Trackday Riders: Cadwell Park 22nd July

Message

   This 40 year old body was never planning on visiting cadwell on the 22nd July. However, all that changed when a new TDR member travelling from Scotland was out and about trying the UK’s tracks on his own;  I thought I would lend a hand to pick up any pieces if required.   

With a few phone calls and messages, Akropovic and I planned to meet up after his Oulton Park attendance and give Cadwell a damn good thrashing – wet or dry!  

I packed the car the night before, leaving the bikes in the garage and entered the kitchen to find Mrs Dozi sorting out all the food for the following day.  A full BBQ and fresh fruit – result! I will marry that girl some day and make her an honest woman after 24 years of living with me. 

An early night to bed saw me up at 5am, creeping out of bed, down the spiral staircase and collecting my clothes with the feathered morning light chasing me out of the bedroom through the window blinds. Out on the landing my silent form with tired eyes, managed to get my underwear on back to front and  then lost balance with one and a half legs in my jeans; this led to a crashing eruption as I headed down the stairs. Yes another trackday featuring Mr Coordinated!   

I recovered myself and staggered into the kitchen for a settling cup of Englands finest tea and was shortly joined by Mrs Dozi muttering something about an earthquake and we should check BBC news channel. No dear that was just me on the stairs!  

Whilst the morning birds in the forest behind the house filled the air with the gentle sound of nature the sun managed to break through a morning mist, pouring its rays across the tops of the wheat fields bringing a deep golden colour to the sky. I pondered for a moment with my tea in my hand looking out of the window, every morning is different and the older I get – the more I welcome them. I thought to myself this is going to be a great day.

  I left Mrs Dozi in the kitchen whilst I finished off swapping the tyres to slicks on the spare wheels and loaded the bike onto the trailer, a quick check of the time, ticks all there on my new checklist (thanks to Nottingham-Phil), a hug and cool bag from Mrs Dozi, and I was off down the road for 6am with the echoing words always delivered to me – be careful.   

My car was soon swallowed up by the morning mist as I cruise from Sheffield through the country roads, and half an hour later I am a small subject in a glorious painting of blue sky, cotton clouds, golden fields  bordered by lush green hedges. I call akropovic up to ensure that he is up and about and the scheduled 7am meeting time is confirmed. 

A few moments later I pull into Cadwell paddocks and spot Harry Monks big Winnebago and come up with a plan to set up my gazebo as noisily as possible next to him.  I start unloading the car, clattering around with only a few other people preparing for the day, with the Winnebago next to me sealed tightly shut and its curtains drawn. I wrestle with myself and stop short of going up to it and giving it a rock to get Harry up, however I continue to get setup and am soon joined by Akropovic. 

A few moments later and our bikes are under cover from an ever increasingly cloudy sky, and I mention to Arron (Akropovic) that we should really give that obscene caravan a nudge.   This idea of getting Harry out of bed soon came to an abrupt end when two men came lazily from the Winnebago, and my mind went into overdrive; were these Harry’s male carers due to his age , or were they rent boys that he had managed to stow away in his bike compartment . As it later transpired they were two brothers from the midlands and it wasn’t Harry’s sleeping quarters at all!   

Arron and I soon fettled our bikes and put slicks onto them for the day ahead and were joined by DA (eric) who Arron had bumped into the night before at his hotel. It transpires that DA is quite a drinker himself but Arron managed to fly the flag for Scotland and kept drinking shorts into the early hours.   After a quick sign on and briefing, Arron had signed up for everything on offer for the day (I will let Arron write up his report, providing his missus hasn’t killed him for spending her annual shopping budget in two weeks trackdaying)  

The sun was out in places but the sky generally was overcast, and it wasn’t long until Aaron and Eric were out on their sighting laps. Whilst this was being undertaken I filled up my hog, and prepared my attire for the pits. The call came in and I ventured down to the front of the pack with ‘Harry Monk is my Mum T shirt on’ to the amusement of most of Harry’s colleagues .   Harry and I set off and it wasn’t long before we realized that the day’s pack wasn’t going to be particularly fast as in lap two we both turned round only to find two riders with us as we entered coppice. The rest hadn’t even appeared at Barn!. Harry chucked his hands up in the air shook his head and proceeded to increase the speed down Park.   

It wasn’t long until I was back out again and I looked round for Harry, no sign of him. I ventured out doing my warm up lap and then as I came out of Charlies and onto Park there he was along side me. The rampant rabbit on his playboy bike. He took off and it was game on. I chased Harry for a few laps never quite getting the better of him and then he just f**ked off on his blade… Grrr The old boy is pretty fast! 

I came in not only to have Harry’s face grinning at me from my t-shirt but also by Harry who came up to see Arron and I. The shame! I dismounted the timer that I recently got of Rawly and found my fastest lap of the session tailing Harry at 1:39.4. Harry had brought over the details of the chase and his GPS had 1:41 on it so we agreed to go out the following session and see what could be achieved when I was receiving some instructing from the not so slow track playboy.  

The next session came and Harry followed me round for a bit to check out the areas where I was slow, and then on lap four he came flying past me again out of Charlies and onto Park. My god he knows how to pull your chain. That was it I followed him for a few laps and then he lost me in the traffic as he smoothly coordinated an attack on riders through Hall Bends.   After some GPS timer comparisons on a few laps they seemed to be pretty accurate but it was obvious who had the edge at Charlies. Twice I had been taken to the cleaners by the rotund rider, on my home circuit too! How Very RUDE! 

The third session was game on from the start as Harry and I took off. The agreement was that Harry wouldn’t bugger off down Park straight using the power of the 1000cc, and that I was to follow his lines and we would increase the pace. This he did like a machine with each lap reducing from 1:45, 1:44, 1:43, 1:42, 1:41 and then into lap six we came up on some back markers and again the bugger saw me off and left me straggling to pass three riders – I never saw the playboy machine again! 

I came in to lick my wounds and have a gander at the times for the session trying to catch ‘The Monk’

I took a lot from the mornings instruction, a list of which is below:

1  - an arse beating
 2 – better line of sight from head position 
3 – being raped at charlies
 4 – learning how much I hate 1000cc bikes down park straight 
5  - harry’s grin etched into my cerebrum causing sleepless nights!  

Lunchtime came and the bbq was established, with smoke filling our gazebo and Aaron being the full gentlemen by not complaining about the smoke as he dragged on an Embassy No 10. A few burgers each, some fruit desert and some drink and it was time to head out for another humiliation.   

Harry seemed to have found his sense of humour as he had now rigged his bike with video cameras spouting from every orifice and they were all pointing backwards, he knew full well it wouldn’t be worth pointing them forward as I would never be on there!   Harry, a fellow instructor and I set off and I stayed with the old bugger for a few laps and slowly but surely, like something out of the matrix the inevitable happened. He slowly pulled away through the traffic and down the straights. This left me and the other instructor chasing him as I tried to push and push to catch him. Again the other instructor on the ZX10 pulled away on the straights but I managed to claw it back coming through Chris , Gooseneck and Mansfield. It was neck and neck as we lined up for the mountain and I just got my front wheel infront as I went airborne over the mountain and then had to give the line for hall bends – grrrr. It was quite a sight at one stage as we caught up the rest of the instructors and this long snake of orange bibs curved round the track with me stuck on the end trying to get past, but just losing out all the time. The chequered flag came out and in I came sweating my tits off, but thoroughly having enjoyed myself, especially as I had tried some of the advice given by the monk and I am damn sure on reflection I will go faster next session.  

I headed back to the paddocks to grab a drink and to try recover in 40 mins. Alas this was never going to happen as my first reaction when I rode up the slope was that some bugger had nicked the gazebo!  

It wasn’t long before I found it quite a distance in a field after it had unbound itself from three full cans of fuel and a power generator and taken itself for a walk in the wind, narrowly missing the extremely warm BBQ and leaving its signature from a metal pole across the bonnet of my Audi A4. I dragged it back and started to disassemble it and with that the clouds came in and it started spitting. I was shortly joined by DA and Akropovic and I have to thank these two guys as before I could blink I was back out on the track for another session. They not only managed to finish the disassembly of the structure but also neatly folded up all the sheets for it and put them away for me. Many many thanks for the assistance on that one guys, it saved me a right ball ache when I got home to unload, as everything was perfect!   

It wasn’t long before I was back into the paddocks and DA and Akropovic headed out to give Harry a beating. Also Akropovic had been round with the resident star of the day and was trying out some new lines and techniques – hopefully this will be covered in his report. With no shelter  within which to hide, the clouds managed to change their light rain to some bigger drops and that soon saw DA and Akro head back to the paddocks shaking their heads, shortly after that the session was red flagged as somebody managed to come off their R1.   The call went out for my group and I rushed to my car to get my wets. A quick change and some advice from DA to calm down and chill as I had only missed 4 minutes of my life, and he didn’t want me to miss the rest of it, saw me out on the track with only 1 other rider! Thank f**k it wasn’t Harry - It wasn’t long before I realized that it was now starting to dry and it became to dry for wets and too wet for slicks. With a lap time of 2:04 I called it a day and brought my rather chewed up boots back to the paddock and sat there waiting for the weather to make its mind up. It never did make its mind up so the three of us decided to end whilst the going was good and get packed up.   

Eric and Aaron were true gents for the whole day, and it was such a great experience to see Harry for the first time, all three individuals are a credit to the trackday ethos where fun, friendship and banter can be safely mixed with a high risk sport.   A great day on the 22nd July at Cadwell was had with my only injury occurring from falling down the stairs of my house. 

Trackday Reports
Trackday Riders :TRACKDAYS :Trackday Reports