First published in Motor Cycle Monthly:
My hands are weak and I can’t open a tin. I have cramp in both my thumbs. The balls of my feet are sore, my thighs are sore, my back aches, my back muscles are sore, shoulders sore, the back of my arms ache, my fore arms are surprisingly ok, my neck is stiff and strangely my jaw aches. Did I have my helmet on too tight?
If you want some excitement in your life, look no further than twin shock scrambling. Shock is the word. Twin shock quite appropriate as it is frankly shocking to take part. I took my 1960’s scrambler, ‘Macy’, to Butt’s quarry, Chesterfield, for the Midland Classic two hour enduro scramble. Endure is another appropriate noun.
Classic Twin Shock is an affront to all your senses. Breathing in burnt blue two stroke oil, the din rattling your ear drums, the vibration of the bikes shaking your bones. An affront to nature, the overwhelming cacophony taking over the whole area, dust filling the air.
Trying to stay calm at the mass start of a scramble is no easy task. I was so nervous I was struggling to put in my protective ear plugs. I only got one in properly.
There is something visceral about scrambling. It’s the fact that you can come off at any moment face down into the rocks that gets your full attention.
Yesterday at Butt’s there were quite a lot of jumps. One in particular, at the top of a full throttle ascent up a sweeping right then left-hander, I had Macy high in the air, at least it seemed. There was a young man next to the launch point with a big grin on his face as we briefly defied gravity. Then someone started taking pictures and I must admit I showed off, gunning it even more, going too high for comfort and coming down hard.
My heavy, uncomfortable bike was not really suited to yesterday’s race and I was desperate for the chequered flag to fall at the end of both sessions. It was taking a lot of effort to keep the bike on the track, in particular on the rutted bumpy areas where more modern machines zoomed over it as if it was a flat meadow. Smaller bikes zipped past like I was granny, which indeed is what my bike is.
Am so tired this morning. Have had a massive work out. You would never put so much effort in at the gym!
I was riding ‘Macy’, my pre ’65 Rickman Metisse BSA B44 [can it have any more letters and numbers Ed]
I came 3rd – my only pole in my life.
AND THIS WAS MY 1ST EVER SCRAMBLE
MY FIRST CLASSIC SCRAMBLE – SHRIGLEY POTS, PEAK DISTRICT Oct 14th
I feel as if someone has kicked me all down my back, deep into my thigh muscles, booted my shoulders, bricked my arms. Am sore.
Yesterday I did a two hour scramble on a Rickman Metisse BSA 450. It was raining, it was slippery as ice, the mud you could make a hut from, thick and rich with grass. The whole bike was covered in thatch. I was covered in thatch. Water does not move mud like this – you have to scrape it off with a screw driver.
It goes in your mouth, up your nose, thick lumps shot at you from the back of another bike, house bricks aimed at your head.
There were a few places you could pull the throttle back and let it go – one bend a big sweeper where you could get the back end out like a speedway rider.
One hill had many off, sliding backwards into other bikes going full tilt. One guy rode straight into me on my first lap – how I stayed on I have no idea. Very aggressive.
Falling over into thick sticky mud, it’s hard to pick the bike up, feet sliding, tyres slipping, fall over again. Then you have to kick start without being able to hear the engine in the din of one hundred racing machines.
After a while the piercing noise of the high revving two strokes fades away and you go into a trance like state, just doing your own thing ignoring everyone else. I found my own lines and different ways up the steep hills where I could get some grip on the un-touched grass, up tight by the race tapes, closer to dry stone walls.
My bike, which is 45 years old, a bit younger than me, is very strong and very heavy. It mis-fired at low revs in high gear but at high revs she was fine, so I kept the throttle back as often as I could.
It’s a quick machine too, leaving a lot of the newer bikes behind on the straights and a couple of bends. But I don’t yet have the skill to keep the power down in the bends, nor the nerve to boot it into the deep groove cut by the brutal tyres.
It took an hour to get the mud off the bike before I could clean it! I feel like I have been beaten up this morning. I don’t know my position yet but I passed a few and a lot passed me. It’s a great way to keep fit and a hell of a buzz – not in any way dull.
I had never ridden a scrambler before last week.
