08/07/2007 - MUDMONSTERS - TWINAXLE TROPHY ROUND 2

Event Location:

Mud Monsters Site

Event Format:

Cane Trial

Organisers:

Phil Wiles

Winner:

Simon Roberts

Organising a competition always has its complications, this one had a few specific problems all of its own. For a start, nobody was 100% sure where the site was. To make matters worse, everybody had to turn up at the same time due to the restrictions of the site. Then the French decided to hold a bicycle race across the southern counties of England, so we couldn't get from where we lived, to where we wanted to be, unless we did it really early!

Luckily this was a Twin Axle competition, so team work over came all the obstacles and I found myself in the East Grinstead McDonalds, at silly o'clock on Sunday 8th July. To my delight, most of the competitors were already there, in body anyways. After checking that at least one person,(ie. Peter) knew where to go, Si, Stoo and myself made our way to the venue to join Phil, Trev and the rest of the team who were putting the final touches to the stages they had set out the day before.

Scrutineering was relatively painless this time round thanks to Stoo and Si helping out again and everyone was ready well in time for the drivers briefing at 9.00. Even Graham looked less like he had been awake for over a week.

The event Phil had set out was a cane trial. The drivers took numbers from a bag to decide the running order, and took it in turns at getting through all the gates in each section without stopping, or touching any of the canes. Sounds easy? It's not. I don't excel at these events, but they always make for a more sociable day.

The first two sections criss-crossed a large bomb hole, and straight away things were tricky. The later drivers got to watch others, finding out where the harder bits were, but by the time they got to drive the course the drivers before them had spread out the mud making the whole section slippery. Route two had a buttock clenching side slope in it, which Andy made worse by driving up a tree on his left whilst the ground on his right was disappearing . Courses three and four took us through a wooded section and provided everyone with a chance to get dirty with many goo filled holes along the way. I managed to royally mess up section four, clipping the second gate and gaining 9 points.

I gave myself a stern talking to whilst everyone ate lunch. I don't mind not winning, but just driving into sticks isn't on! From memory Si was in first place by lunch time, with Gavin and Peter not far behind. As we were ahead of time, Trevor and Tony had set out two more sections in the bomb hole for us to run after lunch. Before we got to them though, we had section five to deal with. I didn't finish this stage either, but failed with much more style by knocking over a whole tree part way round. OOOoops. Peter had to run this stage twice because we re positioned a cane after his turn, and Andy's Suzuki simply refused to propel itself up the first incline.

Sections six and seven were high scoring for most people because everything was still so slick from the mornings escapades, but Andy redeemed himself by being one of only two people to drive a particularly long and slippery slope, and the only driver to successfully complete the part in route seven were we had to stop on a hill and get going again. Alex did his part to keep everybody entertained too, by doing wall-of-death style laps in the very bottom of the bomb hole.

After the scores had been added up, we had a tie, so it was decided to run route five back to front. By the time everybody had run, Si had managed to secure the lead once more by a healthy six points. Cracking performance. I on the other hand, had been concentrating too much on the dash board, due to its new impression of a Christmas tree. DOH.
Many thanks to everyone who turned up. The competitors, the marshals who spotted everyone through the courses, and of course Phil for organising another excellent day.

Stodd