Snetterton 2019
28th September 2019
We went to Cadwell on Thursday 26th so Chris could ride the North in the Classic Bike Track Day.
It seemed like a good idea at the time to go to Snetterton when it had finished.
The morning was dry & rain was expected in the afternoon. Marshal Neil arrived & helped Chris with the starter while I slobbed about for a while until lunch.
The North made it through two sessions & then the lay-shaft snapped.
I packed what I could while Chris & Neil went track-side to watch the action. The time went by & I began to worry about the journey to Snetterton & the time we’d be setting off.
I got everything done, bar loading the North, & had to sit in the van until the boys reappeared. Then it was a big rush to finish & we left Cadwell at 5pm.
Neil left before us & arrived at Snetterton an hour & a half after us having done a tour round Cambridge or something
.
We ate late as we’d arrived late & it was all a bit stressful, again.
I was pleased it was the end of the season.
Chris ripped the North apart & I went to Shropshire to stay with my friend, Sarah, & did lots of lie-ins, Scrabble & Times Cryptic crosswords.
LSW
Mallory Park 2019
1st September 2019
On 1st March 2019 I booked & paid for a garage for the CRMC race meeting, on 31st Aug/1st Sept. I booked that early because I wanted garage one, due to there being a lot of space down that end of the row of garages. We were arriving late & we would be guaranteed parking. I was allocated garage one.
As the meeting approached I began to get nervous about which end of the row of garage one was. Logically I would have put it as the first garage you came to so I decided to contact the circuit to check.
Over the six weeks prior to the meeting I went to considerable effort to try to get to speak to someone to check that garage one was not the first garage you come to & that it was actually the last garage in the row.
I sent three emails, none of which were replied to & each time I telephoned I was greeted by an message saying the staff were currently busy dealing with enquiries & to leave a short message & my phone number. This I did each time.
I rang at 5.30 one morning & the message was the same! I never had a reply to any of my five left messages.
Finally I got through to the circuit the week before the meeting & was assured garage one was at the end of the row.
We arrived at midnight of Friday 30th August to find garage one was locked & hook-up cables were through the hole in the wall. Someone else was using it.
We set up our vehicles for the night & I got up early to speak to someone about the problem.
It transpires that because there are no numbers on the garage doors the garages had been allocated by the CRMC wrongly & that garage one became garage 10 in their opinion.
We had to move all our vehicles up to garage 11 before racing started as it was the only area with enough parking for us – they tried to give us garage 8 but you couldn’t get the van‘s doors open if you parked in the space available.
The mix-up was totally the fault of a CRMC committee member who allocated the remaining garages. Walking past in the morning I noticed the obvious large sticky residue of the number 10 on garage 10’s door. Anyone with half a brain could do the maths, but I shouldn’t forget we are dealing with men who have banged their heads a lot in their efforts to try & get a bike to go forwards fast & stay on & they are no longer capable of common sense.
We had a really awful start to our race weekend which I thought I’d organised so early & so thoroughly.
I was told the person in charge was ill & did the best he could. After the serious hassle in getting ourselves into a remaining garage I said I was going to be ill in a minute too if the situation wasn’t resolved quickly.
I was told by a CRMC committee member that because Chris wasn’t racing any more they ignored my booking thinking it was a mistake. Eh!
We were using it with a couple of Chris’ racing colleagues.
Due to the lack of parking space our caravan ended up on a severe slope so close to the edge of the lake Chris had to put the movers on the tyres to stop it rolling into the water.
We had some dreadful weather over the weekend. I did a couple of saves in the wind & pouring rain on marshal Neil’s tent while he was out getting soaked. It was miserable most of the time.
LSW
Donington Park 2019 - A wash-out. That's all you need to know!
Beezumph 28
Thursday 25th July 2019
Although people were camping at the top of the paddock we decided it was too far to walk in the heat and set up as near to the track as we could.
Chris insisted on using the big gazebo and in 32 degrees it quickly became a very large oven, so everyone sat outside it.
Not long after we’d erected it a bloke came over and said to Chris ‘can we dump some of our stuff in your common room so we don’t have it rattling around in the car’.
Common room!!! I may have used the most un-convent-like language at this point. I can’t really remember as I was so completely enraged.
A number of the Dorking bike club were present this year, and some faces from the past.
The familiars; The Majors, Martins Pratt and Pink, Grahams Jeffery and Redrup, Patrick Banfield, Neil Simpson and Daves Whitfield and Cruickshank all camped around us and the Dorking club boys were next door.
Thursday was incredibly hot.
Thursday afternoon Chris went to the aid of some breakdown-stricken French guys.
They later came to the gazebo to thank him and Chris tried to strike up a dialogue with them without much success - Chris has not yet worked out that speaking English words using a French accent does not make the English word easier for the French to understand.
Chris would say things like ‘Ah em eh meh shell’ and do hand actions, they’d stare blankly and I’d tell them ‘he’s a travelling marshal’ and they’d all nod and go ‘ah! oui!’.
I did the final ‘meal for many’ on the Thursday night. Two petrol stoves with a catering-sized pot on each needing stirring for an hour was most unpleasant in the heat. I have ripped up Delia’s Chicken in cider recipe and thrown it in the bin. Then I had second thoughts and the rest of the book followed it - in case Chris wants any more recipe ideas for more than three people.
Friday 26th July 2019
Friday was overcast and perfect for the riders. It was still a very warm day and Chris, who was chief (of course) travelling marshal, was getting extremely sweaty in his leathers.
The boys were up early for sound-test and riders briefing and then we deposited Chris’ starter, petrol and ice box in the holding area for him.
Martin came back to the gazebo after each session and I’d snip the zip-tie holding up his side-stand. It had to go on again when he went for his next session and I inadvertently put the zip-tie round his back brake lever instead of the side-stand. I did manage to look serious when he mentioned it. I mean it’s not like he uses it. I was more concerned about his floppy side-stand coming down on corners.
Alan Major brought his riding gear in the hope of getting out on the track. Both Graham Jeffrey and Patrick Banfield had spare bikes. Alan had a great time out on them.
During the lunch break Chris was invited to ride Mike Hailwood’s bike. Three other important bikes were also going to join him.
A couple of hours before they were due to go out they were informed by Cadwell management that they had to stay behind a travelling marshal and not go over fifty miles an hour!
To match Mike’s bike Chris had red leathers and helmet to change into which he used to wear when racing the RPS. It was incredibly difficult to get his blue leathers off and the red ones on as he was so sweaty so it took a while.
Patrick Banfield was the travelling marshal and he set off at a sedate pace but having no speedo, and Chris behind him nodding violently ‘Go on! Go on!’, the laps got faster and faster.
We’d like to thank Ian Stewart for hiking round the furthest parts of the circuit to video Chris on the Hailwood. He put in a lot of effort to cover so much ground in such a short time. It’s a pity he thought Chris was the marshal, so there’s a lot of Patrick in them.
Chris came back to change, once again, into his blue leathers and I sprayed his bare his legs with Dove water-melon and pomegranate antiperspirant and he slipped into them a lot easier.
Patrick’s wife has the right idea for removing them. He lays on his back with his legs in the air and she pulls them off his legs with surprising ease. I now use this method for Chris - giving great amusement for onlookers.
I’d like to thank myself for all the hard work I put in enabling everyone in our gazebo to have a cushy time.
I’d like to thank Dave Cruickshank for all his help and for putting up with all the swearing.
LSW
Morini Track Day 2019
Wednesday 10th July 2019
A wonderfully swift journey to Cadwell.
Grahams Redrup and Jeffrey were already set up and we parked alongside them.
Cadwell has further restricted the paddock area by allowing no-one to camp below the fenced area. Apparently someone got themselves knocked down in this area and this brought about the ban.
It’s a very silly ruling. You can get knocked down anywhere in the paddock. Are they going to close it all?
Chris suddenly remembered he’d forgotten to bring his race licence with him so there was panic for a while until he’d sorted out what information he needed to give
the circuit office to be allowed to take part in the track day.
Supper time. Now I have been doing this camping meals sort of thing for a long time and can say with complete honesty that I am quite good at it.
I have tried and tested a number of ways of cooking a large variety of meals and, having had some failures, have learned the best way to end up with an edible plateful of food.
We use the gas barbecue as an oven when we have no power. It has to be nurtured, and in some ways adapted, in order to achieve the best results.
We were having chicken enchiladas which come in a plastic tray. I have found it better to decant them from the plastic into a baking tray, sprinkle with cheese and leave them with the barbecue on a low heat.
Nice and slow is the way.
Although the barbecue is level, the top shelf in it is slightly sloping down at the front. I put a couple of pieces of wood from the caravan under the front legs so the meal doesn’t slide out when I open the barbecue’s lid.
Chris, terribly kindly, says he’ll help with supper. No, he doesn’t need to decant the meal as he’s going to cook it on a very low heat and, no, he doesn’t need to put any wood under the front feet of the barbecue. He’ll sit the plastic tray in the baking tray.
I think ‘Clever chap! I must be a right idiot'.
He says he’s just going to put the barbecue on high to get it to a good heat. He puts in the meal and goes to socialise locally.
When he returns he’s forgotten to turn down the heat, he opens the barbecue, the tray shoots out, he tries to catch it but it is too hot and lands upside down on the grass.
(Deep sigh) But I was so calm - I think sometimes I am just too tired to be bothered to be scathing. I’m not trying to belittle Chris when I say I know best but, in cases like this, if I didn’t know best I’d save my breath.
Having plucked out the vegetable matter we ate the meal, leaving the cheese on the grass, and then Chris spent half an hour trying to remove the plastic from the baking tray which had welded itself solid. I decided to clean the grass patch as it was immediately in front of the gazebo. I didn’t want Chris running the North’s tyres over it or him slipping in it and losing the bike.
Thursday 11th July 2019
Chris had an enjoyable track day on the Thursday and kept it sunny side up.
I did take a couple of crappy photos which I deleted from the memory card before I realised they hadn’t been successfully loaded onto the computer.
So I shall send Ashley a photo of my kitchen floor instead. What you see is not a shadow. It is the part of the floor on which I have not used the scrubbing brush. It is where they make tea.
It is like this because my husband and his friends walk into my house from the garages and think their boots are clean. If the kitchen floor gets this dirty you can imagine the colour of the carpet between it and the front door!
Having had two trips to Cadwell in six weeks we are doing another visit for the Beezumph. We should see The Majors there!
Chris is going to be terribly famous. He is taking out some bike which belonged to some guy who was very important for some reason. I hope he doesn’t drop it.
We will gather lots of photos for the gallery, for the first time this year.
LSW
A wonderfully swift journey to Cadwell.
Grahams Redrup and Jeffrey were already set up and we parked alongside them.
Cadwell has further restricted the paddock area by allowing no-one to camp below the fenced area. Apparently someone got themselves knocked down in this area and this brought about the ban.
It’s a very silly ruling. You can get knocked down anywhere in the paddock. Are they going to close it all?
Chris suddenly remembered he’d forgotten to bring his race licence with him so there was panic for a while until he’d sorted out what information he needed to give
the circuit office to be allowed to take part in the track day.
Supper time. Now I have been doing this camping meals sort of thing for a long time and can say with complete honesty that I am quite good at it.
I have tried and tested a number of ways of cooking a large variety of meals and, having had some failures, have learned the best way to end up with an edible plateful of food.
We use the gas barbecue as an oven when we have no power. It has to be nurtured, and in some ways adapted, in order to achieve the best results.
We were having chicken enchiladas which come in a plastic tray. I have found it better to decant them from the plastic into a baking tray, sprinkle with cheese and leave them with the barbecue on a low heat.
Nice and slow is the way.
Although the barbecue is level, the top shelf in it is slightly sloping down at the front. I put a couple of pieces of wood from the caravan under the front legs so the meal doesn’t slide out when I open the barbecue’s lid.
Chris, terribly kindly, says he’ll help with supper. No, he doesn’t need to decant the meal as he’s going to cook it on a very low heat and, no, he doesn’t need to put any wood under the front feet of the barbecue. He’ll sit the plastic tray in the baking tray.
I think ‘Clever chap! I must be a right idiot'.
He says he’s just going to put the barbecue on high to get it to a good heat. He puts in the meal and goes to socialise locally.
When he returns he’s forgotten to turn down the heat, he opens the barbecue, the tray shoots out, he tries to catch it but it is too hot and lands upside down on the grass.
(Deep sigh) But I was so calm - I think sometimes I am just too tired to be bothered to be scathing. I’m not trying to belittle Chris when I say I know best but, in cases like this, if I didn’t know best I’d save my breath.
Having plucked out the vegetable matter we ate the meal, leaving the cheese on the grass, and then Chris spent half an hour trying to remove the plastic from the baking tray which had welded itself solid. I decided to clean the grass patch as it was immediately in front of the gazebo. I didn’t want Chris running the North’s tyres over it or him slipping in it and losing the bike.
Thursday 11th July 2019
Chris had an enjoyable track day on the Thursday and kept it sunny side up.
I did take a couple of crappy photos which I deleted from the memory card before I realised they hadn’t been successfully loaded onto the computer.
So I shall send Ashley a photo of my kitchen floor instead. What you see is not a shadow. It is the part of the floor on which I have not used the scrubbing brush. It is where they make tea.
It is like this because my husband and his friends walk into my house from the garages and think their boots are clean. If the kitchen floor gets this dirty you can imagine the colour of the carpet between it and the front door!
Having had two trips to Cadwell in six weeks we are doing another visit for the Beezumph. We should see The Majors there!
Chris is going to be terribly famous. He is taking out some bike which belonged to some guy who was very important for some reason. I hope he doesn’t drop it.
We will gather lots of photos for the gallery, for the first time this year.
LSW
Cadwell Park 2019
Friday 7th June 2019
Chris was looking forward to the weekend before Cadwell having had a busy week and very early starts each day.
He got home Friday and thought he’d find out how the RPS was getting on and when he should bring it back to our place, as we were supposed to be taking it to the circuit with us.
Nothing had been done so Chris spent the day at P&M stripping it down. He had booked to go to Reigate in the afternoon to pick up a box-trailer he’d purchased last November. I had to get that and I had far more important things to do.
For five weeks Chis had known we were going to a party at my mother’s on the Sunday but he cut that short so he could go back to P&M to do more to the bike.
I was really really really pissed off about all this. If he’d been told the previous weekend Chris could have spent that Saturday there.
We set off on the M25 Friday 7th at 10.30am - and reached the next junction fifty minutes later! It was rammed.
We got to the circuit in pouring rain and waited for it to clear in the dry of Rod’s camper - Chris slumped in the seat still getting over the shock at having to pay £64 to get in.
Funny isn’t it. Thirteen years of getting everybody tickets because they want to get in free and now Chris is retired there’s no-one to get US any. (I say retired but he’s done more hours on the RPS this weekend than the whole year of Alan riding it.)
It stopped raining. We set up gazebo and ate and the evening sky over the circuit was beautiful.
Saturday 8th June 2019
It started raining and it did it all day. Those poor bastards on the track - though they must be totally insane. When is Cadwell going to do something about the standing water problem, about the river running across the track at the start/finish straight.
Guy Martin was out there but had bike problems. We will not see Cormac again as Brendan Ryan has retired. Also, the amalgamation of races this year means he’d get only two races a day.
The 1300s are now in with the F750. Chris originally rode the North in the 1300s and the post-classics, then the powers that be changed the dates of eligibility which is when Richard Peckett offered Chris the RPS to race in the F750. We would not have considered continuing for only two races a day. These days Cormac is happy doing endurance with Patrick Banfield.
Sunday 9th June 2019
Very good weather. I packed everything I could while the gazebo dried. Chris was still living round at Andy’s trying to sort the bike out. We were leaving at 12.30pm ish.
The time passed and Chris was still under the bike so I put the gazebo away and packed the van. This is actually quite heavy work for a girl on her own. Luckily I’m built like a brick shit-house.
Chris arrives. He says he’d like to watch Andy’s last race which is the first after lunch, to see how the gear box is now.
So an hour later we go down and watch and its an 8 lap not 5 lap race and there’s only enough fuel put in for a 5 lap race. So it runs out of petrol. So that was a bloody waste of my life.
In all the years we’ve raced, our rider has never run out of petrol. It’s the basics isn’t it. Have a look at the sodding clip-board and see what you’re doing next! Even I can manage that.
We leave Cadwell at 2.35pm and get home at 6.30pm, so much later than I’d wanted.
We haven’t decided whether or not we’ll do Anglesey. We are waiting to see if Gav can finish his bike in time. He’s had more than his fair share of hassle with it.
LSW
Pembrey 2019
Thursday 2nd May 2019
Arriving at the circuit at 2.30pm the man at the gate informed us we were not allowed to go into the paddock until 6pm and said ‘Didn’t you read your paperwork’.
Everyone had received an email confirming their test day entry but nothing else had come through since then. So no, we didn’t know.
We joined the queue and I fiddled about with Chris’ phone on whats app and inadvertently sent a photo of my sister and Ashley from New Years Eve to everyone in Chris’ work team and to a variety of his friends.
That took a bit of explaining.
Friday 3rd May 2019
Friday we were up early. Chris signed on and we started the North – well it started eventually when he’d remembered to remove the carb covers. They have a large, red, ‘Remove Before Flight’ flag hanging from one of them. It’s not big enough, Graham!
Fewer groups than at Castle Coombe meant Chris had more and longer sessions and he was exhausted by the end of the day.
The North was fine with exception of the rear brake cylinder getting stuck, but he doesn’t use it most of the time.
Saturday 4th May 2019
Andy Hornby was there with the RPS which kept missing gears. In his second race the foot rest with the gear lever was hanging on by a couple of threads.
After that he found half of the heads of the bolts holding the sprocket on had snapped off – Chris had this happen at Donington.
Sunday 5th May 2019
Chris has been working on the gear box of the RPS with Andy and I only saw him at mealtimes which is nice.
Steve Parrish arrived in his plane and took Chris’ bike out for a few laps during lunch. Then he did some book-signing and award giving and flew away again.
Stave had a crash helmet with him but had to borrow the rest of the gear from Chris. Steve said they were the most comfortable leathers he’d ever worn. I said I thought the word he was after was ‘roomy’.
Does it sound desperate of me for fame to mention that I had Steve Parrish down to his underpants in my caravan? Twice! Well he had to go in again to put his clothes back on didn’t he.
The RPS will go back to P&M to have a shake-down before Cadwell & it looks like we will take it up with us. Luckily there’s a month to do it in as they are always very busy.
See you at Cadwell.
LSW
Arriving at the circuit at 2.30pm the man at the gate informed us we were not allowed to go into the paddock until 6pm and said ‘Didn’t you read your paperwork’.
Everyone had received an email confirming their test day entry but nothing else had come through since then. So no, we didn’t know.
We joined the queue and I fiddled about with Chris’ phone on whats app and inadvertently sent a photo of my sister and Ashley from New Years Eve to everyone in Chris’ work team and to a variety of his friends.
That took a bit of explaining.
Friday 3rd May 2019
Friday we were up early. Chris signed on and we started the North – well it started eventually when he’d remembered to remove the carb covers. They have a large, red, ‘Remove Before Flight’ flag hanging from one of them. It’s not big enough, Graham!
Fewer groups than at Castle Coombe meant Chris had more and longer sessions and he was exhausted by the end of the day.
The North was fine with exception of the rear brake cylinder getting stuck, but he doesn’t use it most of the time.
Saturday 4th May 2019
Andy Hornby was there with the RPS which kept missing gears. In his second race the foot rest with the gear lever was hanging on by a couple of threads.
After that he found half of the heads of the bolts holding the sprocket on had snapped off – Chris had this happen at Donington.
Sunday 5th May 2019
Chris has been working on the gear box of the RPS with Andy and I only saw him at mealtimes which is nice.
Steve Parrish arrived in his plane and took Chris’ bike out for a few laps during lunch. Then he did some book-signing and award giving and flew away again.
Stave had a crash helmet with him but had to borrow the rest of the gear from Chris. Steve said they were the most comfortable leathers he’d ever worn. I said I thought the word he was after was ‘roomy’.
Does it sound desperate of me for fame to mention that I had Steve Parrish down to his underpants in my caravan? Twice! Well he had to go in again to put his clothes back on didn’t he.
The RPS will go back to P&M to have a shake-down before Cadwell & it looks like we will take it up with us. Luckily there’s a month to do it in as they are always very busy.
See you at Cadwell.
LSW
Castle Combe 2019
Thursday 4th April 2019
When I woke that morning I could not have envisaged the mayhem and stress I was to experience later.
Around 11am Chris set off on the Le Mans in the rain to attend the funeral of his brother-in-law in Eastbourne.
I started to work my way through a long list of jobs which needed to be done before we could leave for the circuit.
By 2pm I was finished and the van and caravan were out of the drive and hitched in the yard but I could not get the lights to work on the caravan. I expected Chris home any minute and I swapped the van for my car and the lights worked so the problem was in the by-pass relay in the van.
Chris got home and phoned around then set off for Guildford for a new relay. It took hours to fit it and it turned out to be not the relay but a faulty live connection.
We eventually left home at 7 effing 30 and arrived at the circuit at 9.40pm.
It was pretty full. We chose an area of grass, track side, and a huge black cloud headed towards us. It arrived very quickly because of the gale-force wind behind it and the memory of the ghastliness of Mallory Park came, literally, flooding back.
We first had the caravan to park up on the grass. Chris put the jockey wheel on the road so it would not sink into the mud and we had the back of the caravan towards the track. The ground was so uneven and muddy we had to use all the wood we had on board to go under the caravan’s feet and wheels.
Although the caravan was as far forward as it would go, the space between the end of the bike ramp and the fence was shorter than the length of the bike, so the end of the ramp was trapped under the North’s front tyre. Chris nearly dropped the bike as I worked to extract the ramp.
By now it is pissing down with rain and the gusts of wind so strong we could not get the zips on the gazebo sides to meet. I can’t tell you how many times we pulled them off and put them on again but my fingers were bleeding from hours of scraping them across the hook side of the velcro where the top of the sides join the roof.
We went to bed at 3.00 Friday morning having had no supper nor a cup of tea.
For the first time ever the gazebo was empty in the morning as it had become too late to unpack the van. We even left the bike outside in the rain and gale because we were too tired to try and push it into the gazebo through the mud without dropping it.
We were absolutely soaked. A river was flowing along the edge of the grass which we’d had to walk through each time we needed to reach the road. It was miserable and we hated each other.
Friday 5th April 2019 - Track day
We got up at 6.45am and put our wet jeans back on. At least Chris had his leathers to change into later. I emptied the van and set up the gazebo while Chris went to sign on and go to the riders’ briefing.
Graham and Janet arrived and at last we had time to make a cup of tea and some food.
Of all the places we could have chosen to park amazingly we’d ended up next to Paul and Tony Potter. They were a sight for sore eyes.
The slope inside the gazebo was so steep we borrowed all of their spare planks to level the legs on the tables. We had to sit in a line facing the back of the gazebo so the chairs didn’t tip over. Eventually I thought of putting the window blind up so we didn’t look so stupid.
Chris had a good track day. Good friends visited and we all had lunch together. The North ran well all day but a spark plug blew out of the head halfway through the final session. Due to the head being twin-plugged the spark plugs are only 8mm in diameter so they are more susceptible to stripping. Chris will have to do that before Pembrey.
The Majors arrived and went into a space opposite and Chris and I were asleep in bed by 9.30pm. That’s a first!
Saturday was cold and damp and very misty. Chris had a bit of a lie-in and got up at 10.30am and bought me a bacon sandwich as it was our wedding anniversary.
We had a pleasant day watching the racing and had a catch up with Lesley and Kevan that evening in the gazebo.
We packed up the gazebo Sunday morning and the lights wouldn’t work on the caravan again. The van’s roof lining had to come down again at the back and eventually Chris managed to sort it. He said he had an idea for a permanent fix which he’d do when we got home.
Later in the week Chris took the head off the North and noticed one of the push-rod cups had little nibbles out of the side of it so he had to go and disturb little Davvid at P&M on Easter Sunday.
We are getting ready for Pembrey and hoping to have a much earlier start.
I have unpicked the velcro from the top of two of the gazebo sides, which took me hours, then I machined it back on again, properly this time – take note you crap machinists at Gala – so that we will have an easier time fitting them from now on.
Hope the weather’s going to be dry in Wales.
Catch you all when we come back.
LSW
When I woke that morning I could not have envisaged the mayhem and stress I was to experience later.
Around 11am Chris set off on the Le Mans in the rain to attend the funeral of his brother-in-law in Eastbourne.
I started to work my way through a long list of jobs which needed to be done before we could leave for the circuit.
By 2pm I was finished and the van and caravan were out of the drive and hitched in the yard but I could not get the lights to work on the caravan. I expected Chris home any minute and I swapped the van for my car and the lights worked so the problem was in the by-pass relay in the van.
Chris got home and phoned around then set off for Guildford for a new relay. It took hours to fit it and it turned out to be not the relay but a faulty live connection.
We eventually left home at 7 effing 30 and arrived at the circuit at 9.40pm.
It was pretty full. We chose an area of grass, track side, and a huge black cloud headed towards us. It arrived very quickly because of the gale-force wind behind it and the memory of the ghastliness of Mallory Park came, literally, flooding back.
We first had the caravan to park up on the grass. Chris put the jockey wheel on the road so it would not sink into the mud and we had the back of the caravan towards the track. The ground was so uneven and muddy we had to use all the wood we had on board to go under the caravan’s feet and wheels.
Although the caravan was as far forward as it would go, the space between the end of the bike ramp and the fence was shorter than the length of the bike, so the end of the ramp was trapped under the North’s front tyre. Chris nearly dropped the bike as I worked to extract the ramp.
By now it is pissing down with rain and the gusts of wind so strong we could not get the zips on the gazebo sides to meet. I can’t tell you how many times we pulled them off and put them on again but my fingers were bleeding from hours of scraping them across the hook side of the velcro where the top of the sides join the roof.
We went to bed at 3.00 Friday morning having had no supper nor a cup of tea.
For the first time ever the gazebo was empty in the morning as it had become too late to unpack the van. We even left the bike outside in the rain and gale because we were too tired to try and push it into the gazebo through the mud without dropping it.
We were absolutely soaked. A river was flowing along the edge of the grass which we’d had to walk through each time we needed to reach the road. It was miserable and we hated each other.
Friday 5th April 2019 - Track day
We got up at 6.45am and put our wet jeans back on. At least Chris had his leathers to change into later. I emptied the van and set up the gazebo while Chris went to sign on and go to the riders’ briefing.
Graham and Janet arrived and at last we had time to make a cup of tea and some food.
Of all the places we could have chosen to park amazingly we’d ended up next to Paul and Tony Potter. They were a sight for sore eyes.
The slope inside the gazebo was so steep we borrowed all of their spare planks to level the legs on the tables. We had to sit in a line facing the back of the gazebo so the chairs didn’t tip over. Eventually I thought of putting the window blind up so we didn’t look so stupid.
Chris had a good track day. Good friends visited and we all had lunch together. The North ran well all day but a spark plug blew out of the head halfway through the final session. Due to the head being twin-plugged the spark plugs are only 8mm in diameter so they are more susceptible to stripping. Chris will have to do that before Pembrey.
The Majors arrived and went into a space opposite and Chris and I were asleep in bed by 9.30pm. That’s a first!
Saturday was cold and damp and very misty. Chris had a bit of a lie-in and got up at 10.30am and bought me a bacon sandwich as it was our wedding anniversary.
We had a pleasant day watching the racing and had a catch up with Lesley and Kevan that evening in the gazebo.
We packed up the gazebo Sunday morning and the lights wouldn’t work on the caravan again. The van’s roof lining had to come down again at the back and eventually Chris managed to sort it. He said he had an idea for a permanent fix which he’d do when we got home.
Later in the week Chris took the head off the North and noticed one of the push-rod cups had little nibbles out of the side of it so he had to go and disturb little Davvid at P&M on Easter Sunday.
We are getting ready for Pembrey and hoping to have a much earlier start.
I have unpicked the velcro from the top of two of the gazebo sides, which took me hours, then I machined it back on again, properly this time – take note you crap machinists at Gala – so that we will have an easier time fitting them from now on.
Hope the weather’s going to be dry in Wales.
Catch you all when we come back.
LSW