I recently took part in the 121st running of The Edinburgh Trial - which despite it's name takes place mainly within Derbyshire. The full route was 190 miles running from 22.00 on Friday evening 26th Sept overnight through to 16.00 on the Saturday afternoon. 

I was competing in Class R - which is a form of Classic Trials taster class - more akin to a rally, which was the reason I was interested,  as a navigator only, in having a go. My driver was Clive Nicholls of Blackpalfrey MC in a 1973 Morgan 4/4 with a Kent Ford 1600 engine.  We ran roof down the whole night.  

Whilst I'm not a trials fan as such , my driver was persuaded to have a go by fellow Morgan owners and as we enjoyed a Blackpalfrey 20/20 Regularity together earlier this year , I was happy to have another outing in the 4/4 and to do something completely different.

I absolutely loved the 10 hours or so , route plotting the Main Trial from a 20 page colour road book using  What 3 Words, 4 x 50k OS paper Maps , supplemented with a 25K OS App, Google Earth & Google streetview to spot the entrances to the white roads. 

We set off a day early to enable a bit of a Dales recce - just as well as the alternator packed up near Coalville and we had an 18 hour stopover to get another one. We still had time on Friday afternoon to do a daylight recce & arrived way too early for scrutineering at Rowsley South Heritage Railway Station near Darley Dale.  By 22.00 there was a terrific atmosphere of over 220 vehicles ranging from Classic Motor Cycles through to specialist trials cars like Dellow, Liege , Marlin, Dutton through to heavily jacked up Escorts , MX5's , BMW E30's Skoda's and a host of weird Suzuki X90's. 

We had a technical start time of 00.03 but were held until 02.03 to avoiding catching the main field too early.  At the event itself  we had a briefing at 00.30 & our Class R route was supplied in a 259 line 14 page road book , with an intention that we "drove it verbally" rather than plot it. We had to do manoevres or tests at 5  W3W locations, find 20 code boards and identify from a 5 page photograph sheet 18 items such as Statues, ornate Gates , Pubs & Signs & state at which line of the road book they were placed. The timing and use of Time Controls was difficult to understand but we had 20 places where we had an earliest arrival time to allow the two teams of marshals observing us to get there on time. As it happened we only saw our teams about 6 times , but we were checked in & out of other locations by Main Event marshals. The route was about 85% similar to the main event route I'd plotted  apart from avoiding ALL of the Whites, I had so looked forward to finding. I did take Clive down two but they were a bit rough as the Morgan is low and very stiffly suspended so in hindsight doing trial sections would have been tricky.

So , the event turned out to be an 11 hour scatter rally - with NO RESULTS. We didn't drive any "proper trials sections" and the observed sections we did were a bit devoid of rules & instructions , but I my have known more if I'd done Class R on other Trials Events.  I have to say I enjoyed the 3 day trip away, the event atmosphere ,my drivers company, the other Morgan drivers help & the great roads & scenery. I may not however venture back unless Class R is made to be more of a competition. 

Although I have received a set of provisional results , 12 days after the event ( not 7 days as per Regs), they are still not final  19 days after the event SO I CANNOT DIVULGE THEM TO YOU until you see my next report! Eat you heart out Tony Michael of mtc1 and App supplier John Clavey - they could do timing and marking so easily - especialy for our Class of 7 cars just doing "its own thing".

Jim