Getting to Lackham just after nine I was directed by Army types to the official’s car park. I spotted Martin and John my Co collectors for the day a couple of rows in front. Greetings and introductions done I unloaded my bike (400 EXC) and parked up next to Martins Beta and Johns BMW. None of us had done any scorecard collecting before or even been out on a TRF run as we were the newbies of the Wiltshire group, also it was John’s first time off road with the beemer and my first ride with the KTM.
We hung around the car park for a bit then went in search os Sarah (from the college) to find out what we were meant to be doing!!

The gateway into the field was already churned up and was quite slippy. It claimed the first ‘off’ of the day as Johns road tyres filled up and gave us a nice little 180 on the beemer in front of a reasonable audience.

Having spoken to a few officials (and importantly stashing our supplied packed lunches) we set off for a quick ride around the course. It was about 2.5 KM long all flat easy going with a few patches of snotty stuff and a couple of bridges thrown in good measure – oh and a double jump up a climb to negotiate!!.

We had to collect scorecards from the 17 fences each with it’s own set of judges huddled in a 4x4. Said scorecards were then taken to another hut on the otherside of the farm where more ladies totted up the points – cool we can do that. We parked up just behind the start finish and watched the horses off @ 3 minute intervals. After the first 4 had gone John headed off to do the first round of collecting. A few more horses away and Martin headed off. After seeing John safely return a quick chat then I was off on my maiden voyage! No problems doing my rounds until reaching the later stages of the course when pulling away from some judges the bike bogged down and died. After not starting off the electric boot, a few kicks with the decompression lever pulled finally got it going…        …only to do the same thing at the next fence. This became the norm for the rest of my day – a little maintenance needed with special TLC given to the valve clearances should hopefully sort it.

Met back up with the guys and the relay continued through the rest of the morning and afternoon stopping only to grab a coffee and devour the lunches! We had a couple of downpours but hey that all adds to it. I had to shoot off during the afternoon, as it was my son’s 4th birthday, leaving the boys to it. All in all a great day out with good company and a few sovereigns to the fighting fund. Special mention should go to John, how he kept that beemer upright on those tyres Martin and I will never know!!!

Andy Waring