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Photo - Chris Birch (File photo)
Most will be aware that Chris Birch, the current NZ Enduro champion has made the major move to the UK to pursue his dreams.
Chris has a really great Website: that you may wish to bookmark.
Here is his latest report which has him 'keeping up with the Jones's".
Hi everyone,
Thought I would let you know about my weekend and do a bit of an update. On Saturday I went to Llanidloes to meet up with Geraint Jones and help out with one of his training schools. Geraint Jones is a multi British enduro champion and he and his family control a lot of the British enduro scene. He also runs Yamaha’s British enduro team.
Their farm backs onto the Hafren forest which hosts a round of the enduro champs, and this year a round of the European enduro champs, so I was pretty keen to have a snoop about.
The schools that Geraint runs are pretty casual and are designed more as a ride experiance type of day. They have a fleet of Yamaha’s ranging from TTR125’s to WRF450’s. After a bit of a briefing about how the day was going to work we were off up through the farm heading towards a big gravel area where we were going to do some basic skills training. I was tail end charlie on the 450, and, after being five weeks off a bike, was having a great time roosting up as much prime pasture as possible, without scaring the squids I was supposed to be looking after too much. We spent a bit of time teaching correct cornering technique before setting up a circuit for us to race around. After coming in for a break the 450 wouldn’t fire back into life, I ripped the seat and tank off and changed the plug but couldn’t get any spark out of it. After trying all the basic things we decided to leave it to it's little tantrum and Geraint-not-Jones (another guy helping out) gave me a lift back to the farm on a TTR250. It’s pretty steep in this part of Wales and the little TTR was making hard work of our two-up forest racing – it seemed like an eternity before we got back to the farm and grabbed another well-used TTR for me to try and wreck.
The rest of the day was spent hooning around Hafren forest racing the two Geraints. It was good fun as Geraint Jones was testing me out a bit, he was leading and obviously knew the trails very well. He’d have a quick glance over his shoulder to see if I was with him then pick the pace up a bit. This went on until we were going flat out on these poor old TTRs, valve bouncing and bottoming the suspension.
On Sunday it was up at 6am (much to Mon’s disgust, though she came round eventually!!) and back to Gerraint’s to help out with the Hafren Rally. This is basically a really easy enduro, mainly gravel road with some easy trails. Three tests, no time schedule but a six hour day. They limit the entry to three hundred and they reckon that the entry is full within a couple of days of it being open. You get all sorts of bikes, from DT175’s, to fully tricked out KTM’s, to one guy on an Africa twin!
I got the job of being a roving marshal which meant I got to spend the day thrashing the pants off another one of Geraint’s hire bikes, this time a WRF250. I had a great time blasting about, occasionally dragging a few punters out of ruts but for the most trying to get the hang of the shale rock that makes up a lot of the trails. I found out that it can be quite unpredictable, and that it hurts a lot when you come off on it!
I stopped to watch a bit of one of the tests that was a fast twisting climb on the gravel. After watching a dozen bikes come dawdling through I was ready to move on when I heard the sound of a big four stroke being ridden hard. Round the corner came a fully sideways LC8 KTM - with the throttle pinned, he backed off slightly then threw it sideways again for the next corner before cracking it wide open again and blasting past at what seemed like at least 140clicks. Very impressive!
Apparently one of the Dakar guys.
Right near the end of the day I was doing an unofficial sweep lap when I came across the guy on the Africa twin just as he arsed over at the bottom of the biggest hill. There was no one else around and it was pretty obvious that he was never going to get two hundred and something kg’s worth of Honda up the hill by himself. It was like trying to push a car! When we finally heaved it over the top he admitted that it probably wasn’t the best bike for the job and that his mates had entered him, telling him that he would have no problems!
Bit of a mean joke!
