TRIAL REPORT
Stroud - Cotswold Clouds Trial
1st February 2004
Classic trials enthusiasts are a pretty traditional bunch and nowhere is this more evident than in the entry lists for the handful of events that never seem to change from year to year. The route card for the first Cotswold Clouds that I entered is now buried in a storage box somewhere in the house but I know that, were I to dig it out, it would be virtually identical to this year's. Crawley has replaced Sandfords as the first section, Rushmire is no more, special tests have moved around a bit, but after that I'm struggling to think of any other notable changes. But do the triallers get bored? Not a bit of it, they flock back year-after-year and, once again, the Clouds ran a full field of 80 cars in 2004.
After suffering my first-ever retirement in the previous weekend's Exmoor Trial I had been trying, without success, to locate the cause of the continuing fuel supply problems. On the Friday night, with the car still in bits, I received a panic telephone call from Jonathan Ellwood whose passenger had let him down - "Did I know anyone who might want a ride on the Clouds?". It didn't take much effort to decide to solve both our problems and offer to passenger for John on the Sunday. So, sitting on the start line at the Ryeford Arms, I knew this year's Clouds was going to be very different.
As I've commented (ad nauseam) in the past - "Name me another current-day trial with the first six sections all mentioned in Wheelspin" - now no longer strictly true, but four-and-a-half out of six ain't bad (Sandfords has gone, and the PreWar Mackhouse section is now non-competitive). Crawley is a nice gentle warm-up section, cleaned this year by all of Class 7, but is followed just a couple of miles down the road by Crooked Mustard, an awe-inspiring climb around four corners over clay-covered stone slabs and one of the truly great sections in modern trialling. Stroud now apply punitive tyre pressure limits on most Clouds sections, but not Crooked Mustard so there is always the "How low shall I go?" dilemma. Many competitors, myself included, think that the real key to cleaning the section is line and speed rather than ultimate grip so I imparted my pearls of wisdom and prepared to bounce like hell. John, having never tackled it before, did not have the confidence to attack the section with quite the gusto I was suggesting and we spun to a halt for a 3 - not bad for a beginner on a day when only four Class 7s were clean.
Axe was next on the entirely predictable route and caused us no problems although it did stop a handful in Class 7 which is quite unusual. Then on to Nailsworth Ladder where John made a classic 'first-timers mistake' and stuffed the car into the bank on the bottom turn. He was about to make a second 'mistake' and take the failures route until I encouraged him to re-attempt the section without stopping at the restart - just to see what it looked like from the driver's seat. He was very annoyed with himself so I had to calm him down and point out that a significant number would fail the restart and lose just as many points as we had (in fact exactly half the class cleaned Nailsworth Ladder, and half failed). We joined a very lengthy queue at the holding control on Rodborough Common and it became apparent that Ham Mill was causing far more problems than usual with some cars failing to even reach the restart. This gave me the time to tutor John in exactly how to tackle the section and this time he did exactly as he was told and we left the restart in style - one of only six out of sixteen to clean it in Class 7 - and that restored the confidence nicely.
Mackhouse was diabolical with everyone in Class 7, and all but two in Class 8, failing at the restart. Fred's Folly had a very tricky restart this year which caught out all but four in Class 7, and Merve's Swerve was its usual self with only Andrew Martin (Dutton) going clean in Class 7. John claims my bouncing gained us a couple of points here but I'm not so sure. I thought Highwood 1 was as unclimbable as usual but seven in Class 7 managed to leave the restart, and they were spread through the entire field so we couldn't use our late-ish number as an excuse. John excelled himself at Highwood 2 where the car leapt off the line and shot up the section climbing strongly until it suddenly lost grip at the 2. Only five cleaned it in Class 7, and no other fails scored better than a 5, so I was mighty pleased for John. A stroke of bad luck, when we fell in the 'wrong' hole on the restart, cost us 8 points on Climperwell (ten cleans and five fails in Class 7 here). The two sections at Bull Banks generally provide the sting-in-the-tail for the Clouds but they were in a benevolent mood this year with only a handful of failures in Class 7.
So how did we all end up? Andrew Martin was the predictable winner of Class 7 with Derek Tyler in the ex-Adrian Marfell Baja Bug not far behind in second place. Howard Stephens was best Marlin in third place, some way behind the other two, but after Howard the scores were close with Mal Allen fifth in Class, Jonathan ninth, and then six Marlins in tenth to fifteenth places (all far more experienced competitors than John so I'll spare the names to save the faces).
Results: View as PDF File (23kb).
Photographs: On the Classical Gas Web Community - Photo Album 1 and Photo Album 2, and a small selection of photographs taken by Robert Grounds on this site.
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