All content © Bob MuIIins

1984 Tarenig

The 1984 Hafren DBC Tarenig was my second enduro.

I had learnt a lot from my first ride in the Brechfa but I had not grasped the most important lesson which was not to enter second one.

PG Motorcycles had offered to lend me their trailer again but I wanted to be independent and so I invested £20 in an old but freshly painted piece of post modernism.

Leaving Machen at 4.00pm on Saturday afternoon would have given me plenty of time to drive to Llanidloes, find a B&B and settle down in front of a roaring fire in a cosy hostelry to intake a couple of litres of essential hydration products from the Emerald Isle. 

As I dogged down the Honda XL185 and hitched my new trailer to the tow bar of my old Robin Reliant van - pointing west towards the setting sun - I felt an exhilarating sense of adventure overwhelm me. It lasted about 30 seconds. Just as long as it took for the rusty weld on my new trailer's outrigger to give way and flip the Honda into the lane.

Undeterred I added the trailer to my list of jobs to do and regrouped. By removing the passenger seat from the Reliant I managed to push most of the Honda sideways through the back door into the van and by removing the front wheel, bars, mudguard and forks I could close the door. By 6.00pm I was ready to leave and it had started to snow.

The Valley roads to Merthyr were clear but as I climbed into the Beacons the snow began to stick. Driving a 3 wheeler in snow is like sailing a dinghy on a windy day as the front wheel jibes and tacks from one rut to another without warning. It was a relief to pass Storey Arms and freewheel into Brecon.

On a hill between Erwood and Builth Wells the van lost traction. I got out and by pushing and jabbing at the accelerator with the Honda's handlebars I managed to get the Reliant into a lay-by. One of the advantages of a Reliant is that you don't need a jack. Even loaded with a bike it is possible for a fit man - with no fear of hernias or death by crushing - to lift the van onto 2 wheels and prop it up with a set of bars. A quick check under the car revealed that the clutch cable had seized. I got out the spanners, removed the cable, worked some WD40 into the lining until it was free and then refitted it. As it was dark, most of this work was done by feel which - after half an hour - there was precious little of. I got back in the van and fell asleep recalling Captain Scott's last words. "Great God this is an awful place!", I was woken around 10.00pm by a passing gritter splattering the van with salt. With a clear road ahead I fired up the old girl and I carried on to Builth.

I arrived at Llanidloes around midnight. The Mid Wales market town - even on a Saturday night - could not be confused with the "City that never sleeps" and there wasn't a light to be seen. I parked up in a side street & fell asleep to be woken up by a tap on the window. The owner of a nearby B&B had seen me arrive & he offered me a room. It was on the 3rd floor and it was colder than the van but it had a kettle and the makings of a cup of tea. In the morning, my full English breakfast was clearly made by someone who hated everything about the English including their breakfast, I could have patched a tube with the egg and done an oil change with the half litre of lard it floated in. I gave some thought to taking the sausages with me for later but I was worried that if I dropped one on the pavement I would be fined for "fouling".

I headed for Llangurig. The sun was shining and the sky was clear. The start was on the junction of 3 forestry tracks just off the Aberystwyth Road. Over the years I have been there many times as it is used as a check in the Welsh where the white flag was placed beyond a blind brow so that late riders could wipe out some faster riders waiting at the yellow flag. It is a crude form of handicapping. Very Welsh.

I assembled the Honda, passed scrutineering and signed on. From the start the course followed a stream that flowed into a lake full of fallen trees and covered in ice. The water was knee deep to ensure everyone filled their boots Pushing out the other side I was congratulating myself on holding on to my breakfast when I was confronted a man doing a Ted Rogers impression with his hand. It took me a while to realize he was counting me down to the start of my test.

The test wound it's way through a copse of evenly spaced popular trees. Now the Honda was a not a tall bike and - although at 5 foot 9 inches - I am considered to be a giant in the valleys of Wales - the combination meant I rode closer to the ground than most but I have never ridden a test taped at eye level. Without any perspective it became a hall of mirrors with riders going everywhere.

With the test behind me I followed the marking higher and higher where the snow got deeper and deeper. I like riding in fresh snow and a group of us were soon slaloming along a broad firebreak blissfully unaware of the darkening sky heading towards us from the west until the blizzard was upon us. Within seconds we were in a "white out". Bikes and riders yards away disappeared. For 20 minutes I couldn't see or hear a thing. Staying where I was I could freeze and moving could mean getting lost. I edged forward by feeling for old ruts beneath the snow. Out of the gloom a small tree emerged and spoke to me. It could have been an epiphany or it could have been one of the Jones brothers marshalling. He directed me to a road where a large, red face man sat and basked in the warmth of his Landrover's heater drinking hot soup from a flask. It was the out check. He signed my card and assured me that the worse was behind me. He lied.

Riding along a snow filled firebreak, a rider's head & wildly waving arms rose up out of the ground ahead just in time for me to accelerate & jump over the hidden ditch that he & his bike were firmly wedged in. I stopped to pull him out. He had lost his kick-start so we tied our jacket belts together & I towed him out. We passed a young rider in a race shirt hugging an expired KX80 for warmth. I wished him luck.

The next track hairpinned off the forestry road and climbed to join a snow covered firebreak that ran steeply up & down the side of a mountain. The course went up in theory but not in practise. A dozen steaming riders stood looking at the wall of ice & clay. A marshal shouted from the road above that the event had been abandoned and he directed us to the forestry road below which we had just come along. While we untied the belts the other riders made their way down, We followed and discovered the flaw in the plan. One by one as the bikes ahead of me reached the flat bit of ground at the bottom of the hill they disappeared. The flat bit of ground was a lake covered in thin ice & snow. I dropped my bike, dug in the bars & stopped short of the water's edge. I pushed left into the trees where the lake emptied into a deep channel. It was too steeply sided to get the bike into & too wide to jump. Eventually I climbed into it, lowered the bike onto my back & carried it across. When I pushed it off on the other side, the clutch lever snapped. The XL was very fond of it's clutch lever & wouldn't do a thing without it. I had a spare lever in my bumbag but my fingers were too numb to get the zip open. I pushed the bike until I found a strip of forestry road not covered in ice & bumped it in 2nd. I finished with 10 minutes left of my hour. A week later I received a rather fine onyx finishers award through the post.