blue Hills.
It’s the journey that counts, not the destination. For most competitors, this began the previous night, and has carried them across Somerset, Devon and Cornwall to here, travelling mostly on unclassified roads and taking in a series of observed sections on rough tracks, much of which must be ridden or driven unseen in the dark.
Not for me though. I’ve navigated vehicles with three and four wheels through the night on this event before, but for my first attempt on a motorbike, I’ve ticked a little-used box on the Motor Cycling Club’s entry form that gives me a start from Wilsey Down Hotel at a very civilised 9 am on day two of the event. Conveniently, this is just a few miles from my house, and happily it serves a generous cooked breakfast (my wife is convinced that ‘trials’ are actually a sort of perverse gastronomic tour of the West Country in which the participants compete to consume large quantities of fried food and pasties).
I will be navigating as well as riding, but I won’t have to contend with picking signposts out in the black of night or mists of Exmoor’s early morning. Nor will horrible obstacles, real or imagined, loom suddenly into my light on the off-road sections.
Doing the day-only trial is as stress-free as it could be. You don’t even get given a final score, so it’s really just an organised trail-ride.
After breakfasting with two Triumph riders fresh from the all-nighter (I find out one has, like me, had the honour of navigating for John Turner in his Dellow trials car). I go to the start and meet the one other entrant in the daytime class…who is riding a Royal Enfield Himalayan festooned with soft luggage. I wonder at the wisdom of adding more weight to an already very heavy motorcycle, but each to their own.
He in turn wonders at my roadbook. It was constructed by John Turner himself, from one of those sleeves that up-market whisky bottles come in. Two plastic waterpipes, each with a whisky-bottletop glued in one end, comprise the roller mechanism. A window is covered in clear plastic.
As the event progresses, I realise what a genius invention this device is. My fellow-competitor says he has just made a trace of the route and downloaded it onto his smartphone.
We set off down the A road towards Launceston, then veer towards Liskeard. The first ‘event’ is the special test at Ruses Mill, and getting there involves negotiating a complex of ever-more minor roads. I let the Himalayan man pass as I’m still sorting out the best method of using JT’s roadbook. Following the Enfield is an interesting experience. Its long-stroke engine has an exhaust note straight out of the 1930s. I can hear the charm, even if I can’t see the attraction.
Passing through the half-restored and now seemingly abandoned and heartbreakingly beautiful buildings of Ruses Mill, we come to the special test itself, which is a start, stop-and-restart, and-stop-again, conducted on an incredibly steep and dirty tarmac hill. I actually know the layout quite well because I was a marshal on it during last year’s Three-Day Trial.
Accelerate, brake, stop, accelerate, brake, stop…and breathe!
No real drama, and no real point in pushing too hard as my time won’t count towards anything. Exit through a little village, then a ride across Bodmin Moor to the first proper observed section for us daytime wimps: Water Main Lane.
Himalayan man is ahead of me, and I am joined by some competitors from the full event. I decide to let them go ahead while I adjust my tyre pressures, given that they look tired, and I’m fresh and well-fed.
This section starts off easy, but there’s a bit in the middle that has suffered from water erosion…hopefully not from a burst watermain. I stand up for this part, and the back wheel promptly slips sideways. It takes a couple of ferocious ‘dabs’ to get the Beta back on course. There goes my (imaginary) Gold medal. I kick myself…what’s wrong with me?
At the end of the section, I make a worrying discovery. The trip-meter on the Beta has stopped working, so has the clock, and speed is now showing in Km/h. I know what’s happened: the connection for the instrument’s internal battery has failed and the thing is running on electrical power from the bike’s loom and can’t be reset.
Last night I went through the roadbook and carefully highlighted all the distances between the various waypoints, planning to reset the trip as I passed each one. None of that is any good to me now: I’ll just have to guess the distances and relate them to the directions as best I can.
Unsurprisingly, I overshoot a turn off a major road. I encounter a sidecar outfit which has done the same and is about to repeat the mistake in the other direction. Frantic waving and shouting gets them back on course.
We set off on one of the best bits of the trial: tarmac lanes which deteriorate into greenlanes around St Neot: one part is a steep and rough downhill which would make a great section in its own right if the trial ran in the other direction. Lovely scenery, no traffic, can this really be Easter Saturday in Cornwall?
Next stop is the Panters Bridge Time Control. I’m not sure if I’m actually supposed to attempt the Warleggan section up the lane here as it’s not clear what route the daytimers should follow, but the marshals send me up anyway.
Again, it starts easy with a soft, grippy surface. Then there’s a part that has been scoured by heavy rain, exposing tortured longitudinal ribbons of igneous rock. I stand. I fall. I restart. I stand. I fall again. The marshals pick me up. I realise where I’m going wrong, drag the bike over to the side of the lane and climb what’s left in the gutter with my bum firmly in the seat. This is going just as badly as I anticipated.
The route takes us past Bodmin. I managed to get John Turner lost at a roundabout here: taking us and a few followers off to the right and down into the traffic-calmed nightmare that is the town last year. The routebook is ambiguous about the roundabout this year too.
I’m not going to go wrong again. I go straight on. This is wrong. There’s a new section, and I should have gone right. I explain my error to the sidecar boys who have followed me.
They wish me luck (I think that’s what was said, but can’t be sure).
The route skirts the southern suburbs of Bodmin. I encounter two more competitors stopped by the side of the road with a technical problem. One is on an ancient rigid Norton, the other a modern GasGas enduro two-stroke. The technical problem is the GasGas has run out of petrol!
They are planning on transferring some fuel out of the Norton and into the GasGas with a plastic bag and assure me they will be alright.
I leave them to it, find the next section, and with it my mojo!
Imagine a Scalectrix track made life-sized, surfaced with mud and imposed on the topography of an abandoned railway cutting. This is Eddy’s Branch Line.
I cut my trail-riding teeth in the thick mud of Northamptonshire. I can do this.
What a section! Start, hairpin bend, down into the cutting, along the cutting, up and out and over a bridge across the cutting, right-angle corner, flatout undulating blast to the end. Stand for the tight corners, sit for everything else.
And done, and done clean. Waiting at the end is the section chief marshal (and farmer) Eddy himself.
We thank marshals on each section as a matter of course, but this is an opportunity to thank the landowner too. I tell him it’s the best section so far.
He tells me that other competitors have complained about how difficult it was and that the mud has cost them Gold, which boosts my confidence no end. I’ve done better than some!
Great Grogley, Withielgoose, and Trevithic sections are found and dispatched without difficulty. I remember at least some of them from last year. At this point I’m riding in a bubble. There is no one ahead of or behind me, and marshals are enjoying lunch as I approach. The quiet is unreal.
It doesn’t last. The route spits us onto the A39, jammed with holiday traffic and lined with tacky attractions. It’s like another (nightmarish) world. I take a wrong turn off a roundabout, and find myself up by Newquay airport. Giving modern technology a chance, I pull out my mobile and open the map app. There’s no signal, and no map. Waste of time. Just go back to the roundabout and pay more attention.
But I take the opportunity to fill the Beta’s long-range tank at a nearby Gulf station. It’s not on reserve, but it might be soon. I check the engine oil tank. It’s used all of an egg-cup full of lube. It looks like I can do the whole event and ride home without using the extra oil I’ve stashed on the bike. Amazing!
Back on route, I pull into the Peranporth time control. While I’m enjoying a nutritious snack of three Lidl energy bars and a can of Red Bull, the Norton and GasGas pull in. Glad to see the plastic bag exercise has left them unscathed.
There’s one more section to go before Blue Hills.
I ride past the entrance to Lambriggan twice, thanks to my non-functioning trip meter. Having found it, I’m up it like a rat up a drainpipe, and on to Blue Hills.
I’m not sure if I’m actually supposed to do Blue Hills One, but it would be rude not to. Down around, up, out and stop at the line.
Now on to Blue Hills Two. The access to this is a challenge in itself, but I make it there without drama, largely because I keep my bum on the seat.
At the Section Start, I’m instructed to wait. The Chief Marshal wants a word. Perhaps news of my lack of skill has preceded me, and he’s going to tell me to wait until the air ambulance arrives before I launch myself into the rocks?
Here he comes down the hill like a mountain goat. It has been decided, he tells me ominously, that daytime riders need only get as far as the A-board and then I will be dragged to the top of the hill if necessary.
Oh, dear…there’s only one other contestant in the class…what the hell happened to him that this guy has come down to tell me this?
And I can’t see the A-board.
No matter. He’s away to the top of the hill, the start marshal is telling me I can proceed, and someone is pointing a video camera in my face while an expectant buzz comes from the crowd.
This is it.
First or second gear?
Well we got up here so far in first without traction issues, so my left foot clicks the pedal down while my right foot hold the back brake on.
Clutch to biting point, throttle open progressively. The ring-ding from the Beta’s exhaust deepens into a growl, and the Mitas rear tyre miraculously finds traction as the back brake is released. And we are off. I remind myself not to stand up, and just let the front wheel pick its way up the path. Steady throttle, feather the clutch if it feels like it’ll wheelie or spin (it doesn’t). Marshals are blocking the point where the ‘proper’ contestants turn left so I just carry on up the hill. Somewhere, back there, I passed the A-board.
And suddenly, I’m up top, at the back of the queue for the tea-stall! I haven’t fallen, I didn’t foot. Familiar voices shout my name…it’s brother Ben and sister Chris who have gone to get refreshment anticipating that it will be hours before I arrive at the foot of the hill, if indeed I arrive at all.
I’m buzzing!
My siblings are incredulous.
I try to explain, incoherently, that I was a mere passenger on the Beta on that last climb, and I didn’t do the really difficult bit after the left-hand turn (where John’s Dellow destroyed its clutch and our Gold medals last year) but they are having none of it. You’d think I’d won the Scottish Six Days Trial.
A cuppa and two cakes later (sorry Ben, was that your cake?), and I’m off to sign-off at the Miners’ Arms. A brief chat with Richard and Claire Griffin (KTM 990 and Freeride) and I wobble home on a distinctly soft back tyre after I fail to get any air into it with the mini MTB pump I’m carrying.…it’s no worse than riding on a Yokohoma ‘whispering death’ tyre in the rain was back in the 1970s, or so I tell myself.
Later, I view the video taken by Diptheclutch, which is on YouTube. I see my fellow dayrider Himalaya Man being dragged up Blue Hills Two by three marshals. So little power, and so much weight. And horrible ‘chevron’ tyres, too. Fair play to him.
But the real hero is rider number 116, riding a Yamaha XJR1300. He appears to have ridden all night and cleaned every section (results provisional at going to press), beating all the proper ‘Adventure’ bikes and most of the lightweights too. Chris Curtis, your name is Legend!

[g00ner]

That’s a great read, well done

[catcitrus]

I did that many,many years ago on an XR250--silver medal.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

I missed the hard bits...but anyone who does the whole event has dome really well.
A Silver = just one 'failed' section, and you get a fail for taking a single dab on one section. Most of the sections may not seem that hard, but you are doing them unseen and either in the dark or after riding through the night.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Just to add, huge thanks to organiser Dave Middleditch...who sadly had to cope with the death (from natural causes) of one of the car drivers on a section during the event .

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Just entered the Derbyshire Daylight Trial...the 'wimp' version of the Edinburgh Trial...at the end of September.

[tuftywhite]

Brings back memories.

I'm so glad I'll never 'have' to do that again, however, I reckon everyone should do it once.

Riding off road sections over night is amazing.