SCEC Shillingstone Forest

The beautiful forest of Shillingstone, near Blandford Forum, was the location for round 3 of the Southern Counties Enduro Hare & Hound Championship.
The course had been well prepared but unless there was a mountain of more time and many more hands, it would be impossible to completely clear the lengthy 9 mile course, thus making certain areas quite technical, with a number of hidden obstacles under extensive sections of

undergrowth.

The continuing high temperatures and heat wave would surely be a factor for all riders.

With a good mixture of steep drops, bared tree roots, long climbs and technical sections, the lap was in the region of 20 minutes for the front runners and with a full entry list, then it made for an interesting event.

Stan from Front Row GB was competing on what is becoming his usual mount, the KTM690 Enduro-R. With a change of suspension the bike had been running and handling well and Stan was keen to try and get the KTM690 as close to the front of what would be a course suited to the smaller enduro machines.

For the second race in a row, the KTM690 failed to burst into life when requested on the startline, although only taking a few seconds to resolve the issue, the rest of the field apart from Danny Hall on the BMW450 were stretching towards the first corner. Danny Hall passed Stan in the first turn, relegating him to the back of the field at the start of the race.

It wasn't long until the KTM690 and Stan got into a good rhythm and by a third of lap 1, Stan had re-passed Danny Hall's BMW450 and was making in-roads into the rest of the front runners.

By lap two, Stan had pulled away from Danny Hall, after rear brake failure on his BMW and passed a number of riders to move into 6th place. Putting in good consistent times, Stan set about trying to get further up the pack and by lap 6 had moved into 4th position.
Lap 7 proved to be the stumbling block, when the side stand spring on the KTM690 snapped, killing the power.
With minimal tools to fix the problem, Stan relied on a travelling marshal who kindly produced some bungee cord and with some manipulation, fixed the problem and Stan was back on his way.

Time had obviously passed by quickly, as Stan thought he had only lost a few minutes, but this in reality was closer to 10 minutes dropping him back into 30th position.

Stan attempted to get the KTM690 back in a respectable position but running short of time, only managed a 9th.

Carl Tiley took a convincing win on the TM while Mark Cornick took a good 2nd.

Thanks to the travelling marshal for the assistance, to SCEC/Gary Warr for such a good event and Nick Guppy for the photographs.


FRGB