HAMELDON, THE EVENT THAT WASN'T

Not strictly true - the event did take place - call me what you want,
but I chickened out. Sure I brought my motor, sure I walked the
course, sure I got through scrutineering (almost) unscathed, but I
also got a SOAKING when 1 walked the course and felt so damned
miserable I put the motor straight back on the trailer and set about
watching instead.

Believe what you want, but it wasn't the course which put me
off. On the contrary, I thought that Phil had done a superb job find-
ing about two miles of passable land through what is usually a bottom-
less bog, and to use both tracks to their full potential. But when the
rain running off my head had trickled down my back and was threaten-
ing to wet my jeans, I just didn't feel like racing.

This is the first (and hopefully not the last) combined Pennine/
NORC event hosted by Pennine, and a few NORC motors appeared
despite the venue not being exactly their favourite one. Pete Greenhaigh
brought his V8 Lightweight, which had, incidentally, entered two
Nationals. There was the ex-Tom Montgomery Mere V8 engined,
widened Range Rover special, which seemed slightly faster than its
driver, and Dave Baxter's 2WD space framed buggy which sadly suffered
from reliability problems.

Mick Higson had fitted the new, and very expensive, loadsapower
heads, which certainly gave him enough power to threaten low flying
aircraft with large chunks of Hameldon's best peat. They didn't, how-
ever, guarantee his return on his first attempt at the course. Rumour
has it that he lost his way in the mist and driver and navigator started
hitting each other, but Mick's story involved a problem with his coil.
Didn't know he wore one. Mick Heywood seemed to be going fairly
steadily, but he must also have been going quickly as he turned out to
be the eventual overall fastest. Pete Greenhaigh was keeping a close
watch on Mick's times, with a view to taking Fastest Time. He did.
The coilers showing their vast superiority over the leaves, even when
the ground is mainly boggy.

The leaf-sprung motors were having their own private battle, as
usual, with Kevin Baldwin putting in the fastest time and winning
Class 2. Steve Oliver was going really quickly when I watched him down
the second of the fast straights, and it took a brave man not to back
off for the bend and use up all the available track. Unfortunately,
Steve's engine couldn't stand the pace and stopped rather abruptly
with an expensive sounding bang. Michael Chaloner's motor, co-driven
by Peter Urwin, was doing its customary job of splitting the 2 1/4
machines, even though it did sound like a bag of nails. Clive Cocks had
(rather sportingly, I thought, after Tong . . . . ) let Peter Coonan share
the driving with him. Well, there aren't any trees at Hameldon - and
anywaythere’s not much to choose between them. I think Clive only

suffered a broken spring, so it'll have been a cheap do by his standards.

Even though the course was passable throughout its length, it
didn't stop a good number of motors getting rather badly bogged. I
felt particularly sorry for Dave Forster, who had taken the time and
trouble to fetch Ins motor all the way from Hull only to get stuck on
his first run and be left there for the remainder of the day. The con-
census of opinion is that the course should not be stopped to recover
bogged or broken down vehicles, unless they are a hazard to other
competitors. But at a place like Hameldon, or perhaps Tong, it may
be an idea to have a pre-arranged time, or times, when the course will
be closed, say for periods of 15 minutes, in order to extricate the
stricken steeds. It's only an idea - if you have any feelings on the sub-
ject put them to a Committee member, they will be discussed, and if
there is enough 'noise' made on this or any other subject it could
become practice for events.

I thought the event ran extremely well, and everyone I spoke to
said they had thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I must admit that when
the mist Had cleared and the rain had stopped I did get twinges of
regret that I hadn't entered. These twinges got even more painful when
my motor got systematically dismantled to keep others running. But
that's what makes our chosen sport so enjoyable.

See you all soon,
Dave Rogers

HAMELDON

It is now Sunday, a week later. I've been meaning to do a write-up,
but haven't had time. I'll have to rack the old brain-box to see if 1
can remember what happened.

It all started the Friday before the do. We were all in the Dog Inn
as usual. Pete suddenly piped up "Hay Clive, do you remember saying
you would let me double drive the Old Bus sometime? Well , this is it,
I feel good for Hameldon." "OK".

So Sunday morning appeared like they do. The WWT was some-
what depleted. In fact, it only consisted of me and 1 Amp's motor on
an "A" frame. Squirrel and PP were going on tlieir own in style in the
Range Rover. Oh, by the way, my second was chauffeured there in
style as well.

1 Amp and myself burbled our way there and prepared the motor
for the day's events.

There we were. all we had to do now was wait for Squirrel, PP
and my driver. Then it appeared. Range Rover, trailer and oven ready
boggler.

“What the boddly hell’s that?”

'Never ask PP to sheet anything for you", Squirrel replied.

Anyway we went for a walk round. I say walk round, we couldn't see

a hand in front, but anyway we persevered.

Squirrel was trudging along with me. "Watch out for that hole" he

warned.

"Yeh" I said and promptly walked straight into it. Everyone fell about,

and I limped on. Squirrel now had his funny head on. He looked down

at the tufts of coarse grass and remarked, "I was watching a programme

last week about Russian women javelin throwers and they had some of

this under their arms".

We all fell about again and trudged back to camp.

The mist hadn't cleared at all, and we were ready for the off. We
decided that Pete would go first. Chocks away, off we went. Pete
driving and me navigating.

As soon as we set off we steamed up. Pete bawled, "I can't see a
bloody thing!" "Neither can I, never mind press on".
We approached the end of the first straight and the markers looked
like we should turn left. We both agreed and swung a left - wrong - a
360° saw us in the right direction again. We pressed on until we got
to the water. Unfortunately there were two motors stuck there. I
shouted to Pete to swing round wide. We did and ploughed our way
back on to the track. We pushed on further, still as blind as bats. Down
the long straight we roared, hard left and over the bumps to the finish.
The finish line was in sight, and Pete went for it. Unfortunately neither
Pete nor me saw the last rut. We hit it hard and rocketed skyward. We
seemed to be up in the air for hours. Eventually we came down like a
bag of spanners.

Pete wimpered "Sorry Clive." "Never mind bloody sorry, get over
the line".

I went to have the card marked. Sarah said "Not so fast Clive, but 10
out of 10 for presentation on the last jump". Back to camp, inspection
revealed a couple of leaves on the front spring were broken. Still the
main leaf was intact, so we went for a second run, me to drive.

You may ask yourself at this point, where's Lea? Well I said she
could sit in with both of us, but Pete wanted me to sit in for the first
lap and I suggested that he sat in for the second, just to give him another
look at the course. I could see that she wasn't 100% happy about these
arrangements, but nevertheless agreed.

Right, lap two, off we go, we weren't doing too bad and the visi-
bility was a bit better. We got lost again somewhere in the middle, but
managed to find the right line again, and off we went. We roared up
the top straight to the water. There was nobody stuck, but a little bit
of indecision crept in. 1 suddenly thought - why were the two motors
stuck on the previous lap? 1 decided at the last minute to go round

again. That was the fatal mistake. We sunk. All the riving, thrutching
and pulling had no effect. We stayed there until the marshal came to
pull us out. Blast, a maximum.

Eventually we got back to camp. Lea's turn now. I decided to
have another drive, this went OK apart from getting a gob of muck
on the steering wheel, which went like grease.
"dive us a rag". Nothing. "Give us a rag". Wipers come on.
"GIVE US A BLOODY RAG!" Ah ah, success. There's nothing worse
than a dithery navigator. 1 can only put it down to sulking about miss-
ing the first two laps, and her rusty head. Anyway on we went to finish
witli a reasonable time as well. Only problem now was we had a com-
pletely broken spring. What should we do? Pack up and go home or
change it? "Let's change it then". Lea said, "I'm not crawling under
there, I've only had one run".

So we set about changing the spring and after about half an hour
of thumping and banging we were ready for the fourth lap. Pete looked
at his grubby hands and proclaimed "I'm training to be a Mick Higson"
Anyway. Lap 4 Pete driving me back in the navigator's seat. Off we
went. Things were definitely getting better. Everything was going great
until we jumped off the top track into a bog again. "Sorry Clive".
"C'est la vie". Anyway Russell Holdsworth was there on hand, so lie
yanked us out and on we went (Thanks Russ). We finished, but with
a disappointing time.

Run 5, me back in the driving seat, Lea back alongside. Just a
minute, what's this? Toby dashed over to tighten Lea's harness. Cut it
out Jefferson, that's my job. Anyway off we went. No problems.

A fairly uneventful lap brought in my best lap of the day. Un-
fortunately we broke the same spring again, so that was definitely that.
Just remember 1 still have to tow 1 Amp's motor home.

So there we are, it didn't go too well, but what we did I enjoyed.
Pete did well to say it was only his second do. So, well done Pete!

Well done all the winners, and my usual thanks to all the marshals
organisers, landowner and everyone else who had a finger in the pie
(sorry Glen). See you all soon.

Clive Cocks

SCOUT MOOR TRIAL AND SNOWBALL FIGHT

A quick look at the weather on Sunday morning persuaded the Mean
Green Machine (Okay. okay, it's a shed) that it would have more fun
sitting on the drive than getting its wheels dirty at Scout Moor. Shame
really, 'cos it's one of my favourite bits of land. Anyway. I wasn't
going to miss the event entirely, so complete with eldest son and girl-

friend (his, not mine), and in convoy with Steve Rawcliffe in his some-

what draughty steed, we set off to see whether we could get up the
track to the quarry. When we reached Heap Village. Raymond was stood
in the middle of the road with his yellow jacket on, pretending to be a
traffic cop. Only the helmet let him down, 'cos he'd borrowed Anne's
white tea cosy and you couldn't tell he was wearing anything at all. He
told us that part way up the track was a Caterpillar slewed across, part
in the ditch, but with a bit of care you could get past. Trailers would
most definitely have to stay at the bottom today. Off we went, up the
track, to see who else had turned up. We had a quick drive around but
couldn't find anyone, in fact we could hardly see the evidence of any
other motor having driven on the fresh snow. Back down to the bottom
to find out what was going on. Apparently, Rob Gill and Steve Oliver
were setting out on Saturday (Steve kindly volunteered Rob's assistance
without him knowing) and the wind was whipping the sticks out quicker
than our intrepid duo could knock them in. So it was that there were
no sections set. Various groups set off in different directions and before
long the sections had numbered about ten. All we needed now was a
few competitors, and that's exactly what we got. Nevertheless, it's not
the size of the entry that matters - it's the quality! Ah, well.

There appeared to be one group going from section to section, in
numerical order. Section one started in the main parking area, with a
fairly steep drop down to a lower track, and had a hillclimb finish
(where Steve Rawcliffe was unlucky enough to break his front diff as
we were setting out). On to section two, which had an easy looking
right hand bend which anything on leaves found almost impossible.
Even the 80s were struggling. Section three started with a pretty good
snowball fight involving most of the spectators and competitors, which
was started by the Whalley Waggon Train. It finished with sledging. I
didn't know what good sledges lightweight bonnets made. Thanks must
go to John Dennison for the loan of the sledge, 1 don't think it got too
badly scratched.The section looked interesting enough. It managed to
stop Mick Higson's coiler despite the new set of Grabbers, but I think
Mick was more worried about the snowballs than the section!

About this time I lost track of where the competitors had gone,
possibly due to the amount of talking 1 was doing. 1 never really caught
up with the proceedings again for the rest of the day. It was interesting
to see the different sections which had been set out by the various
groups, they all seemed good, even though it was extremely difficult
setting them out in the snow when the exact lie of the land couldn't
be seen.

Thanks to all who set out, and the marshals, and well done the
winners.

See you all soon                       Dave Rogers

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