The weekend at Stainby saw a dissapointingly low turnout, despite it being membership renewals. Saturday saw only 4 members attend for driving, and Sunday saw 9 members drive, with 4 day pass drivers coming along for the day. Thanks to those of you who did come along, including those of you who took the time to come out only to renew throughout the day.

Thanks to those club officials who gave up their time for you, and arrived really early on both days only for the majority of you not to turn out!! It confuses me that an event on your doorstep has low numbers, and yet an event in Wales last month, 135 miles away gets the best turnout for a considerable time! I appreciate that work and family commitments take priority of hobbies, but when events get cancelled or their is a longer break between events I get complaints!! Guess I can’t win which ever way I do it!

Thanks also to Mark for taking the time to set out a very good trial section, and setting a bench mark time of 1minutes 18 seconds for people to try and beat, which provided a couple of hours of fun on Sunday afternoon!

The hidden punch competition was well fought, with 4 drivers completing both punch cards before 12pm. These were, 1st - Chris Hackett, 2nd - Gary Horne, 3rd - Eron Baxter (Ezz), 4th - Craig Sims.

The afternoon saw several drivers take to the starting line for the trial section. Those who took part had several runs in an attempt to set the fastest time. Details of this part of the event follow

1st - Chris Hackett  - 1 minute 6 seconds

2nd - Eron Baxter (Ezz) - 1 minute 7 seconds

3rd - Liam Sankey - 1 minute 9 seconds (with a special thanks to Ezz for getting in with Liam for this!)

4th - Gary Horne - 1 minute 16 seconds

5th - Craig Sims - 1 minute 18 seconds

6th - Mark Staples - 1 minute 21 seconds

7th - Daniel Spratling - 1 minute 58 seconds

A special mention to event marshall Andy Stone, who ran the course on his quad and set a time of 1 minute 8 seconds.

Some thankyous are owed all round, mostly to Byron, the Chief Marshall and Gaz, our ever friendly scrutineer.

This was a really well attended event, with as usual the numbers being swollen by the guys at wormhough, but nonetheless it was good to see some new faces, and some old ones (me) who haven’t been to an event in a while.

Punches were already set out by John the site owner, which I am told were in some sneaky locations…..

The punch competition was won by pez in the bowler tomcat, I don’t know too much about that as I was busy helping recover a g wagon from in the bottom woods, which as they weigh as much as a small planetary system, and it was his dads and didn’t want to scratch it!? was an event in itself.

The afternoon was given over to a cane trial set up by Ezz, Paul and myself. This is not a new thing for us, but we decided to add a twist to our usual time trial by making a tough trial through the ridges in the bottom field. The idea was to challenge most people by how far they got through the trial, and for the good guys to be separated by the time it took them to complete the trial. The trial rules were pretty simple, as many shunts as you like, touch a cane though and that’s as far as you got.

The results for the first direction are shown below.

As the trial was becoming impassable after gate 4 a quick decision was taken to reverse the direction of the trial for the last hour.

Results for the Reverse direction

The trial was a great success with many vehicles taking part in it. If you can share any pictures or videos from the trial get in touch and we will either post them for you or help you to post them on the site.

Thanks must go to all the guys who helped with recovery which enabled most everybody to have a chance in the trial section.

Well, till next time and thanks.

Edit: Some pictures from Gaz Horne from the day below

Mark

Well, it was a great day out in the mud at Holymoorside on the 21st. The guy who came with me was called Sinan, and is big into his photography. I have pulled out SOME of the pictures he took on the day (Yes there are more!) if there is a picture you like with your truck in it let me know in the comments and I’ll send it you in large format.

Obviously, Sinan was with me for the day so there are a lot of photos of my truck, but Ezz’s, Ako’s, a couple of stray Disco’s, a Pajero and some random Quad’s make it into the mix. And a mad dog!
Enjoy, Mark

Read More »

Results from this weekends punch challenge at Wormhough.

Well, what a day. Great to see so many people turn out for an event, even if some were from an invited club. Thanks have to be said first to quite a few people, Byron being the first for taking charge of this event in the absence of Trev, to Gaz for scrutineering, which was busier than expected due to the high turnout, and to Chris and Andy for marshaling. Rachel and Callum sorted out the punch cards so that they made sense, and fitted them to all the cars.

The punch challenge was great fun with 10 punches being set out in differing locations through the site. I must say that the positions were very well chosen, and a standard shiny could have enjoyed getting about 50% of the punches on the site, But the other 50% were pretty interesting, with the #2 punch by the river causing some problems, I had to pull a Suzuki out of the way before I could get that one myself Read More »

Despite the low turnout, we had a good day at this new site (new to most people anyway!). Saturday’s working party kept people busy opening up the site, although their is still more to do. Thanks to those who gave their time to help with this.
Read More »

Read More »

I have had the best days off-roading since competing with BAFMA when I was in the Navy. My old driver Dave Chislett came up and navigated for me (Unusual role reversal there Dave hates maps!) Shrek the Range Rover had a faultless day, not missing a beat once.

The job of changing the front diff still fresh in my mind meant that there was a lot less throttle being used than normal and I was astounded where the Rangey would go on special tracks on a low throttle.

Driver error saw Shrek getting a good pasting on his rear roof quarter, but between us we collected some punches that I never thought we were going to get to. However we did get all of the punches apart from 22 and 19 that were in the stream in the bottom paddock, even though some of them took some lateral thinking to get them.
Having a sunroof helps on a Range Rover….

But the scale of the bog on the extreme area in the top paddock meant that we were unfortunately missing a few red ones from that area.

We walked the course, but as I nearly lost my wellies down there on foot I decided that a 2 ton Range rover wasn’t going to make it.

There was a tough punch near the fenceline that was in the middle of the bush, and driving to it would have meant falling in a very large boggy rut, but we solved that problem by driving into the bush and getting the punch through the sunroof again.

On reflection maybe I should have gone a class up into the modified and used my winch. but as Byron pointed out I would still be on the course now If I had done that…..

All in all this was a top Quality event, with a good turnout. I’m sorry I had to leave early before the prize giving, and I still don’t know who won at this moment but Dave had to get back to Southampton and time was catching us all up.

Thanks are in order, and I don’t know how many different people helped in different ways. So Byron and Trev, stand up take a bow and give yourselves a pat on the back for the organisation. I know many others helped especially Gaz, Calla and Pete and I pass our best wishes to you all. You helped make a fantastic challenge, and a great driving day.

Or is it? ……..for once I wasn’t at work etc so raced home at 8.00pm, had a quick scrub then straight down the pub, bugger me where are the lads? anyone would do just

somebody to talk to would be nice! A few phonecalls later and I realise Monday night has been changed to flippin Tuesday night this week only! GREAT.

Luckily a very ’senior’ member turned up followed by another ‘long termer’ and we did have a good a laugh (neither of these guys knew of the day change).

Suppose the Monday pub turnout equaled the Saturday driver total at Wagtail!

Maybe the Tuesday turnout at the pub will break all attendance records? Hope it does .

Hopefully with the Website getting better by the day and Summer comin things will improve, especially with a Challenge planned and a wicked bit of new ground to beat.

Also worthy of note is that a ‘brightly’ coloured car with 2 astromoners in it has been seen a lot recently, well we assume they’re into astrology as they’ve been staring

at the Moon quite a lot. I’m off now but please follow this post with any comments at all, might just make myself a jam sandwich before I go to bed!

Cheers.