Witley Motorcycle Club Boxing day Enduro

Venue : Slab Common, Borden, Hants.

This was my first event following my recent lay-off and I was just to be marshalling.
8am Boxing day morning, 22 degrees centigrade, light winds and bright sunshine. It was looking to be an excellent day......... in Australia. However, here in Hampshire, it was humping with rain and decidedly chilly.

Slab common is not know for being firm under foot at the best of times and the recent rainfall implied that it was going to be an 'interesting' day. Soon after arrival I met up with Manny who had been involved in setting up the course who informed me that he'd had problem just walking it and, as such, had left his bike at home.

I set out early to do a lap of the track and help cut it in a little and succeeded in getting bogged down several times. My apologies to any of the front runners who may have followed my tracks in to the sand traps. The start seemed to go OK even though I missed it as I was finishing my sighting lap.

It wasn't long before some of the riders were seen hauling their machines out of the quagmires. Other riders were very kindly draining some of the deeper puddles. Although I can't help thinking that the muddy water must have tasted rather horrid.

I spent a great deal of time, along with quite a few other marshals, trying to extract one particular KTM. He'd kindly parked his bike in a very boggy patch so that the other competitors could avoid it. I think he was there for around an hour whilst his machine was being extracted. Multiple persons were pulling at it, Christian Vaughn and his Quad were towing it, shovels were being abused and still this stubborn bike was in no hurry to move. It was eventually extracted and seemed to start up and be ridden away fairly easily.

Sadly, by this time my bike, which up until now had been ridden at a very sedate pace, had been allowed to cool down and refused to start as the plug was oiled up. I was forced to return to the pits and collect wire brush and other tools on foot. By the time I was running again the event was all but over and I was cold, wet and tired. As such I didn't get to see much of the whole event but the persons I spoke to in the its all seemed fairly happy. It hadn't been easy going but most seemed to have enjoyed it. The ambulance crew spent the event twiddling their thumbs and getting paid for doing almost nothing, which is always a good thing.