Another good Trial. I stated out well but after Ham Mill it became "trial by re-start" and I fell apart and didn't get off many (did I get of any?). My personal triumph was getting out of the stream bed at Mackhouse 2 to a nice cheer from Andrew Brown.
The "new" hill before Merves Swerve was a nice trip through the woods. I enjoy the green-laning.
My mate Mike Pearson had problems at the start when he found his alternator pulley was broken. I don't know if he got it going or not.
Otherwise I didn't see meny drama's. We had a puncture on Ham Mill, another on the way home and the Speedo stopped working in the woods at Highwood.
The organisation seemed pretty good apart from the chaos as us failures tried to get back down the lane at Crooked Mustard.
How was your Clouds?
My first Clouds was rough, tough and very, very wet for the last three sections.Just prior to Climperwell the heavens opened and by the time we'd completed the last section we were soaked through to the skin and dripped all the way to the finish at approx.6.10p.m.However we had our victories.Cleaned sections were:- Sandfords, Axe, The Ladder,Fred's Folly, Catswood, Climperwell (which was in a very bad way by the time we reached it), and both Bulls Bank 1 and 2.I was also pleased with my special tests.However I got stuck coming out of the river, went straight on at Highwood 2, had a disastrous re-start on Ham Mill, failed miserably on Merve's Swerve and like so many I failed Mustard, although my descent was better than I'd imagined.I'd just like to thank everyone for the support I received and John for the pics.Hazel
ReplyDeleteWell I thought we'd had a good-to-excellent day until I viewed the photos and saw that the Harts had cleaned Merves Swerve! We only stayed at the finish long enough to find out that we hadn't been given the benefit-of-the-doubt on the Mackhouse 2 Restart - we got out but with a bit too much time spent going 12" forward and 6" back (several times!) for the marshal's liking. An easy clean on Crooked Mustard for the second year in succession and John Salter has it captured on a superb photograph - No.18 of 43 in the Photo Album - that's where you need to be on the second right-hander but it's getting into the position to do it that's difficult! (John - I'd love 'photo quality' copies of the three you took of us but I'll e-mail you direct on the subject).Otherwise it was clean until the two Mackhouses, then fails at Merves Swerve, the obvious places on the two Highwoods, and the Bull Banks 1 Restart (yet again!). But what a wonderful day, although we did finish in dry daylight so we may be biased. As I've said ad nauseam in the past, the Clouds really is the 'classic-of-classics' - what other trial has the first five sections all mentioned in Wheelspin and three of them still 'stoppers'?Andrew
ReplyDeleteHello Everybody,I'm not in a good mood. I've just spent most of the afternoon fettling a load more photos of the Clouds, to download them this evening. Guess what? I obviously did it incorrectly because my computer has completely frozen up trying to download them, four times. The only way to get programmes running again was to delete all the work I had done. The only thing positive, was that it was in the company's time!!I will try and download them again, in the next 48 hours, subject to workload.I scribbled a load of notes on the Clouds, hoping to send you a report, but on reading them tonight, none of them make any sense!! For instance, I have credited cars 10 and 16 both for being the first clear on Crooked Mustard. I do remember David Foreshew grabbing second gear around the 12 marker on his ascent of Crooked Mustard though. Another note I made against no 39, Andrew Brown, on the hill was "out of control", obviously the way to get up.Another drive I was impressed with was Terry Coventry in his Citroen AX. He got a lot further than most cars on both Crooked Mustard and Mervs Swerves.John Salter
ReplyDeleteJohn,Yes I can sypathise. I sometimes have problems in down-loading, actually I guess this way its up-loading, pictures to the community.There is no doubt that Microsofts server gets pretty busy at times because I have had the same problem even when using the ISDN line at the office and it doesn't seem to matter which ISP I use. (I use three different ones for different things!)I suggest that you try up-loading a limited quantity at a time, perhaps three or four. You could make the file sizes smaller but that would deny people the chance to download and print them and that would be a shame as they are nice.You may have noticed that I have cropped and re-posted one of your pictures of Dudley. Thats because I have to load the pictures for the title page from the photo album and I try to keep the file size small to minimise the time to load the page. This means I resize to 300 or 320 pixels wide and sometimes reduce the colours down to 256. This really speeds the page loading time but of course the resulting pics are not much good fore showing at a decent sizeAnyway - the other thing is to change the time. The late afternoon is a bad time for the net as the UK kids are just coming home from school and the West Coast Americans have just arrived at the office.Just another couple of points. Apologies if you already know about these things. It always helps to give the computer a nice spring-clean by :-Deleting all the *.tmp filesRunning Scan DiskDefragnmenting the diskClearing out the Internet CacheAlso, although it shouldn't matter, close down all running programs and re-start Windows before doing everything important. This is because the computer can get low on "recources" when running a lot of programs at once. Re-starting Windows releases them again. Again - sorry if this is teaching a grand-mother to suck eggs.Finally - If I havn't said it already thanks for great pics and look forward to the report.Michael
ReplyDeleteThe Clouds started to form for us. We have cleaned / failed Crooked Mustard on successive years for about 5 events. This year a clean was due and we did it but only just, not by getting to Andrew's correct line but catching a lucky bounce through the hole. We also gained a puncture for our efforts.We were clean to Mackhouse 1 where we gained 6 and stayed on 6 to Highwood having been delighted at cleaning Merves swerve. Then as usual it all went down hill scoring on both Highwoods and both Bull Banks yet again. We watched Mike Pearson clean Bull Banks 2. I am sure he did not go above 1000 RPM all the way to the top. He tells me its the first time he has cleaned them both so perhaps he has found the secret. Unfortunately my right foot has not got what it takes to stay back for that long!!!!As usual a great event and thanks for the pictures John.
ReplyDeleteWell as the Clouds is my original 'local' trial (along with my adoption of the Allen as I now live in Bristol) my sense of anticipation & intrepidation was particullarly high.The day started well with a clean on both Sandfords & Crooked Mustard but Axe was a particularly worrying hill as I had a puncture about 20ft off the start line (before it even became rough!). The familiar sound of escaping air is incredibly clear even in an open car and knowing how long the section is a continuous prayer was uttered all the way to the top hoping that the trye would not roll off the bead (which it thankfully didn't!)From then on we were clean up to Mackhouse 1 (which was unfortunately where my parents were based). We managed to get to the restart without difficulty then stopped touching the 5 marker.We then continued without further penalties until Highwood 1 & 2 where on restricted pressures we failed to get off both restarts.Thankfully we were able to get good special test times on both tests which ultimately enabled us to beat Adrian Marfell who was on identical points but thankfully with slower times.My highlight of the trial was definitely Merves Swerve as I really did not think we would be able to conquer the hill on restricted pressures.Thanks to all the marshalls & again to John Salter for his great pictures.
ReplyDeleteThis was my first Clouds too. Although I failed Crooked Mustard I enjoyed the attempt - at least it leaves the feeling that you nearly made it, unlike some of the restarts that followed.....Did'nt move an inch off the Ham hill restart, Jim Scott came up next in similar car and cleaned it - moral starts to sink... severe dose of pilot error on Fred's folly doesn't help matters then I let the tyres down too much for Climperwell and bellied out in the ruts. Didn't charge hard enough at Highwood 2 as I was looking for the non-existant white boarded restart, but at least we finished up by cleaning both the Bulls Bank sectionsBut what a good trial! Hope the problems with the Mustard failure route didn't aggrevate the PR situation there - maybe a holding control would have helped. Well done Stroud & DMC
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