KIELDER REPORT
The National Husqvarna 2 day Kielder Enduro 26th/27th July
The Dirtbike-traxs crew headed north to the Kielder forest, the biggest forestry complex in the uk set in the Northumberland National Park to join up with the NXC team, to revive the old Kielder enduro , but with a new flavour run over 2 days, on good old fashioned enduro going with times that would test the riders, John Kerwin the Dirtbike–traxs number 1 always believes that time card enduros should be won on the course and in the event of a tie the special test will decide the best man, and this would be proved to be right with the majority incurring course penalties
The route took in many famous parts of the kielder forest including Pundershaw, The Bower, Chirden Burn, Bolts Law, all set to test the riders to the maximum .
With a green field start area which provided an excellent camping and parc ferme area the event got under way at 1. 00 pm Saturday afternoon with the championship riders leading the full entry away at minute intervals , Saturdays course was 21 miles around with all classes doing 3 laps except the sportsman who had 2 , in the championship class Daniel field set the fastest special test of the day , but lost 2 minutes on the going after leaving his time card at the test in his tool pack and having to go back to get it, David Myers and David Wood remained clean on time ,with Myers taking the day 1 win , in the expert class James wood was the first day winner from second placed Julian Harvey who had made the long trip to kielder from his Suffolk home , rich Milner the famous Scarborough builder found his old form with a third place in the expert class
. The clubman class found the going harder with riders loosing time and 8 riders houring out, Karl Greenall took day 1 honours in the clubman E1 class while Darren Cousins the E2 class . the sportsmen found the going hard with a high rate of retirements Mark Bell from Barnoldswick was one of the few sportsman that remained clean on time to take the day 1 win
Day two
The hard working teams from Dirtbike-traxs and NXC had switched in the day 2 course comprising of another 8 miles of new going to add into the first days course making the total distance 29 miles per lap for Sunday , With some overnight rain just enough to dampen the dusty fire roads during the early part of the day before the red hot sun got high in the sky , the first championship riders left the start at 10.00 am with 3 laps and nearly 90 miles to cover , the first lap would take them 75 minutes and they were only just back to the check in time David Myers won the first test in the championship class, but the fastest rider of the day on the test was a blast from the past former champion Wayne Westwood having a rare outing in the expert class , 10 years ago Wayne was the number 1 rider in the north of England championship,
As the championship riders started there third lap David wood on his yz 250 had problems when his clutch cable snapped leaving him to ride the last lap with no clutch, burying his bike in one of kielder’s famous bog the other 2 remaining championship riders Myers and Field dug him out and rode the entire last lap together all taking the same time penalties at the final check . David Myers took the win from Field with Wood in third
Wayne Westwood easily won the expert class from Julian Harvey with filthy Rich Milner third , clubman E1 was won by Richard Pearson while Andy Longden won E 2, the sportsman class was won by Mathew Ward , David Selkeld once again dominated the over 40 class with another win .
Dirtbike –traxs using there new enduro timing system had the results ready within 30 minutes of the course been closed , quite an achievement considering this was the clubs first venture into time card enduro , the results would have taken a long time to work out manually as nearly every rider that finished on Sunday incurred time penalties John Kerwin the Dirtbike-traxs chief said at the end its been a great weekend for the riders, a bit stressful for me with the British experts trial running at Carlisle , I spent the early part of Saturday on car parking duties before rushing back for the start of the enduro ,a big thanks must go to Jeni Jones who developed the program for the time controls , but its back to normal next week with the National Putoline hare scramble championship at Gisburn Lancashire see you there .