A weekend on the hills

[ Written for the NHCA Hill Climber magazine, as penance for causing the first red flag at Manor ]

I'm pretty green at this hill-climb lark, having been cajoled by Pete Fisher into a one-off ride at Hartland a couple of years ago. The ever-generous Simon Wilson was happy to lend me his 250 and 450 for a double entry. While that visit was nothing stellar, when I tried again the following April I managed to pick up a couple of championship points and, rather ungraciously, beat Simon on his own bike! If not for already spending too much time and money racing short circuits, I'd have been straight back for more. But the bug had bitten, and I knew I'd be on the hills again at some point.

Ignoring the view at Hartland
(Photo nicked from Facebook, so apologies to the unknown snapper)

I'd fancied a shot at Wiscombe since popping down to spectate a couple of years ago. With Manor Farm nearby, and both days bikes-only for double entries, I figured I'd make a weekend of it. Simon was kind enough to lend me his bikes again, having scampered off to other classes, so I booked a van and headed down to Charmouth.

My first job at Manor Farm on Saturday morning was to walk the hill. It never tells me much about what it'll be like to ride at speed, but it's always good to know where blind bits go in advance. Things have changed since the guide on the website was written - after the horrible off-camber first corner, the nice fast bit down to a bridge, and the short blast up the other side, instead of turning right through a hedge I found a wiggly footpath across a field to the finish line. It's like threading a needle on a bike, so I don't envy those daft enough to rag cars up it.

My first practice run wasn't exactly textbook. A hot head, cold tyres, and lack of recent practice meant I asked a bit too much of the rear with the bike still on its side, and it spat me off in the first corner. All happened rather quickly, but from the way the bike (and I) landed I'm guessing it was a highside, so that's now ticked off the bucket list. Once I'd got the bike back to the paddock, and let the adrenaline wear off, I could feel throbbing in my boot, so took it off to see what I'd done. And promptly put it back on again before anyone sensible saw what I'd just seen.

Taken after the swelling had gone down a bit!

Being one of the first up on the tiddler each time gave me a lovely view of other people being much better at threading that needle than I was. Almost everyone crossed the line on the black bit between the bales, which is quite important as it saves someone having to run over and break the beam for them. I was very ginger through the first corner after my earlier antics, losing a couple of seconds to the pole every time, but made it to the top seven times without falling off, which was nice. I even picked up a point on the 250, a mere six-and-a-bit seconds behind the whippet-like Glyn Poole at the top of the sheet. People with names like Tilley, Short, Hodges and Mills took the top spots, which I understand is quite normal at these events, and records fell in almost every class. Fastest of the day went to Tom Short with 27.03 seconds, half a second under the old record, which is frankly bonkers.

The fun part over, we loaded the van, refuelled at the excellent local chippy, and headed over the county line to Wiscombe.

Trundling down the hill to the paddock, I thought "this is more like it". One of my favourite circuits to race at is Thruxton, a Proper Circuit by any measure. Wiscombe is, I reckon, a Proper Hill. It's also long, and steep, which made the mandatory walk up Saturday evening a tad awkward after my off a few hours earlier. Even walking around the paddock had become a chore. Still, it had to be done - nobody likes a quitter - and once back at the van with a shandy in my hand I was looking forward to ragging the bikes up it in the morning.

My first couple of runs were cautious, all about learning the hill. Making sure it really did go straight on after the blind Bunny's Leap; learning how quickly the Gate corner comes up when you do keep it pinned over Bunny's; how many bends there are through the Esses (5? 10? 99?); and how late to haul it up before Martini - preferably late enough not to have to open the throttle again before grinding to a halt!

The perfect weather dispelled any fears about repeating the previous morning's trick through the first corner, and each run saw my times drop quickly down the lower fifties - the more seconds there are to lose, the easier they seem to be to find. The final runs saw me pick up another three points on the 250, still a country mile behind Glyn but ahead of plenty, and I dipped into the 49s on the 450, which everyone told me was quite respectable for a first visit. I'll take whatever praise I can get.

Records fell again in the 250, 750 and sidecar classes, with Tom Short taking FTD once more, a tenth-and-a-bit short of breaking the outright record. A special mention goes to (I think) Gareth Brown, for the spectacular crunchy noises everyone at the top heard him and his KTM make as they tumbled up to Martini at the end of the day.

And now for the epilogue. After dropping the bikes off at Simon's, sitting parked on the M4 for hours watching flashing blue lights, and eventually getting home about 2am, I took the van back Monday morning and went straight to the local hospital to get my by-then multi-coloured foot checked out. An X-ray showed why walking the hill at Wiscombe had been an ordeal, and I was given a funky boot to wear for a couple of months. That meant I had to cancel my entry for NG at Oulton Park, and no sneaky trip to Hartland either. Funny how, when the visor goes down, all that matters is getting to the finish line as quickly as possible. Racers, eh? We shouldn't be let loose without adult supervision.

You can't get these at Dolcis

Huge thanks to all involved with organising, marshalling and riding at both events, especially Simon Wilson for lending me bikes, let alone not killing me for crashing them. Hope to see you all again some time. And thanks to the staff at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, who I hope I never need to see again, ever.

Another season almost over

It's been a while since I wrote anything up, and I was at Donington recently, for two more days ragging my old banger round the circuit.

Getting up there was the usual chore - picking up the van, loading up, sitting in traffic for four hours... this stuff always gives me a can't-be-arsed feeling that disappears the moment I roll out of the pitlane for the first time and realise there's nothing on earth I'd rather be doing.

MSV have taken over operations at Donington and they've already made some big improvements. The old second-hand leathers shop in the paddock has been replaced by a shiny new bar and restaurant that's similar to those at other MSV circuits. They've added some extra showers (previously there were only two, which wasn't really enough for a paddock holding about a thousand people), and they're hot enough to strip paint, let alone clean skin. Paddock 3, formerly gravel and muck, has all been freshly tarmacked, and there's fresh paint everywhere - no more blue and white, it's MSV red and white everywhere. The rest of the facilities at Donington were always pretty decent, for competitors at least, but it good to see some money going in, even if some of what made Donington feel different to other circuits is being lost.

There was a car trackday going on until 9pm so anyone wanting a garage had to queue up in the outer paddock and wait til almost bedtime, long after scrutineering had closed. I opted for the gazebo-and-generator combo for the weekend, which I kind of prefer anyway. I bought a yet another set of numbers (they keep changing this season, for various reasons), got scruted and signed on, and caught up with the usual faces around the paddock before an early night in the back of the van. Saturday morning I was up early to fit tyre warmers, fire up the genny, make some coffee, and join the race-day queues at the paddock toilets.

Back when I started racing, one thing I noticed at my first meeting was the difference between practice sessions and a trackday. While the latter starts with everyone lining up neatly in the assembly area, being waved out as pairs in an orderly fashion, at a race meeting it's like bulls being let out of a pen. Everyone jostles to get near the front for a better chance of a clear track, or at least not getting bunched up behind slow guys for a bit. At that first meeting I was happy to tag on at he back, but I noticed these days I'm jostling with everyone else.

It'd been a cold night, and it was still a cold morning for timed practice, though the sun was out and it started to warm up quickly enough. I had hot tyres, a big old GP circuit, and ten minutes to do two jobs: get my head up to speed , and remind myself which way the corners went. I usually cycle round the circuit on the Friday evening, but that hadn't been possible with the cars still going round, so I had to refresh my memory in practice. It felt rubbish. Wrong gear everywhere, crap lines, just hopeless. But it was only practice, and when I got my times I was pleased to see I was only a couple of seconds off my best times from past visits, so not a bad place to start.

Back in the paddock I just about had time to wolf down a bacon roll before I was back out for qualifying. NG have changed their format this year, with a proper timed qualifying session for all classes. In previous years, the qualifier was a race with a grid start, with positions mostly decided by when entries were received. The faster boys prefer the new format, knowing their position in the finals will be decided purely by lap time, but for the hobbyists at the back it's just another timed practice session, and a lost opportunity for another race. Still, it is what it is, and all the other clubs seem to do the same.

I felt a bit more comfortable with each lap, if a bit tired by the end, which I can only blame on holidays and weekends away, with no exercise and too much booze. The results showed me 29th on a mixed grid of 40 in three classes - pre-injection 700, streetstocks 700, and streetstocks 1300. The stockers are all pretty modern, with the front-runners having a good 90bhp (plus the electronics) more than my old banger. I was still 16th of 20 in class, which wasn't great, but my lap times wer easily on a par with anything I'd ever done round Donington before, and Lee, my in-class nemesis for the weekend, was only one spot and half a second ahead of me. I think everyone has a nemesis, not always the same one, because for those of us down the ranks, it's the people around that you're really racing against, not the guys at the front. I'd also finished in front of two bigger bikes that had been annoying me throughout qualifying, whose riders who were great down the straights but not so great through the corners. The power difference made them hard to pass, but starting in front would make life easier.

I only had an hour or so in the paddock before I was back out for another qualifying session. This year I've been entering the open 600 class with all the fast boys, as a cheap way of getting some extra time on track. It's half price for a second entry, and peanuts compared to the overall cost, so seems daft not to. Back at my first race meeting, some last minute schedule changes meant my fourth race started on a mixed grid behind the open 600s. I'd done the maths and knew the fast guys were going to catch me after just five laps or so. Sure enough they did, and it was rough. First one went past me at the end of the main straight. Then as I went to tip in to the third corner, I found there was already a bike on the apex, and another one coming round the outside. That put me off doing the extra class for a while, but these days I'm quick enough not to get lapped, occasionally even being the one doing the lapping, which I'll call some kind of progress. Qualifying saw me 32nd out of 40, but two full seconds a lap quicker than in the earlier session, and Lee this time only a tenth of a second ahead. Best of all, I knew why I was quicker, having experimented with a few extra gear changes, so it all looked good for the races proper.

The first lap of the pre-injection/streetstocks race was scrappy. The bike two rows in front of me on the grid, and right in my line, stalled at the start, and people were swerving around to avoid it. Someone went straight off at Redgate, and I had to force myself to stop looking at the bloke fishtailing through the gravel, remembering the 38 other bikes around me in the first corner. Another bike went down at Craner, with a huge cloud of dust and grot going into the old hairpin. After that it settled down a bit and I had a decent enough scrap, finishing 15th in class (out of 20), 21st overall, and almost 8 seconds ahead of Lee. I'd beaten my main rival, picked up a championship point, and hadn't felt tired at the end, so was happy enough.

The 600 race was much the same - some chaos on the first lap, finished 33rd overall, almost half a second a lap quicker again, wasn't lapped, kept Lee well behind me, and had tyres so hot I could smell them when I got back to the paddock. A good day's racing, with times going in the right direction and the bike tucked up for the night before the rain started.

Sunday morning was wet. Not biblical rain as we'd had at Snetterton earlier in the season, but the paddock was properly soaked. I never bother with practice on Sunday morning, preferring a lie-in and a mooch around the paddock, so I walked over to Redgate to see what the track was like. While there was spray coming up in the first session, a dry line had started to appear in the second. We were race 6, and I figured that by then, if the rain held off, it might be properly dry. And it would, had it not been for the heavens opening again, 30 minutes before the first pre-injection race of the day. We all promptly got busy swapping wheels back to wets, but I had a hunch we were making the wrong call.

Only a couple of bikes turned up in the assembly area on dry tyres. Rolling out of the assembly area and onto the grid, the track wasn't just damp, it was properly wet, and slippery with it. As was the first corner, but from there it was bone dry until the final chicane. I still can't decide what the right choice of tyre would have been, but I noticed someone pull into the pits at the end of the warm-up lap, clearly having decided it wasn't worth shredding a set of wets for the sake of a couple of points. I thought I might as well play, but I'd have to be careful, as my wets were already four years old and have seen plenty of dry use. I was six seconds a lap slower, tiptoeing around on cooked tyres, but so was just about everyone else, and I came home 11th in class, almost catching another bike in front of me across the line (albeit a streetstock, so didn't really matter). It had felt like a bit of a waste of time though, more a lesson in tyre management than a race, and I'd learned nothing for the final.

Not having entered the 600 race for the Sunday, I had a long wait for my last pre-injection race of the weekend. It was going to be dry, I was itching to play, and it was awesome. Straight off the grid I felt faster, and I was in a pack of seven bikes in various classes swapping places for the whole eight laps, passing here, being passed there. Sometimes frustrating, stuck behind some bikes that were slower in corners than me but had better drive down the straights, and I screwed up a couple of times, outbraking myself into the chicane trying to pass too many bikes at once. But I'd cracked the 1:20s, three seconds quicker than I'd ever been round Donington before, and only two and a half seconds a lap slower than the class winner, halving the gap from the day before.

Great fun, clear progress, and no crashing. All I look for in a weekend of racing. My next outing, skipping Castle Combe, would be Oulton Park on the 6th of October, and I couldn't wait.

And then I went to do a couple of hillclimbs, broke my ankle, and the season was over. Bah.