Rain adds spice to Holmes trial
Persistent rain just as signing on began totally changed the nature of the John Holmes Trial organised by the Westmorland Club on their own land at Lindale with the previously fairly dry sections soon soaking wet with the severity changing as the rain continued through the day.
But it didn’t seem to matter as the 40 strong entry knuckled down to complete the four laps of ten sections in record time, with the trial over, all wrapped up and everybody away off home by 1.25pm. Possibly a record?
The results of the main clubman course show that Matthew Edmondson notched up another win with only section nine proving any real trouble for him as he lost seven of his ten marks on this one section. Young Edmondson is very much an under 40 year old rider, but his closest rival on the day was Richard Taylor who is very much an over 60 rider and he finished six marks behind, but one ahead of Will Baron, another of the Centre’s up-and-coming young riders.
On the Clubman easier course it was Neil Buckley who took the win in this category with the loss of 21 marks on his 185 Bantam with Phil Haygarth second aboard his BSA that class winner Buckley had previously worked on. Nigel Furness was third despite having to spend some time working on his son’s Armstrong which persistently kept shedding its chain.
The long gully at the top of the steep field that features regularly in Westmorland trials at this venue was in vicious mood, with rain having washed much of the loose rocks out leaving it both slippery and with some significant solid rockery in the second of the two continuous subs. On another day the section can be much easier, but in this case it certainly wasn’t . Only Edmondson and Andrew Hackett cleaned the first sub there but nobody mastered the second sub, a dab being the best. The easy course riders had it easy on this section, just riding alongside the gully on the grassy bank but they all had a hard time at section two where Buckey was the only rider to escape with a single figure loss.
There are no scores for section 10, the card having gone missing and the club’s thanks to all the ten observers who stayed out in some wet, chilly weather for the entry to enjoy their day. They did at least get a move on to secure an early finish.
Results are available from the Home page link; Eric Kitchen’s pictures will be available soon and so will Phil Haygarth’s video on his You Tube channel, 2wheels offroad. Here’s the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXECLcdnWuI&t=616s