MK Off Road Open Championships

Round 1 2024 ‘The Woodland Trial’

Birchwood Farm, Shatterford

21/4/2024

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Woodland Trial Summary.

Hopefully everyone had a great day on Sunday? We had great weather, hopefully good sections and 67 signed on riders, which has smashed the record for our club by some distance.

The decision to run an adult championship was taken after running the evening series last year at Shatterford, a little last minute, and really enjoying ourselves, with big entries too.

On Sunday just gone, what happened is what we'd hoped. Lots of local riders, and some from further afield too, of every ability turned up. A big chunk of our regular youth riders also turned up, 23 in total! We had an age range of around 5 upto late 70's. Some of the kids on white and yellow struggled a little. We apologise about section 9, which turned into a mud bath. If we'd had known, we probably wouldn't have put it in. But as someone mentioned to us, it did offer a different bit of terrain to the rest of the wood! Sections 8 & 10 were tough one's for the kids on these routes too. Well done all for getting through the day.

The plan was to use as much of Shatterford as I could, thinking spreading things out a bit would help with queues, and also give a fun blast around. I set a combo of short and long sections. I also tried my best to challenge some of the very experienced Expert riders, while making it do-able for all who chose that route. Some new (or not recently used!) areas of the wood were found. I had a blast with the chainsaw on Wednesday!

We had good feedback on using one set of flags for each route. This takes a lot more setting up but it's something we have carried over from our youth series. It's just easier to follow for all, especially new riders to the sport.

Thankyou to our observers. Bev Cumberland, Kevin Podesta, Liz Boulton and anyone else who grabbed a board. Thankyou to Chris and Tom, I'm really sorry your rides were cut short. But thankyou for hanging around and helping us out.

Big thankyou of course to Jim Colley, the land owner, who has been so supportive of us. For those that don't know, you can practice at the farm anytime. Just stop at the top and pay Jim.

Thankyou everyone for coming. We really hope you all had fun. Massive well done to all the riders.

Big thanks also to Mark Beckett for taking some brilliant photos. Mark takes some of the best trials photos I have ever seen. These can be found on the DTC facebook page.

Video above. There's a longer version on youtube also if you have a spare 45 mins!

Cheers all. Andy, Caz, Kayleigh & Jack