The Purau Bay property has always offered challenging trials; the 2011 visit was no exception. There was a good mixture of new and old sections, with plenty of new elements. Every section had an obstacle or two to challenge the skills and the psyche - let’s just say that there were plenty of thrills and spills. 

The young guns from the South Canterbury Trials Club had a great day out. Billy riding Clubman A, and Bradley looking good in Expert on his new Beta. It’s truly amazing how quickly Billy has improved. Let’s hope that it’s not too long until Billy needs a new bike that doesn’t sound like an army of angry bees. Talking of angry, our resident Tourette’s sufferer was in fine voice; something about Cripps and a long rocky dry creek section? 

NonStop Adventure rep, Stef, had an adventurous day out - clipping a small tree on the approach to a rather unpleasant drop off in section ten, and collecting a stick in the front wheel on the technical climb in section nine. Well done Stef for picking up the bike and carrying on. More casualties - Shane’s clutch master cylinder surrendered to the rocks after an unfortunate real wheel slide on section five. Despite rumour, John Regan’s DNF wasn’t due to section severity, rather some serious commitment at the pre-party. It was good to have Brendan’s spares bus in attendance, and mildly amusing to see Brendan’s eyes light up to the sound of breaking plastic… cha-ching! 

There were a few problems with the scorecards and riding protocol, so no results have been published; but why let the numbers spoil a good day out? Post-trial there was the familiar debate around section severity. Will we ever achieve consensus between grumpy old men? Perhaps we should look to the younger members of the club for guidance? 

The real competition of the day was getting in and out of the paddock. Despite an aggressive effort by the Gardner Racing L300, it was Kendall that took honours in the two wheel drive van class. The highlight though was the rapturous cheer raised when the Oaro moon man failed to predict the lack of available traction. 

Thanks to the property owner, section setters, peg pullers, trailer puller and sausage cooker.

Unfortunately there will be no results posted for this event. The score cards were a mess! There were sections with no scores and a lot of scores that were just illegible. Consequently we are not able to get complete results. There were also, once again, a few riders riding alone and marking themselves.

Please remember to check your card at the end of the trial; make sure you have been scored for every section and that the scores can be read. Also remember riding on your own is just not acceptable. Make sure you ride with someone else and that you are not marking your own card.

Lets try and get this sorted for the next event at Tui Creek!!

This year has been an extrordinary year on many fronts. The earthquakes have certainly had an affect on everything that we had planned this year. But there is always a silver lining, This year has seen us gain access to at least 6 new properties. Staying away from the Peninsula for fear of being squashed by rock slides has meant we have had to get out and find alternatives. We have been very sucessful in North Canterbury with Alistair Trewin finding us "Snips Place", a property in Amberley (which we hope to use next month) and another property in Cust. Alan Honeybone went visiting long lost relatives and came up with the Hurunui property we used earlier in the year. Now a new member Glen Kimber has come up with a couple of properties out Hororata way, the first of which we will be using in a couple of weeks instead of the Timaru trial.

The property is called Tui Creek and is directly next door to the Terrace Downs Resort. Alan Duthie was out there last week and is very excited about it. He says it has something for everyone from Experts to Classics so it will be a good addition to our calendar and only 40mins from town.

The Timaru trial will now be held in November (The 13th). Mike Rowley was very keen to resurrect the Old Hampton Challenge which was a challenge between our southern brothers from Dunedin and Invercargill and the Pioneer club. It was traditionally held on that weekend, which happens to be "Show Weekend" here in Canterbury, so it seems an appropriate date.

The trial planned for the end of July will see us use the new property in Amberley (to be confirmed with the farmer). John Regan, Rob McKay and Stef Downes have been out there for a ride earlier in the year and say that it is another good venue for club events. It is a smaller venue but with plenty of variety and good carparking.

I will be posting directions to the new venues on our directions page as they come to hand.

"Thanks very much for an excellent event. After 20 years doing Brass Monkeys instead this year has me looking forward to the next Kaikoura. Good venues, well thought out sections, a good Saturday night meal-enjoyed the lot!"...Fred Carter 

Fred has just found out what a lot us have known for years. Kaikoura is the must attend event of the year and this year was no exception. Three fantastic days of fun riding and socailising and this year capped off with three fantastic days of weather. 
Day 1 was at Barry Schroeders place at Mt Fyffe, which has always been my favourite venue. The day started with the selection (if that's what you call it) of the teams for the Pomes Verse the Kiwis team. The Pomes desperation was evident even then with the selection again this year of a German and I think they may even have included a couple of North Islanders who had been to England once....years ago. You never can tell whats going on when "The Two Johnnies" are involved.

The sections were again all along the creek and this day proved to be the hardest and tightest for the Intermediate and Experts. The clubmans and more importantly for me the sidechair sections were not so bad and were pretty much of a similar level all weekend. Rob and I stepped up to the A Grade sidechairs this year along with Andy and Kendal and it was clear at the end of the day that perhaps some practice and even a little bit of fitness might have been a good idea. We finished the day in 3rd place and that is where we were destined to finish each day.

That night we made our way down to the Lobster for the Spitroast dinner. Unfortunately for us "The Two Johnnies" had beaten us there and there was not much left to eat, so the staff had to go and cook some more. OK there were some other people there with the two Johnnies but I'm sure they didn't eat much!!!

Sunday was another brilliant day weather wise and the sections for the Experts and Intermediates were a bit easier. We were back at the Trewins in Oaro and reusing a lot of sections from previous years with a few new ones thrown in. Everyone seemed to be smiling at the end of the day so I think the sections must have been about right. We even finished early enough to head up the road to the next days venue and check all the sections. It was obvious by now that the Pomes were really struggling and the talk from the Two Johnnies was all about a North Vs South competition. Just as well The Two Johnnies weren't in charge of the Battle of Britain or we'd all be speaking like Stefan now.

The third and final day was at "Snips Place" (sorry don't know the mans real name) where we had recently held the Pioneer vs Top of the South trial. Again we reused some of the sections from the previous trial and added a few new ones as well. After a cold start the weather was again brilliant for the day, something that we were all thankful of. As we discovered last time that particular property can be a different story in the rain. The sections proved to be about right again with lots of smiles about at the end of the day. The sidechair sections included a couple slippery hill climbs which required 3rd gear and lots of noise which is always fun and a couple of hill climbs and descents in the pine trees that got my heart rate up a bit which was also lot's of fun.

At the end of the day we had our prize giving and a bbq. Young John Haynes had held off the challenge of Blake Fox to win the Experts Class. Peter Blaymires managed to pip Tony Cameron by a mere 3 points to win the Intermediates. Gavin Fox took out the Cubman A class by an even smaller margin. He was just 1 point clear of Evan Carter after 3 days. Greg Creagh won the Clubman B class and Brent Downes absolutely embarassed the opposition to be the clear winner in the Classic class. Likewise Paul Dowell was also the clear winner in the Twinshock class. That was the Class that our new President forgot during the prize giving. He didn't forget the Presidents class though and why would he. 2 points on the first day was all he lost all weekend. A brilliant ride on the "old" Triumph. Well done Al. In the chairs Paul (The Rat) and Glenn continued their domination of this event winning the A grade by a huge margin over Andy and Kendal. The latter two just keep improving though and will be challenging the boys for the honors next year I'm sure. And finally there was "The Two Johnnies" who managed to open up enough of a lead on the first day to keep Dave and Brian from overtaking them in the B grade.

Specail thanks need to go out to The Hallies for all their work, The section setters for giving up the weekend before to set it out and of course the property owners. I personally need to thank Rob for the use of his sidechair outfit and for swinging with me. That guy is the bravest man I know.........surely he's seen me ride! 

All in all it was another Kaikoura like we have come to expect. Lot's of fun, not too serious and of course, the best part, beating Pomes!

"No Andy That's not how you do it....................This is how you do it......"

Check out the Gallery for more photos of the weekend.

Last weekend saw another sucessful working bee at the Waimak Practice area which is fast becoming known as "Delis Park". Paul has been busy again and had arranged about ninety (thats right 90) truckloads of soil to be delivered. Then to cap off that little effort he managed to talk himself into the loan of a front end loader for the day! Now when he called to say he had borrowed a front end loader I didn't actually expect it to be so big, but what a machine and boy did he shift some dirt with it. At the end of the day Paul, his frontend loader and about 10 helpers had "fined tuned" a few of the existing obstacles and created a few new ones. With the empasis on creating things for the Clubbies as well as the Experts we moved around a few of the big concrete chunks and packed around them with dirt filling in some of the holes and generally making them a bit more forgiving on rider and machine. The large pipes were spread slightly to make them a bit more ridable for us lesser riders and we piled dirt up on each side to give us somewhere to land when it all goes wrong. The big hill was remodelled and enlarged and Paul tells me he has organised another huge pile of dirt to be delivered to site so we can make it even bigger. One of the last things created was a rectangle made from concrete poles spread out along the ground. The idea is to fill this with river stones to make an area for practicing tight turns in loose gravel, so everyone riding there is expected to "pay" for the priviledge by carrying 10 stones in and putting them in there. It will be fill in no time. 

All in all "Delis Park" is really beginning to take shape and there is now something for everyone. If you haven't been there yet for a ride then you're missing out.

A huge thank you to Clemence Drilling for the use of the Frontend loader without that we wouldn't have acheived much at all. And of course another big thanks to Paul for all his work on our behalf scounging up things for free. Without Pauls efforts all we would have is an empty paddock with a bit of a dirt pile.   

Paul Delis "like a big kid with a new toy" (or is it " a little kid with a big toy")

Stef tries out our handy work.

More pictures on the gallery page.