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Kielder K2 – Marshalling Day 3

Sunday morning was an early start but despite the fun of the previous day, I was basically ok and the swelling of my leg has massively reduced overnight. I made my way back to Bellingham in time to put fuel onto the fuel trailer and then made my way leisurely to the far checkpoint and my section. Unfortunately I was on my own today, it is more fun when you have someone to ride with and talk to.

Eventually bikes turned up and entered the section and then I followed the pack through to make sure there weren’t any issues. It was all quiet so I cut back to the special test and refueled finding the riders weren’t yet back to there. I therefore waited around. The end of the special test has an interesting detour through a ditch and there were a number of people falling off there who I ended up helping. There was one person who decided to head off the line everyone else was using and buried it in liquid mud up to the mudguards. I didn’t enjoy pulling that out and getting covered in mud. Another went off line, planted the front wheel into a hole and went over the bars head first, thankfully he was shaken but ok as it was slow speed.

There were people having fun on the enduro loops but my back tyre wasn’t up to it, nor were my energy levels to be quite honest. I had something to eat/drink and eventually the closing marshal turned up which marked the start of my main work. I headed back to my section via a short cut along with a local rider who was wanting to retire. There, I had a wait for the closing marshal again, he arrived and it was time to demark.

I was supposed to be with a team of another two however they weren’t there and I decided to get started without them, leaving word with the checkpoint to send them on. I hadn’t gotten too far when they showed up and joined in. We worked as a team, person in front gets the first arrow they come to and the team rotates. Demarking can be interesting as you never know quite what kind of terrain you’ll have to park on to reach the arrows. Obviously you try to do it without getting off the bike, although if the ditch is marsh/water with reeds growing out of it, you quickly learn not to ride into it (I’d remembered from last year).

We made it around the course to the next checkpoint and demarked to the road there, then also demarked the route back to the camping field. The far section with the second special test was being handled by another team. By the end of the few days, the bike was rather coated in mud/dust and rather sorry for itself with its missing headlight:

The forest fire roads are hard on tyres, particularly when you do use the power to accelerate and my rear was paractially a slick at this point:

So all in all a good weekend and some good fun. The bike is going to need a good check over after all that vibration from the fireroads.