TRIAL REPORT
MAC - Clee Hills Trial
18th January 2004
With the Clee Hills just one week after our disappointing Exeter a lot of midnight oil was burnt, and quite a lot of cash was spent, in replacing the mechanical fuel pump with an electrical one and making various other changes to the fuel system. But in the end we never made the start line, due to an unfortunate combination of last-minute family commitments, and this report is therefore written based on second-hand information.
The Toulmins were back in the organisers' driving seats and had made further refinements to the 'Woodall formula' resulting in a figure-of-eight route centred on Craven Arms with half of the trial heading north, and half heading south, from the start. This required no fewer than three different route cards (one for classes 1-5, one for classes 6-8, and one for Classes 0A and 0B), and one valley tackled in different directions by different classes with differently-named sections! It's a tribute to the phenominal organisational ability of the MAC team that no one got lost.
Roger Bricknell (Vincent) always travels up from Cornwall to the Clee Hills in an attempt to establish an early lead in the Crackington League but this year he was joined by Andrew Martin (Dutton Melos), another West Countryman, who had made such an impression towards the end of last season and was clearly going to be on a Championship 'mission' this year. Derek Tyler's ex-Adrian Marfell Baja Bug, which has done so well on the Clee in the past, was also entered in Class 7, and no fewer than seven Marlins.
In the end Andrew Martin was in different league from the rest of Class 7 dropping only 6 points on the trickily-set Longville Special Test - as did all of Class 7 and most of the rest of the field. Howard Stephens just beat Roger Roger Bricknell to second place with John Ludford fourth, Peter Morris fifth, and Paul Royds sixth.
Results: View as PDF File (26kb).
Photographs: See a small selection of photographs taken by Robert Grounds.
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