A social or a hill climber?
By TMX Archives on 29th Jul 11
Taking a rare opportunity of a local day out at a very specialist two-wheel sport, JD sprinted off to the Barbon hillclimb...
Where do old motocross machines go when they die? Apart from breakers' yards in Wales that is! (Why Wales – I really don't know.)
Well, there was a time when at least some of the faster ones (at least they were fast before they finally expired) got snapped-up by serious hillclimb racers and were then taken into rev-sheds to be chopped, changed, hacked and welded into hillclimb specials with which to storm the hills.
Basically, they sported shortened suspension, possibly a tweaked chassis and of course they featured road-based wheels, tyres and brakes. They might not have looked pretty but they were mighty effective at what they did.
I know this because over the years I have visited the annual Westmorland club's Barbon Sprint Hillclimb, in the sheep littered hills near Kirkby Lonsdale, more times than I care to remember. I have done this because for one thing Barbon is barely more than a sprint across a few fields for me and if there's bikes racing, who can resist?
I also know now that things have moved on somewhat since those heady home-built days and that the real hot tool for a hillclimber right now is a shiny new red-hot Supermoto machine.
In actual fact, today's Supermoto bike is as near as dammit to what the inventive shed-built special builders were screwing and bodging together themselves, with whatever they had available 20 or 30-years ago. And what they had mainly was potent MX-ers which were past their use-by dates. It is just that factories nowadays build shiny (and inevitably expensive) new ones. In the great scheme of things it is almost a surprise that Supermoto took so long to get invented. The hillclimb boys had the basics decades ago.
As ever with motorcycle sport though, however hot the bike, it is only ever going to win with a rider to match. Barbon witnessed something a bit special last Saturday when Matt Winstanley and friends turned-up using superlative Supermoto skills, braking unbelievably late into the hairpin from a top speed of 95mph and sliding sideways into the apex, before firing towards the line.
Matt, on a trick-looking CR450F, was competing at Barbon with other SM stars who were otherwise enjoying a busman's holiday while ostensibly taking a weekend off from racing. They included current hot-shots Matt, Craig Venske, Christian Iddon and Malachi Mitchell-Thomas. A tidy line-up you could say.
There was however one fly in the SM ointment though and that was specialist hillclimber, Paul Jeffery, who was campaigning a venerable Honda CR500 two-smoke that, and I do hope I'm not doing Paul an injustice, looked, from the sidelines at least, just like a proper shed-built special.
But did it go – and could he ride it! To cut a long story short (I know you're getting bored) Matt, representing the new breed of racer and Paul, who had the spectating traditionalists jumping-up and spilling their tea, fought out a high-speed dual which culminated in Matt setting an all-time hill record. The time was 25.28 seconds, compared to Paul's 25.43. It really was a tremendous climax to a great day's sport.
Just to labour the point one step further, one previous solo record holder just happened to be one Paul Bird, top motocrosser turned World Superbike team owner, who stormed the hill, way back in 1998 in a time of 26.19. His bike? You guessed it, a CR500 two-stroke!
So, that was one of the more quirky events taking place last weekend. And as our British summer's worth of sport reaches its climax there were of course 101 off-road events for you to ride in or spectate at in all disciplines. There was ACU British Championship Motocross at the awesome Foxhill track that staged such epic championship events just a few short years back, a double header AMCA champ (MX1 and MX2) at Little Boden, British Championship Enduro in the depths of Wales and the cracking Reeth Three-Day Trial in the Yorkshire Dales, which royally entertained over 200 riders in some of the best trials terrain you'll find.
The organising Richmond club enjoy the best possible relations with the landowners, farmers and residents in what could be a really difficult part of the country to obtain consent to run major motorcycle events. They have these good relations because they work hard at gaining and then maintaining them. This doesn't just entail a quick sprint down a farm track to leave a bottle of cooking sherry on the step by way of thanks after the event, the Richmond guys and gals are genuinely heavily involved in the community 365 days a year. They put an awful lot into the community and raise thousands and thousands of pounds each and every year to put into local events, charities and organisations.
This isn't just currying favour on their part, the club is genuinely part of the community and everyone benefits from the interaction.
This action is what I believe the prime minister means by his term 'Big Society'. It is the simple action of being responsible for what you do and what you believe in and sorting things out by your own efforts. The Richmond club stands for so much more than just running trials!
