During first practice the dirt sections are treacherous, a water bowser (or from the smell, possibly a septic tank emptying tanker...) has been around the dirt sections turning the course into a thin layer of sticky slime over a rock-hard bed. It's so slippery that I can barely stand up in it, yet I  am, apparently going to be racing on it. On cut slicks...

A travelling marshall on a Quad takes us round for a paced sighting lap before pulling off to let us find our own way round and I am astounded to survive the session. It's quite surprising how much acceleration and braking traction a thoroughbred off-road competition bike can find, even without the knobbly tyres it would normally wear for this sort of going, but an ill-considered tweak of the loud handle can still send the rear tyre snapping out to the side in an instant. In third gear...

I manage to stay ahead of TT superstar (well, it was a pretty good debut), stunt god, and Bike journalist Martin "Wild" Childs for two full laps before I run wide on one of the dirt (or rather slime) bends allowing him to bugger off into the distance on his very trick, factory KTM 640, and feel quite pleased with this...

Keith, who's been out with the big boys in the "A" group has a somewhat different experience, only completing a single lap and falling off three times in the process. I'm sure that without the benefit of the "paced" lap, and surrounded with very quick experienced riders I wouldn't have done any better, but Keith plainly isn't happy as he mutters something
about ferry timings and leaves, which means I have full use of the YZ and the track for four whole races!

Race one sees Childs, fellow Ixie Mik Reed (on a Honda CR500 with CBR600 wheels which he only finished screwing back together yesterday, just in time to high-side it out of Cadwells infamous Old Hairpin), and myself lined up at the back, behind the lunatic on the Triumph Tiger. The orange "Starters Orders" beacon starts to flash, one red light, two red lights, three red lights, lights out and away. Somehow the Tiger rider manages to hook up and find traction and he fairly rockets away, like a bullet shot from a gun. My getaway is rather more modest (mainly because I'm terrified of looping the YZ) and I'm last into the first bend. Left foot out and forward just above the ground, weight forward over the tank and I pitch the bike in what I (probably mistakenly) assume to be classic 'cross fashion, sitting up and pushing the bike down beneath me, and feeling the back tyre squirm as it slides and grips, slides and grips on the uneven bumpy surface. I've got no idea whether I'm doing this right, how fast I'm going, or what it looks like, but it feels great! Onto the dirt going /far/ too fast for comfort, and I discover that the Quads and Buggies have been out since our practice have compacted the slimy mud into something which feels more like badly broken-up concrete, which the tyres manage to find amazing levels of grip on, this doesn't prevent Mik from running wide and off the course a couple of corners further on though, letting me past,meanwhile Childs has shot off in impressive fashion on his way to the first of a series of top-three finishes in our "B Group" races.

The pattern continues with Mik and I running pretty well neck and neck for all of our four races. I visit the shrubbery on a couple of occasions but only actually fall off once, in my second heat when the front wheel simply refuses to bite on the left hand bend sending me off into "The Berm" (as we Demon Crusties of Dirt call it), "Oh", I think, "That's OK we'll just run along here for a few yards and then "bounce ourselves back onto the course" sadly this plan fails when "The Berm" (a sort of low, soft earth banking formed by material pushed out by the bikes) disappears from under me, depositing the front of the Yamaha into a hole almost exactly the size and shape of its front wheel. The bike stops abruptly and I don't, sailing over the handle bars and ending up under the bike in a heap. I lie there for a minute or so, waiting for the marshals to red-flag the race, lift my horribly maimed body into the ambulance, and nee-naw me away to the nearest medical facility but nothing happens. Clearly Supermoto riders are expected to be made of sterner stuff, so with a grim determination worthy of Captain Eric "Killer" Steerforth[1] himself I extricate myself from under the fallen machine, remount, kick the beast into life (contrary to some of the lurid stories I've heard of 4-stroke 'crossers the YZ starts pretty easily once you know how), nonchalantly acknowledge the marshall who has been displaying a yellow flag in a token attempt to stop other competitors riding straight over me, and ride gingerly on. My visor is flapping around crazily, so I'm just about to pull off the track into the paddock when I notice that the Union Jack "last lap" flag is out, "Bugger that", I think to myself, and carry on round the track once more to a finish.

Heat three is uneventful, and sees me seeded into a solid back-row grid position for race four, the "B group" final. I make a less tentative start and slide up the inside of three people into the first bend (some of these guys seem a lot more tentative on tarmac than I am on dirt) and am lining up to take a couple more out through the left hander leading us back onto the tarmac which takes us back onto tarmac when the inevitable happens, I push a little too hard, lose the front again, and wind up bumping through the shrubbery outside the course cursing to myself as the pack disappears into the distance. Fortunately I'm not the only one to have caught out myself out this way, and a group of three of us (including my good friend Mik Reed) battle our way to the finish with me at the front. I'm feeling pretty good about this when another moment of over confidence sees me ease in just a /tiny/ bit of extra throttle climbing up to the second jump. The back steps out, I back off and catch it, but have lost momentum. Mik gets inside me at the left hander after the jump, and with only the two hairpins (which are too tight to make a move through unless the victim runs obligingly wide, which as a former motocross competitor Mik isn't about to), the grass chicane (which scares me witless, as it's taken horrifyingly quickly), and a couple of straights (which don't do me any flavours, as Miks 500cc 2-stroke probably has about a 20% BHP power advantage) between us and the chequered flag there's absolutely nothing I can do. Sure enough Mik beats me home by a whisker, but I'm not last, have had an outrageous amount of fun, learned to control a sliding motorcycle under circumstances which would previously been an automatic bail out, and feel that I've had a pretty good day all things considered.

Supermoto? Highly recommended either to spectate or take part in. Given the opportunity I'd do it again like a shot, preferably on a circuit with a little more bias towards tarmac.

Martin Childs? Bugger ended up winning the B-Group final. Don't you just hate talented people...

Jonathon Green