Having successfully completed the Sport Adventure Normandie event I felt I had completed my trail riding apprenticeship. The Scorpa Trials had given me an excellent early grounding in basic balance, slow speed manoevering, throttle and clutch control. But it was not suitable for the Normandie event which led to the purchase of the T-ride, specifically to do so. I gradually realised that good though the Scorpas undoubtedly are, they are the output of a very small scale manufacturer, were produced for only a few years and are getting rather old. I found I had to make various modifications to them to overcome issues that had not been well enough engineered and the parts supply was quite a challenge. So I sold them both and started to look for a do-everything Enduro type bike. I had quickly learned to value light weight and felt that a 2T is always going to be simpler and lighter than an equivalent 4T, so my search narrowed to looking for a modern 250 2T enduro.
A few days in Budapest with Georgina. It was very cold !
Once again Gij organised everything – EasyJet flights, AirBnB. We had a whole apartment to ourselves and it was amazing – very Bohemain. The visit to the Holocaust museum was harrowing but very worthwhile and extremely well done.
These events are run by Chris EVANS of Sport Adventure https://sport-adv.com/. This is a 3 day event and you cover approximately 100 miles per day, nearly all off road. Each bike is fitted with a road book reader – just like the Paris-Dakar rally ! Each morning you are issued with the road book scroll for that day and given a briefing on the key points. The road book is a long list of instructions telling you which way to turn and what to watch out for as you navigate the trail. People are usually in teams of 2-5 and take it in turns to lead and do the navigating.
Our team was my mate Dougie on his trusty Freeride, Mark on his KTM 250 4T and we were joined by their friend Dave (Dangerous Dave) on a Honda 250 4T. I was on the Scorpa T-ride.
The first problem was that I had ignored the supplied instructions that stated you should fit Enduro tyres and had turned up to the event with Trials tyres. These tyres are perfect where I live as the trails are hard and rocky and the trials tyres provide lots of grip. But in Normandie it was very very muddy. The organiser Chris took one look at my front tyre and said “I think you’re going to struggle with that” and he was right! Every time we came across a patch of mud – which was most of the time – the tread blocks would plug up with mud and the tyre would then provide no grip at all, just slide across the surface. Good job I had been doing a lot of slow speed balancing practise as I was certainly going to need it.
I had so many close calls when the bike was slding out of control but I just managed to gather it back together at the last second and avoid an off. Dangerous Dave wasn’t so fortunate and fell off quite a lot, resulting in his early retirement from the event.
I struggled on with no possibility of changing the tyres I just had to manage. Fortunately Doug and Dave were quite happy to take the lead and do the navigating which meant that I could concentrate 100% on just keeping the bike upright. But I seemed to make progress and it felt like the trails got easier day by day, which is apparently not the case.
Apart from not wanting to start on the first day – lots of embarrasing push starting attempts in front of the hotel – the T-ride did a perfect job, which was exactly why I bought it. Having succesfully completed the 3 days I felt I had come through my apprenticeship and the Scorpa Trials and T-ride had served me well, but felt I wanted to move on to something a bit more modern. So the plan was to sell them both and get one Enduro bike that could do it all…
Trying to get in plenty of practise on the T-ride in preparation for the 3-day Normandie adventure. Very conscious that all the other guys are vastly more experienced than me and I don’t want to be holding everyone up.
My regular short ride is to do what I call the “valley route” which probably takes 30 minutes or so and has some interesting technical bits. The “waterfall” is just below the house and is a steepish downhill section with lots of tree roots and two rock steps – pretty straightforwrd on the way down but quite challenging on the way back up. Then there is the “rock garden” which is like a dry stream bed with lots of rocks which needs good balnce and throttle/clutch control to get through without putting a foot down. At the other end of the valley is the “valley hill climb” which is steep, loose and with an S bend part way up – not easy to get right. Finally there is the “cenac trail”, a short piece of very narrow single track with a drop off on one side and a narrow gap between two trees to squeeze through – very hard to get through without at least one “dab”.
The Valley Route
I’ve been trying to find a trail route that I can use to get from the house into Cahors, using as little road as possible, and have gradually been exploring the little lines marked on the map which represent potential trails. One of the trails I have discovered drops down into Luzech and I used it on my way into Cahors. As you descend the trail there is a big drop off to the right and on the left is a post in the single track trail that you have to wriggle the handlebars round. On the way down I went past it with no problem, but remember thinking “oops I was a bit close to the edge there”. On the way back from Cahors later in the day, feeling tired and cold, starting to go dark I went up the same trail….
Only this time when I tried to wriggle the bars past the post I got it wrong, the bar hit the post and sent the bike over the edge of the drop off. I jumped clear but the bike slid down the slope and came to rest against a small bush a few yards down a very steep slope and in danger of slipping futher down.
I struggled for some time to drag the bike back up the slope but it was too steep/too heavy. Fortunately a walker happened to be passing and then a car stopped and with three of us we managed to recover the bike….
We stayed on an extra day after the Tricks In The Sticks Training to do a day’s trail riding around the lanes in Kent. Dougie kindly provided the bikes – a KTM 350 Freeride for me and the big BMW 450X for him. He had also mapped out some suitable routes, probably using some insider knowledge from his role as a director of the TRF (Trail Riders Fellowship).
We followed some trails that clearly had not been used for a long time and were overgrown with brambles, which was fun!
