AND NOW FOR THE MONSOON SEASON

Given the torrential monsoon rains during the wettest June for 150 years, the prospect for our day at Oulton wasn’t looking too good. It needed a significant improvement if rain wasn’t going to stop play. However, since the day turned out not too bad in the end there must have been a significant number of sacrificial virgins (or something).

Dinner the evening before was to be held at the Swan in Tarporley. Due to various weather and traffic problems, the number for dinner turned out to be one of the smallest ever. With bad weather and poor driving conditions (not to mention various accidents) traffic was pretty abysmal and Geoff Sturgess only made it to the hotel at 9.00pm. Mark Finburgh broke down on the A5 with electrical problems and was forced to give up and return home.

Ian Fox was the only one of the Folly Officers who made it in good time and eventually he gave up on the others and settled for dinner for one. However, by the time Geoff arrived, four other riders had showed up and so there were five for the (belated) evening meal.

With the New Era race meeting being held on the following two days the event was booked to capacity. There were quite a few people from the Glasgow area attending, and even four hardy souls from Pendene near Penzance.

The day started off cloudy and exceedingly windy, but it was at least dry – with the exception of certain parts of the track which were wet under the trees, and certain parts of the track suffering from deposits courtesy of the local duck population. All that grass and they have to use the track! Geoff was back to carry out the briefing in his usual ebullient manner and, fortunately, despite missing the last two events, he was still in fine form.

The start to the morning’s activity proved to be somewhat chaotic with the Oulton noise testing procedure not working in the most efficient manner. Since the noise testing couldn’t begin until 9.00am each group had to go out for their three sighting laps first and then come back to be noise tested. Three laps proved insufficient time to carry out the additional briefing for novices before they were due on track. There was the added confusion of some of the noise tested riders arriving at the assembly area regardless of group so that we ended up with riders from all groups mixed up together.

The morning remained dry, if overcast and windy, so that everyone was able to get out and have a reasonable ride. The only black spot was a quick sharp shower during the last novice session before lunch. The afternoon started off dry, and we even had some sunshine, and only the last three sessions of the day experienced any further rain. This took the form of heavy showers and there were still eight brave souls who went out in the last session of the day.

Considering the large number of riders present there were only eight offs during the day, mostly of a minor nature, and delays were kept to a minimum. David Marsh was one of the unfortunates and suffered a broken collar bone and bruised ribs. The only other incident worthy of note was the coming together at the Shell Oils hairpin between Aaron Tilley and Michael Pensavalle which resulted in them squaring up to each other on the track.

There was the usual assortment of bikes on the day. Woody, one of the instructors, was trying out a Triton which looked very smart in it’s silver race fairing. A photo of the said Triton can be seen in the gallery on the Folly website.

On reflection the weather could have been a lot worse and the majority of riders were able to have a dry run with plenty of track time. Many thanks to all those taking part who helped to make it a good day. We have a good selection of photos in the gallery on our website for people to view. If anyone wants to purchase any, log on to EDP Photo News’ website at www.edpphoto.com.

Our next events are as follows:

Mallory Park Tuesday 7th August
Donington Park Tuesday 11th September (GP circuit, noisy)
Rockingham Monday 1st October

So get booking and come along and support us.

Jackie