TRIAL REPORT
MCC - Edinburgh Trial
2nd October 2004
Although the MCC prides itself on tradition, and that's what (most of) the members want, not even the country's oldest club for the sporting motorist can stand still, and all three of the club's legendary events change subtly from year to year. This year, with a new Clerk of the Course, there was clearly the potential for more radical changes to the Edinburgh Trial but 'radical' is not a word in the MCC vocabulary. Instead, Ian Bates opted to put all the Edinburgh favourites into a pot, give them a good shake, and pull them out in a different order. He then decided to do the same with the restarts, removing them from sections which have had them for years and adding them to what have traditionally been considered the 'easy' sections. Add in the newly re-surfaced Bamford Clough and we were clearly going to be treated to an event which gave new meaning to the phrase 'subtle changes'.
The Marlin had done barely a hundred miles since the Lands End but it did, for once, get a reasonable amount of care-and-attention on the weekend before the Edinburgh, and I even managed to tick-off all the essentials on the 'to-do' list. Of course, we'd barely gone a couple of miles before it was obvious that the headlights were not on full power but we decided to press on to the start at Tamworth Services where a third(!) earth was quickly rigged-up and that, thank goodness, was the end of any mechanical problems, the car running without missing a beat throughout the trial and the drive home. After the farcical situation at signing-on, where one hand-written copy of the route amendments had to do for all, we had the normal drive through the deserted North East Midlands to Ashbourne. Agnes Meadow had been demoted to a Class-0-only section this year so Wigber Low (14 Marlin cleans, 3 Marlin fails) was the first section with the first of Ian's subtle changes - a restart for Classes 3 to 8. We don't normally bother to adjust the tyre pressures for Wigber Low but, this year, elected to drop to the minimum allowable 16psi. As it turned-out, the restart was not too tricky so that was the first sigh of relief.
Clough Wood (15 Marlin cleans, 2 Marlin fails) was up next, another normally-easy section which Ian had decided to spice-up with a restart, this time for Classes 6 to 8 only. It didn't cause us any problems, other than the pre-attempt nervousness, but the restart did catch-out a few. Deep Rake (All Marlins clean) was 'observed', although only to make Class 0 feel that they were part of the main trial I think, and the subsequent Special Test was only made interesting by the MCC timing lights miraculously gaining an amber light whereas they've always gone straight from Red to Green in the past. Putwell (15 Marlin cleans, 2 Marlin fails) - which was actually Putwell 1 - had been cancelled for Classes 1 to 5, and it WAS rough, although not as rough as the top section of the (unobserved) Putwell 2 which was REALLY rough. This, of course, did not stop a large proportion of the entry practicing the Putwell 2 restart - just to prove that they 'could'. Calton (All Marlins clean) without a restart was very easy although it was strange to do it earlyish in the morning when the sun's usually setting before we arrive. Haydale (All Marlins clean), another traditionally 'easy' section, had a restart this year but the real challenge was crossing the near-flat quagmire to get to the stony track with the restart on it. We were half-an-hour early arriving at the Poachers Arms Breakfast Stop which was just as well considering the queue for food.
We were lucky enough to be able to leave the Poachers Arms on time (later numbers were seriously delayed when militant ramblers decided to exercise their rights, and exercise them very slowly, on both Haggside and Bamford). Haggside (15 Marlin cleans, 2 Marlin fails) was one of the few unchanged sections, with the restart just around the first corner, but I had temporary brain-fade when I started looking for a 'spot' low in the restart box before waking-up and driving ever so slowly and gently up-and-over the step to 'park' as high as possible (which is what you should do), then driving-off without any problems. Bamford Clough (15 Marlin cleans, 2 Marlin fails) was a real fight this year. The MCC may have carried out repairs, and it was certainly marginally less of a roller-coaster than last year, but they must have used teflon-coated aggregate in the concrete - it was SLIPPERY! We watched several experienced competitors, including some in Class 7, come back down the hill with long faces so it was down to 12psi (Bamford was the only section with 'free' tyre pressures this year) before our attempt. As normal, I got as much speed as I dared through the lower slopes but this was little help when wheelspin set in on the upper part. Every loss of speed was accompanied by that heart-sinking moment when one has to decide if this is back-off-and-get-some-grip-type wheelspin or boot-it-and-hope-to-burn-your-way-out-type wheelspin. Whatever, we made it.
On to Great Hucklow which appeared, from the Route Card, to be unchanged from recent years - how wrong we were! Every challenge that Ian had set us so far (in Class 7 at least) had been a challenge only for the unwary or unlucky but things were about to change. For the last few years, the Classes 6 to 8 restart on Great Hucklow had been placed immediately before the sharp deviation left "between stone gate posts", which gave one time to compose oneself and prepare for the onslaught. We'd barely had time to register that the R-boards were not in their 'usual' place before we realised that they had been placed right across the very worst part of the deviation. There seemed no obvious 'right spot' but, if there was one, we didn't find it and registered our first fail of the day (Bryan Phipps, Mal Allen, and Pete Hart were the only Marlin drivers to conquer Great Hucklow this year). Slightly chastened we moved on to Litton Slack where light rain had started to fall just as we got to the top of the hill out of Cressbrook. No one was going anywhere with real experts such as Giles Greenslade making barely 25 to 30 yards before coming to a halt. John Ludford made a very spirited attempt but that only took him about two-thirds of the way to the restart box. So we racked-up a second fail with our pathetic attempt, although I did manage to leave the start line - which many didn't! (See Postscript below.)
A lengthy, and magnificently-scenic, drive brought us to the wonderful Corkscrew, a Class 6/7/8-only section, with a restart for Class 8 only this year. The condition of the section had deteriorated significantly since last year when a good proportion of the Class 7 entry had cleared the restart and the subsequent left-hander. This year most of us got stuck in a bombhole on this corner despite the advantage of a clear run up from the first hairpin. "Faster and wider" was the general verdict on what we should have done (only Bryan Phipps, Jim Bounden, Paul Royds, and Jonathan Toulmin cleaned Corkscrew this year). And so, finally, to Excelsior (All Marlins clean) an apparently innocuous section on the outskirts of Hartington. Although we were allowed to drop the tyres to 16psi, over-confidence prevailed and we left them at our normal road pressure of 25psi. Thank goodness that I knew Excelsior well enough to blast up the first part fast enough to carry some speed through both corners, because it was VERY slippery. A final special test, a quick signing-off, a short drive to our B&B, then into Buxton for an excellent Club Supper. Everyone, well everyone in Classes 6 to 8 anyway, was in high spirits despite the inevitable tales of sections failed and no one could quite explain their exhilaration. Perhaps it was no more, as Simon Woodall suggested to me some days later, than the fact that the Edinburgh - in recent years by far the easiest of the three MCC trials for Classes 7 and 8 - had become a real challenge once again. Who knows? Now on to the statistics ...
20 Marlins were listed in the Entries, 19 in Class 7 and 1 in Class 0, and the final awards tally was:
- Gold: None.
- Silver: 1 - Bryan Phipps (failed Litton Slack). Bryan won the Award for 'Best in Class 7' with the only Silver, a formidable performance when such well-respected names as Tommy Kalber (Ford Pop), Harvey Waters (Ford Pop), and Andrew Martin (Dutton Melos) could only manage Bronzes. Congratulations Bryan!
- Bronze: 4 - Mal Allen and Pete Hart (failed Litton Slack and Corkscrew), Jim Bounden and Paul Royds (failed Great Hucklow and Litton Slack).
- Class 0 Award: None.
- Finishers: 8 + 1 in Class 0.
- Retired: 4.
- Non-Starters: 2.
Postscript: The three 'killer' sections decimated Class 7, but none more so than Litton Slack where Andrew Martin (Dutton Melos) was the only competitor in Class 7 to clear the 'A' boards thus ensuring that the section counted. If Andrew had failed the section would have been omitted from the results and everyone would have 'gone up' one award, e.g. Bryan Phipps would have gone up from Silver to Gold, the four Bronzes would have gone up to Silver, and the five of us with three fails would have gone up to a Bronze. That Andrew failed two other sections, ending-up with a Bronze, is just one of the quirks of the MCC scoring system.
Results: View Class 7 Results as PDF File (13kb). See the Marlin League updated to include the Edinburgh results.
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