Falconers in deepest Readingshire!

The South Reading MCC organised an Enduro with a difference - no mud, no ruts and a choice of timecard or hare and hounds format.

Ben Falconer, Steve Venn, Tony Falconer and Guy M-S tried it, liked it and want to go back for a bit more.

The day didn't start brilliantly when Steve houred out before we'd even got to the event.
He'd set his alarm an hour later and so instead of a Hazleton rendezvous at 7.45, we got off the mark by 8.40am and made it to the Blewbury start with 15 minutes to get the bikes through scrutineering.

Anyway it gave us time to cast an eye over Guy's borrowed Suzuki 250 4T.

"What do you reckon then Guy?" I ask. "It's horrible, I don't like it all," he reckoned. Oh!

Our false start saw Guy running with the Suzuki to the start and kicking it over just in time. Being a motocrosser, it had no leccy boot.
That proved a real handicap in the tight woodland going where, being a motocrosser, it stalled fairly regularly. And without a 6th gear, it was fairly slow across the faster going.

Guy's a 2T man - waiting for a new KTM 125, he'd sold the Gasser 200 to me and I was having a whale of time.

Light, short and so easy to flick, the only bit of the course I didn't like was a hard pack motocross track which zoomed down in to the valley bottom and straight back up three times.

While the bike was pulling up, your innards were still at the bottom of the valley. 

In to the woods, then across part of a motocross track again, followed by a tricky descent, more woods, across the Ridgeway, round a few stubble fields and back via a tricky hill and a speedy singletrack - the course was said to be 8 to 10 miles long.

Stony chalk and clay going would have been a nightmare in the rain but dry going made it straightforward enough.

More like 8 miles, it took around 20 minutes to cover at a brisk pace. The format was dead simple - check begins at the start of the lap and so does the special test. We could have our time cards swiped or just use the wrist transponder at the start of each lap and at about a third way round at the end of the special test.

Best special test from 9 laps to count.

If that was too difficult, there was always the hare and hounds format.

Thanks to the dry weather, the going was not difficult but the South Reading club made it plenty interesting and technical enough - so much so that I bounced off a tree and in to another, busting the front light.

Then later on the quick lap, I bent the bar risers after another collision with the undergrowth.

For two consecutive laps, I greeted Dad in the pits with another bit of broken bike.

On the same minute as Steve, we took it in turns in the lead but there was no doubt that a Gasser 200 is quicker than a CRF 250X in a straight line.

Pinning the Gasser at about 70 mph across the fields was all well and good until a CRF 450 blasted by at warp speed nine. But he couldn't stay with me in the woods!

Good job we didn't see Guy - he was hating every minute on the Suzuki, on the clubman A schedule.

A mild mannered chap, Guy was fairly hacked off with the funny ways of the four stroke but he didn't lose any time.

We're not sure of the results yet but we do know that Steve won't ever be late for an event again.

Thanks to Richard Chandler and his team for a smoothly-run no-hassle event.