Eventpost 55 - BMCA Hunnington

Today was a BMCA trial at Hunnington near Halesowen, West Midlands on a new piece of land found by Ian Bullock. The trial was put on by Ian, Gerry Minshall and Pete Reed.

It's never easy putting on a trial at a new location because you never really know how the ground will react and that compounded with overnight showers after a few weeks of very dry weather gave the organisers a bit of a challenge to get the level of the sections right.

As it turned out the land was really good and I personally hope we get to use it again, however the banks in the wood were covered with wild garlic plants and these can be slippery at the best of times. When you add a bit of rain followed by water being dragged up the banks from the stream it made for a very tricky challenge and some sections that turned out to be on the difficult side.

The sections consisted of 50% that were normal midlands centre stuff with streams and banks amongst the woods followed by the other 50% that wouldn't have been out of place in the Yorkshire centre with rocky sections up a stream with some nice big rocks.

I got off to a steady start and finished the first lap for 6 marks which was quite respectable. Although I continued to ride pretty well, I had some inconsistent moments on the next few laps where there was a very fine line between a good ride and ending up on your ear! Unfortunately I had more of the latter than I wanted and lost 5's on lap 2 and 3 on section 1, followed by a 5 on section 3 and a couple of silly 5's on sections 8 and 9 where I should have really lost a one and a clean if the previous laps were anything to go by.

So, all in all a quite high scoring trial however very enjoyable and I am pretty pleased with how I rode and also how the bike performed. I think my score was about 10-15 marks more than I should have lost but I imagine the whole field would be in a similar frame of mind so I think the result was a fair representation of how the day went for me.

There were a couple of retirements (Alan Nickin, Chris Denny, Steve Thompson and Gerry Minshall due to bike problems and injuries so I hope everyone is OK).

Results
Experts (Up to 350cc)
1. Steve Hay 27
2. Chris Pearson 32
3. Nathan Jones 38
4. Dave Dawson 48
5. Mick Burton 49
6. Keith Gardner 68
7. Bob Greenhough 71
8. Dave Jones 71
9. Alan Halford 76
10. Gary Hawkins 83

Experts (Over 350cc)
1. Jim Pickering 72
2. Mick Parkes 72