Three super smooth winners
The winners in all three classes of the Bassenthwaite Club’s D.K.Laing trial at Threlkeld on the opening Sunday of the 2025 Northern Centre Trials Championship provided a masterclass of how to win to all their rivals in this well supported trial that attracted nearly 70 entrants.
Tom Swindlehurst, the defending champion over the hard course showed that his season of riding major national trials as well as the Scottish and the Scott has certainly paid dividends with a 34 mark winning advantage over Cameron Brice whilst the smooth riding Richard Gaskell was in third.
Richard Gaskell
Smooth riding is certainly a feature that all the very best and talented riders show and few are so smooth in their class as Nick Shield. Riding in the Over 60 category, Shield was quite simply, like Swindlehurst, in a class of his own over the four laps of 10 sections set around the steep mountain course in the Northern Lake District under the brooding scar of Blencathra.
Losing just nine marks, Shield was ten ahead of Adam Brayton, who finished with half the score of his brother Ben, whilst Joe Younghusband in third was six ahead of his dad Gary in fifth with Ben Hanson taking fourth, sandwiched between the two Younghusbands.
Fourteen marks was the winning margin Sam Metcalfe enjoyed over the Green course which proved quite difficult for the intermediate class which rode some clubman and some hard route sections with Connor Anderson, a very much up and coming A class rider in second with Nigel Birkett third as he begins his winter trials riding in preparation for yet another Scottish Six Days.
John Kennedy
Inevitably, whilst all the plaudits inevitably go to the winners, further down the field there were some fine displays of trials riding. Young Aaron Oliver, still a B class rider on a 125 tackled the green course and though he lost 93 marks, his determined effort through the double subs of section seven and eight was determination personified. John Gornall hasn’t ridden a modern bike in a trial for a year but still managed to have a very credible performance for seventh Clubman and Ronnie Looker, riding the only very basic Pre 65 James in the trial found it hard work yet still tackled the entire ciurse to claim a well-earned finish.
Just a few weeks ago, Manx lass Kaytlyn Adshead (lead picture) was one of the three women who won the Women’s class in the Trial des Nations for Britain, and is now resident on the mainland as she attends university at Carlisle, Northern Centre trials are literally on her new doorstep, and where better to improve even further in Cumbria’s classic events. Kaytlyn tackled the hard route and performed well with some determined riding over a classicly tough set of Lakeland sections.
Full results are on the link from the Home page and unfortunately no Eric Kitchen pictures this week. Several riders enquired as to the photo maestro’s whereabouts and his absence was due to a minor accident indoors at home when he tripped over and banged himself about. He’s battered and bruised but OK and will be out and about again soon.