Due to a last minute cancellation, I’ve now got Saturday 11 July available for a course, starting from Oxford.
I can do any one day course, including a City Traffic course which would up in c London.
If anyone is interested in a one day course, drop me a line. Details of the courses are on my website survivalskills.co.uk.
Just a quick reminder that as the long summer evenings are here (or as my buddy Keith puts it; “that’s it, longest day, summer’s over, winter is on the way”), for the next 6 weeks or so I’m available for evening training.
Although I’m heavily booked up for the next two weeks, due to a couple of last minute cancellations some days have freed up in July. So here’s the latest availability in Maidstone and Oxford for the month ahead:
Sun 5 July
Mon 6 (day only)
Tue 7 (day only)
Thu 9 (day only)
Fri 10
Sun 12
Mon 13
Tue 14
Wed 15
Tue 21
Wed 22
Thu 23
Fri 24
Sat 25
Sun 26
Mon 27
Tue 28
Wed 29
Thu 30
Next available dates
Mon 17 Aug
There’s a couple of highly desirable weekends in there – so grab ‘em whilst you can! If you’ve been dithering, now’s the time to do a course and enjoy the rest of the summer with your enhanced skills!
It looks like the heatwave is about to come to a end, with cooler and fresher showery weather pushing in from the Atlantic across the whole country by the weekend, but here in Kent we’re set for at least one more “phew, wotta scorcher” day with temperatures up into the 30s!
(Tip: make sure you hydrate properly in any warm weather! Getting dehydrated takes no time at all on a bike, where you’re relying on the wind evaporating sweat to stay cool. By the time you start feeling thirsty, it’s too late – you are already dehydrated! Dehydration affects your concentration levels and your ability to make decisions; don’t underestimate the risk! It was interesting to hear Martin Hopp make this very point in his pre-ride briefing at the training at Castle Combe back in May!)
The spell of very warm weather happened to coincide with my busiest spell of the year, and as various trainees melted in front of me from the heat I wondered again why so few people take up my option of evening training.
With the long evenings, there’s a window of 8-10 weeks where it’s perfectly light enough to train to around 8:30 or so before finishing up with a debrief, and as we skip the lunchbreak a normal one day course can be done in two nights!
If the weather gets spectacularly hot during the day, as has been for the last seven days, the 6:30 start means we miss the heat of the day, and often if there have been storms they also have tended to fizzle out in the evening.
Yes, there’s a problem with low sun late on, but the same is true of training any time from November to February, and careful attention to routes can usually minimise the amount of time we spend peering into the glare. We just have to remember that if we have the sun lighting the road ahead of us, it’s the guy coming the other way who is peering into the sun!
And of course, you don’t have to take a day off work either!!
Karen has been this summer exception to the rule, and has booked me up for the “Bends” and “Double Bends” courses so we’re doing two nights this week, and two nights next. We were out last night, and had a terrific run on nearly empty roads, in glorious evening sun, and had our final chat of the evening over a cold drink sitting at a table in the garden of my local – very nice.
I’ve still got a few evening dates in the diary for anyone who wishes to book a course and take advantage of the long evenings ahead.
The best trips are often the ones that result from a snap decision. A fortnight or so ago, the training provisionally booked for the weekend was cancelled. It happened to coincide with the Bikers Classic at Spa, a mix of a 4 hour endurance race for pre-80s bikes, a classic 350 GP, a series of parade laps by GP stars of the past, and parades of classic motorcycles of all ages, all on the historic and spectacular circuit of Spa-Francorchamps in the Ardennes.
With nothing else to do, and knowing some buddies I used to go watching endurance there with in the 80s and 90s would be there, the tunnel was booked and Euros exchanged.
With the car packed, I dozed off in front of TV at 10.30pm, and slept till the alarm went off at 3. We were in the car at 3:30, just as dawn was lighting the sky to the east and were at the tunnel by 4. By this time it was daylight. Had 20 mins to kill before loading… checked out the whisky offer price as I’m out of Grants… ho ho ho, more expensive than Tesco…
Out onto the roads on the other side of the channel and the motorway up the coast is clear so we make good time, before heading down towards Gent and Brussels. Just short of Brussels, we stop for a quick coffee and a walk to give Chrissie’s bad leg a break from sitting in the same place, before moving on again.
Around the Brussels ringroad is where we meet the only traffic, and as usual it’s aggressive, even at 9am. Fortunately, after the M25, the ring is so short, it seems more like the Oxford ring road, we’re round it so quickly.
The sun stays out all the way down to Liege, where we take a wrong turn, and end up going straight through the city. No big deal as it allows us to put some fuel in, sufficient to get back to Blighty – petrol’s cheaper here in the UK than in Europe once again – and to buy a crate of beer for the circuit, where it’s always been expensive.
We get to the circuit about 10:30 or 11am, and find our way to the camping area… we decide on the field under the pine trees, and have to get the car up a bit of hill on the dirt road, but find a reasonably flat spot. We put the tent up, brew up some tea and then head off to find Andy and the others.
A couple of CBX1000s (black one at the back behind the Kawa),
a Z1300 and a Goudier-Genoud Kawasaki
Slight technical hitch – it turns out my spare phone doesn’t work abroad. No matter, Chrissie texts him and we find him half an hour or so later, and go wandering round the pits looking at the bikes, then off to a bar to get a beer. It’s €3 for a 25cl plastic glass so after just one at that price, we enter negotiations with the bar people for a bulk purchase. However, we decline to pay €60 for 24 cans, so I produce 4 tinnies from my bumbag and we drink those instead!
Yamaha generation gap. A TZ750 in the background
Geoff, Chrissie and I wander off to another part of the circuit and sit in the sun, watching the bikes go by from a bank. Panning to follow the riders, I get some good photos, as well as the obligatory unidentifiable blurs and shots of empty track. I spread some suntan cream on my arms which are starting to turn red in the sun.
Who said Guzzis don’t handle?
After an hour or so, we walk back to meet Andy and the others (he has been off to get more beer from outside the circuit), and we watch the rest of the events, before racing for the day winds up with a 2.5 hour endurance race.
A famous number – an ex-Barry Sheene RG500
About 30 mins before it’s due to start, the heavens open, the temperature plummets and I wish I’d packed the fleece – a tee shirt and body warmer doesn’t keep my arms warm. We’d seen the clouds and decided to opt for the covered stand. Just in time, we take cover – good choice, the waterproofs are back in the tent!! Torrential downpour.
The endurance event gets under way
The rain soon stops but the race gets underway on a wet track under grey skies and almost immediately the pace car comes out as there is a crash at the top of Eau Rouge, when two bikes clip each other. One rider is certainly OK but the medical car seems to be there for a while.
No sooner has the race restarted than there is another incident on the far side of the circuit – we can see the plume of smoke from the stand on the old start/finish straight. Out comes the pace car again.
With an hour or so to go, the track is drying and the cloud breaks up to the west, allowing rich evening sunlight to flood the track. The contrast between the dark grey cloud hanging over Eau Rouge away to the east and the sunlight grass below is stunning. The spectacle of these classic endurance bikes of the 70s as they power up the hill is just as stunning.
Spa at its most beautiful – bathed in evening sun
The sun sets and the last hour of the race is run in the gathering twilight, the race coming to a halt just as the bikes’ lights are actually starting to light up the track. Given our early start, Chrissie and I forego the evening concert and head back to the tent for some sleep.
The closing moments…
Except the temperature has plummeted. For an hour or more I struggle to get to sleep and eventually pull out my waterproof jacket, spread it over the sleeping bag and finally warm up enough to fall asleep. Until it rains again.
Next morning is grey and damp. We make some tea, and get the tent down, and into the car, and decide to drive round to the other side of the circuit for the early part of the morning, where we can hop down to Stavelot and get a coffee at some point.
But the car barely turns over on the battery. Yikes, a 3 year old car with a dead battery. The doors had been open, and interior lights on, but only for about 30 mins before we shut up and went to bed. I give the battery a couple of minutes and try again. It just turns over, and just as I’m thinking we’re going to need the jump leads, it fires up. Phew.
We take a slow drive to give the battery chance to perk up, and park up at the Stavelot end, and turn all the interior lights out before opening doors! I put the waterproof jacket on this time, as it’s still chilly.
We’re watching Agostini and Read, amongst other GP greats when the heavens open again. We’re just in time to dive under the eaves of a circuit bar (closed) and stand there with a couple of Belgians, watching these guys splash past. They’re both well into their 60s and they’re out in conditions where most of us would be sitting under the nearest bus shelter waiting for the storm to abate.
I’ve seen wider tyres on bicycles!
After 2 more laps the session is red flagged – hopefully only because the track was flooding. The waterproof jacket proves not to be. That’s why it was in the charity shop!
Phil Read, still riding strong in the rain…
I had a Read replica helmet in the early 80s!
We take the opportunity of a bit of a break in the rain to drive into Stavelot and park next to a bar. Shame it’s closed, so we walk round to the next one that is open. I get soaked again. We drink a coffee, avail ourselves of the other facilities and then take a stroll round the town. We look into the museum foyer and pick up a few leaflets and walk round the abbey ruins.
Strolling down towards the river, I spot a plaque on the bridge. It commemorates the American forces who fought here in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and January 1945. Stavelot was the scene of a massacre of approximately 130 men, women and children.
Just around the corner stand an M3 halftrack WW2 military vehicle. Whilst I’m reading the interesting english translation of the negotiations that went on in the 60s to add the original machine gun to the memorial, some police motorcycles come down the hill, followed by a couple of cars. It’s the Belgian national championship cycle race.
So we stand and watch car after car come down the hill. Meanwhile, we are mildly amused by the showdown between the impatient car driver who hasn’t realised why the car ahead of him is stopped at the main road and tries to go the wrong side of the junction, and the police rider who’s stationed there specifically to keep the cars stopped till the race goes past. He eventually reverses and wheelspins up the hill in the other direction.
Then the riders. A cry of “pave” as the breakaway group spot the still-wet cobbles over the bridge into town and some hasty braking as they slow before they hit the slippery surface. Over the next ten minutes, the chase group, the main bunch and the rag, tag and bobtail of the riders dropped off the back all come through, before the roads re-open.
We wander back up through the village, wondering what the masks on display on the walls of many buildings signify [it's to commemorate a local carnival which pokes fun at the monks from the Abbey, the Carnaval de la Laetare des Blancs-Moussis, I discover via Wikipedia later]. It starts raining again.
We head back to the car and have a debate. We could go back to the circuit and catch the last hour or so of the endurance race (it’s split over the two days, somewhat bizarrely) or we can head off across country, and avoid a few miles of motorway. We’re both a bit knackered, so we decide on the cross country route.
I’d forgotten just how good some of the roads are for biking. The sun comes out as we head north west towards Huy, then continue north to pick up the motorway back to Brussels north of Liege, in beautiful clear skies, in contrast to the looming grey masses on the horizon behind us.
Along the way, we spot a field gun at the side of the road, with a memorial beside it. It’s to the 82nd Airborne, another American unit that was rushed in to the area in December 1944.
Memorial to the 82 Airborne
I take a snooze in the passenger seat for an hour or so, then resume driving near Bruges, and the last miles to the Chunnel are rapidly despatched. We have five minutes this time, just enough check out the malt whisky prices. Still “ho ho ho” prices, still cheaper in the supermarkets in the UK, so I pass, but we do pick up a couple of cases of cheap lager for summer barbeques and the like, before heading on to the train and back up to Canterbury, arriving back approximately 36 hours after we left.
This is has been sent onto me by Malcolm Palmer:
I’ve been contacted by Sandra Woodjetts at the Transport Research Laboratory (Crowthorne, Bekshire, RG40 3GA). They need motorcyclists (and cyclists) for some track trials.
They’re on the weekends of 11th & 12th, and 18th & 19th July.
Food & drinks provided
£35 paid for attendance
£10 fuel allowance (for motorcyclists)Interested?
Sandra Woodjetts:
swoodjetts @ trl.co.uk
01344 770721
Please note – riders must be 25 or over. The event is at the TRL research centre at Crowthorne.
There will be a signalised crossroad set up on the large central area and cyclists and motorcyclists will be filmed as they ride through the junction. Participants should be arriving about 9am. It will be a full day on the track with each session lasting about 40 minutes(2 morning 2 afternoon), there will be a break for about an hour between sessions as there will be 2 groups in turn on the track. There will be a lunch break, food and drink will be provided. I’ve been advised that bringing a book might be a good idea for the breaks!
One of the things I get asked from time to time is how I obtained my BTEC in advanced motorcycle instruction. This is the second part which covers the assessment of practical training carried out by Malcolm Palmer and Steve Dixey.
A couple of weeks before the second practical assessment part of the BTEC, Malc dropped a couple of training scenarios in the email, and asked for a draft lesson plan for each.
My initial view of this was that it would only take a minute or two to knock up the required plan, as both scenarios were something I have dealt with dozens of times in real courses.
So of course, because of the pressure of work through August and September , I left everything to the last minute. When I looked at the first scenario (fairly new rider having problems with bends and following boyfriend), my initial thoughts ran along the lines of:
“don’t take anything for granted and go for a ride along a road with some nice bends. The rest of the lesson would be based on what I detect as a problem from that point on. I really wouldn’t work to much of a plan because it’s ‘problem solving’, not training to a syllabus or set plan”.
Yet another email to Malc got a helpful reply:
“But would you arrive ‘cold’? No ideas of what to expect i.e. what clues are iin the information provided? Would you bring along anything besides yourself & your bike?
“You’ve already started to plan, like it or not, by choosing a road with ‘nice’ bends! And what does your experience tell you to expect? Look back at the clues in the scenario again.”
I began to see what Malcolm was driving at… several hours and several drafts later, I had fleshed out that bald statement and presented a lesson plan.
Back came the reply – close but no cigar. Another evening and one final rehash and I had it. Any teacher would be instantly familiar with the format. Every activity is clearly explained with the aims of the exercise, the time to be taken, the results to be achieved, a way to assess the results and the resources required, right down to pen and paper.
Now you might well argue in ‘real life’ we run sessions in a much more flexible manner, because we have the knowledge, experience and skill to do adapt quickly to a ‘real person’ when they meet us for training.
That might be true for an experienced instructor but the planning format gives us major benefits:
1. We can identify and work on specific objectives to ensure that learning takes place;
2. Our knowledge, experience and planning skills are clearly demonstrated (not only to any external assessor, but also to the trainee, and heaven forbid, anyone looking at the course after the event with a view to preparing a liability claim).
3. Having identified the key information using the format will make planning (and training) more accessible.
Furthermore, a relatively inexperienced instructor will have a much better chance of doing a decent job if he/she follows a carefully prepared plan. In my opinion this is something that current instructor training would be well advised to look at.
I do think that taken to extremes there is a danger that this kind of approach forces a “one size fits all” training onto riders and instructors alike in the same way that CBT does, and takes away individuality, but that’s something else altogether and for another column.
Back to tbe BTEC. I turned up at the venue in Newbury, and was met by Malc and introduced to Steve Dixey from the BMF (in person – I’ve known him online for many years), and a gentleman who turned out to be an external moderator from Edexcel. I was on assessment with copper, writer and road tester, Ian Kerr.
Initially I spent a little time going over my portfolio with Steve to fill in a few holes in my explanations and to answer a few penetrating questions. After a short Highway Code/Roadcraft multiple guess test, next up was an interesting exercise. Ian, as a class one police licence holder, was to assess my riding and I was to try to ride to advanced standard, and Malcolm would assess us both. When we got back Ian and I sat down independently and assessed my ride.
Predictably I rode like a plank with all the eyes watching my every move and barely scraped through with an advanced pass so I have every sympathy with the trainees when they have a bad ride. Interestingly given our very different backgrounds, even though there were predictable areas of disagreement on progress and comfort braking, our marking sheets of the ride were eerily similar.
After lunch, we ran through the mock lessons. The on-road training scenario was complex enough to be reasonably challenging whilst nothing I had not seen before. The main problem in teaching select “chunks” of the lesson plan as prepared is determining exactly what is to be taken as seen and said, and exactly where we are in the lesson, but Malcolm’s briefing and play-acting made it reasonably straightforward for me to determine exactly what was expected of me and to brief and debrief the nervous” rider accordingly.
It was a moderately tough but thoroughly enjoyable day. Steve and Malcolm were efficient but friendly, and it was interesting to have along a police rider as a contrast in styles.
So, now all I have to do is wait for the the result!
One of the things I get asked from time to time is how I obtained my BTEC in advanced motorcycle instruction. Here’s the first of a two parter that recounts exactly what I did to qualify via the “accreditation of prior learning” module.
If you’re a regular visitor to the Survival Skills site, you’re probably wondering what happened to the regular updates. Work and BTEC commitments is what.
The basic training school side of things took off in a big way, and I have been working pretty much flat out nearly every day and some evenings too, filling in the odd gaps with the advanced courses, so thanks to those on Survival Skills courses who’ve been very patient with the limited gaps in the diary this summer. Hopefully, next year we’ll have another full time instructor working alongside me and our part-timers to spread the load.
Many of the remaining evenings have been taken up polishing course work up and getting myself up to speed for the BTEC in Advanced Motorcycle Instruction put together by South Lincs BMF that I sorted out at the beginning of the year to replace the appallingly badly organised Driver Education course I began an age ago at Middlesex University.
Both courses use an “accreditation of prior learning” (APL) element for instructors with previous experience to replace a traditional “taught” course. The idea is that you show the assessors that you have not only been teaching riding skills, but that you have used the courses you have taught as a learning experience for yourself to develop and improve your own skills and the training you deliver, thus avoiding the need to spend weeks in the classroom being taught what you already know. For those with limited or no experience, the classroom option is available, by the way.
The required format for the BTEC was slightly different from the Middx course. This meant the original submission I had made to Middx was a useful background document, but still needed the fleshing out with the hard evidence that I had never got round to. The main exhibit for the defence was a portfolio profiling the kind of things they want to see.
Sounds easy? Yes, at first sight. Easy enough to provide photocopies of my driving licence and CBT card. Not too difficult to provide copies of my current training notes. But to demonstrate learning?
Fortunately I’m one of those people who NEVER throws anything away. That does mean the office is knee deep in paperwork and old bike magazines but it also means I had a fighting chance of finding some of the old training notes, course details, briefing notes, debriefing notes and so on, as well as the upto date stuff.
Eventually I had assembled a large A4 box-file of notes and papers, printouts of e-mails from trainees and the resulting course notes, items from the website and Visordown and the various magazines I have had articles published in.
First up was an interview to determine whether the portfolio was up to the job and to see if I could justify the learning I was claiming. It wasn’t quite the grilling I had expected – Malcolm Palmer popped over to meet me in Oxford and spent a long evening chatting informally over several mugs of tea and a plate of fish and chips, whilst going piece by piece through the file. However, it was thorough – around 4 hours later (too late for a quick pint) Malcom left me with a list of what he would like included and copied for the formal submission for APL.
Job done, I thought. Ha.
Now I had to sift the original documents, copy those I needed to submit, and annotate them to explain what they were and why I was submitting them. What seemed like a couple of hours work dragged into weeks of hunting for the original files on the PC and long lost back up zip disks, discovering they were formatted for an extinct version of a word processor noone else ever used and reformatting them to print a readable copy, or where the notes were handwritten or the PC version was long gone, scanning and printing page by page a copy for the portfolio.
Eventually, everything was neatly placed in a large red ring binder and dropped off to Malcolm the evening before the second part of the APL assessment.
…. to be continued ….
Originally published on the website 20 Sept 02
Almost as soon as I’ve bought one and written about its delights, Dell have announced they are to drop the Mini 9 from their range. The story was reported on the PCPro newsletter this morning. It might even be that the last Mini 9s have already been sold – the Dell site didn’t seem to have any options to purchase them.
Dell are apparently pointing people at the larger Mini 10, which has a bigger screen (though with a weird resolution, which drops many XP dialogue boxes off the bottom), a larger, easier to use keyboard and a bigger 160Gb hard disc.
I can’t help but think Dell are missing a big trick here.
The Mini 9 is comfortably the smallest netbook out there. With this kind of form factor, users aren’t looking for ergonomic hundred words per minute keyboards or cinemascope screens to play a day’s worth of ripped movies stored on the HD.
It’s the tiny overall size and weight of the device which allows it to be slipped into a small bag (or in my case, a small tailpack on the bike), the wireless connectivity that allows me to hook up to a network and run a browser, check my email and type a reply pretty much wherever I am, with the robustness (hopefully) of a solid state drive that won’t die a horrible death from being bounced around.
My guess is that these netbooks have actually proved TOO successful and have snaffled sales from the laptop market. I suspect Dell and the other manufacturers who all seem to be upsizing and upgrading their own netbooks from bum-basic but functional to bigger screens, more RAM and bigger HDs, are attempting to blur the line between a netbook and the lower spec’d laptops.
Ah well, as long as they can fix it under warrenty for the next 10 months if it does break, and as long as I can still order a spare battery in the next day or two to pop in the drawer as a spare, I’ll be happy!
…or more exactly from Visordown!
I’d completely forgotten about these reviews of one of the training courses until it got flagged up this morning to someone interested in doing a course. This one dates from April ‘05 and refers to training in Montgomery, mid-Wales.
Went to Wales with Bonners to do some refresher training…we’d both booked in for a general look at our riding, and to make sure we weren’t an absolute liability.
Unfortunately, cos the Dragon in Montgomery is so bloody expensive, me and Bonners had to share a room I pity the cleaner, unless she had nose plugs… :burp:
Had a lovely rideout with Spin, Bonners, Ruby and TRX, up through the Cwmbran (sp??!!) hills, round some gravel tracks, etc. Welsh countrside was beautiful, fields of Oil Seed Rape at it’s most pungent, verges screaming with Wood Anemones, daisies, yellow flowers (Marsh Marigold look-alikes), wide vistas, babbling brooks, and everything
Bonners persuaded me to have the steak in the Dragon. I then pointed out that the 8oz was only £2 cheaper than the 16oz, so i insisted we order that, along with a few pints of Brains (how ironic) and Woods. Fat Bastards-r-us
Hence the room the next morning
Went out Monday (yesterday) for the training. Started off absolutely gorgeous
Did a few roads, Bonners leading, then me, then Bonners, then me
Then it pissed it down – thunder lightning RAIN!!
Just as we stopped for lunch It took us 20 odd mins to get served with standard fares of beans eggs and sausages, and the like. NEVER let it be said that inbreeding is rife at the Morrisons in Newtown
Then it stopped raining – just as we were leaving the caff. For about 30 seconds when the heavens opened again . For a few miles, anyway. Hit the A483…class road, but thankfully we didn’t hit it in the same way as the parked up Gixer appeared to have. Slightly mangled, leaning up against an armco, with a set of leather pants draped over the Armco
It was wet on the way up, but was mostly drying nicely on the way down!!
Headed back towards Monty, where I got the lead, and took Spin for a spin at a less sedate pace for the last few miles – sorry Bonners :burnout:
Best bits were doing the A483 in the rain – I hate the wet roads that I ride routinely, cos they tend to have had loads of traffic and feel fucking greasy and horrible, and it scares me The A483 is a bit less traversed by vehicles, and feels so smooth and grippy it was a joy to ride in the wet. Not particuarly quickly, mind, but brisk enough to bring a smile
Spin’s commentated bit around Newtown was excellent – he even seemed to be able to predict the prescence of skips around blind corners This really was informative as he takes a far wider view than I do – or more notice of things I choose to ignore. Also the way he reads what is likely to be around semi-blind corners is good.
We spent a fair bit of time during the day chatting, which was good – reinforcing some things I knew, introducing some things in a different way, etc.
Not sure what NEW things I learned, but I certainly have a lot of thinking material, maybe slightly different ways of doing things, etc.
Finally, it was nice to do a refresher – make sure I’m still in the correct ball park, and that when I do give her her head that I’m not a total fucking liability, and that I judge each situation on it’s merits, rather than blindly charging headlong into any old situation. And that my obs (which is what was worrying me a few months ago) isn’t so bad.
Well recommended.
Even by hardened battle scarred veterans like meself.
Thanks to Rainmaker for that view of a day out for experienced riders.
By the way, I’ve moved the lunchstop from the Morrisons!
And Bonners had this to say:
First off, Monday’s training.
We started off with a talk for about an hour with Spin, going over some of the principles of what we would be doing, and also focusing on what we wanted to get out of the course. This bit I find pretty essential, as it really focuses the mind on what we are trying to achieve.
Started off the riding with both taking it in turns leading the way, and stopping for a debrief with Spin. He would then start bringing up the next concepts. After he had had a chance to assess both our riding, he started to bring in some slightly different concepts to the training.
We worked a lot on visualising hazards, body positioning, and even Thirds was mentioned Have to say that the whole concept of Thirds still leaves me a bit cold. Having said that, once we had gone over the concept, I kind of put my own interpretation on it, and found my braking in a straight line before the bends seemed to be better judged, and I was getting set up for the bends a lot easier. So, I guess there is something in there, you just have to use these things in the way that makes sense to you. So despite my threat to go home if Thirds was mentioned , it was actually quite useful.
As for the body positioning, again really useful, actively thinking about why you move your body, it also seems to have gone some way to curing one of my main faults of turning in too early on right handers, definately more work needed, but that was something that definately put me on the right track.
As Rainy has mentioned the around town riding was brilliant, I love those commentated rides. Shame about the slow speed control training, but I have to admit my enthusiasm for doing it in the pouring rain and thunder storms was a little ‘dampened’.
There were lots of other things which I’m sure will come to me later, but all in all was a cracking, if tiring day.
As for the rest of the weekend, we had a brilliant time, Rainy actually turned up at my house at the apointed hour on Sunday morning, and we had a lovely ride down, very sensible, apart from the bit on the motorway where the matrix signs were telling ‘bikers save the racing for the track, not the road’ Stupid sign, red rag to a bull, etc…
Met up with everyone at the Dragon Hotel ready for the rideout over the Welsh Mountains (hills?) lovely rideout. I have a feeling that TRX’s ‘Blade was the first one ever on some of those gravel tracks I’m sorry someone has to mention the Goldwings that flew past us, not exactly the most sensible o overtakes on single track roads with blind bends, but hey they seemed happy enough, I’m still not sure when the one behind me saw my right indicator when we turned off for Devil’s Bridge.
Had a lovely snack, also bumped into something like Nick Sanders Moto Challenge, some seriously dirty bikes. Then on for some more cracking B-roads. Just five riders, all willing to go at a nice brisk pace, but no stupidity, lots of fun.
Back to the hotel, I dont think I can even mention the stake without feeling full, ever had a lump of red meat plonked on your plate that moos?
Lovely evening, but I really hope the cleaners had gas masks.
Once we had done the training me and Rainy headed off, great ride back. Got a bit caught up in the crowds leaving Oulton Park (BSB), so we headed for the back routes, and found some more cracking little roads. A perfect way to finish a great weekend.
So, thanks to everyone for a great time, and Spin’s excellent training. The whole thing was very much worth it.
Thanks, Bonners!!
“Thirds” is a means of breaking down straights between hazards into a ‘go’ phase, a ’steady whilst you think’ phase, and a ’slow’ phase. The key point is the ‘think’ phase; if the faster rider is encouraged not to leave the transition from throttle to brake as late as possible, the middle ‘think’ phase does away with a lot of “in too fast” errors, which paradoxically means they are happy to carry more speed on the straight!
It also gives the steadier riders something to do in the bit between corners where they tend to switch off and make exactly the same “in too fast” error but for a different reason!
Last Wednesday (May 13) I gave a presentation on behalf of Somerset Road Safety Partnership at their ‘Rider Performance’ Day at Castle Combe race circuit.
For me personally, it was a very interesting day; a chance to meet fellow professionals in the field of riding skills and to interact in a classroom format with a large group of mixed abilities, a rather different day from my normal 1:1 training out on the road!
The 40-odd attendees were split into two groups, based on their riding experience, so as to make better use of the facilities and to allow for the Avon tyre guy to do his two sessions back to back in his lunch break! That meant I got to do the first session of the day at around 9:30 after the initial briefing, and then the final “graveyard shift” at around 4pm!
The basic brief I’d been given was to run a “workshop” about defensive riding and try to show that many motorcycle accidents are avoidable by the rider; in other words to approach riding with a defensive mindset.
It’s not the easiest topic to approach, not least because biking is about having fun and defensive riding doesn’t sound fun, but also because many riders firmly believe that they had nothing to do with an accident involving another vehicle, because it “wasn’t their fault”. Legally that might be the case but it takes two to tangle – do they have to drive into the accident that someone else is about to cause?
The answer is “no” of course – with the right knowledge of where accidents happen, and a basic understanding of why they happen, it’s possible to put in place relatively simple strategies to avoid dangerous situations.
Slowing down in hazardous places is the most obvious – with more time, you can look around and spot the issues more easily, as well as having a better chance of dealing with them. The key point to get over here is that “slowing down” doesn’t mean slowing your whole ride – it means being more selective about where you add your speed.
Seeing and being seen is another key strategy. It should be obvious that if you can’t see something, you don’t know it’s there. A good rider will consider what they can see, and from that work out the areas they can’t see and take a long hard think about what might be hidden out of sight. But for many road users if you can’t be seen, you’re likely to be out of mind. So positioning is as much about allowing others to know you are there as gathering your own information.
Some instructors hate the expression “expecting the unexpected”; they suggest that if you expect it, it’s not unexpected any more, and they have a point. Thus perhaps a better way of thinking is to look at any situation and ask “what can go wrong here?” Planning for disaster rather than for everything to pan out exactly as you hoped means you’re far less likely to be surprised when you DO have to take evasive action. I firmly believe a pragmatic approach to understanding why other road users and ourselves get entangled with each other is a far better solution to improving rider safety than teaching them the “Holy Grail” of the zero error Perfect Ride!
Now, I could have approached all this in a 1960’s “chalk and talk” classroom session or worse still “Death by Powerpoint”, a style of presentation for which I personally have an attention span very slightly longer than an extremely bored goldfish.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to go the equally dire “team building” approach to my session!
So I used a mixture of approaches, based around the rather excellent “Perfect Day” video. It’s a short two minute video showing a rider avoiding a number of hazards along the way, and as such it’s an excellent teaching tool for illustrating that common accidents that have potentially nasty consequences.
What the video demonstrates nicely is that not only are the potential problems the result of easily avoidable errors, but the rider also has plenty of clues that the things are about to go pear shaped, and has simple solutions to staying out of trouble.
I took out three of the scenarios the video painted for further study. I split the group up into teams and then asked each team to look at various aspects of each situation – what the problem was, what the clues were, where the rider could expect to find the potential hazard and what they could do about it. Each scenario asked the same questions but gave them a different way to approach it.
Final conclusion? If I’m not scaring myself witless as I ride, I have more fun! Defensive riding works!
With only 50-odd minutes for the entire session, it was quickfire stuff, but watching the body language of some of the attendees I’m confident I got the point over to some that didn’t show much interest initially, and I got some good feedback from some of the people sitting in, particularly after the first session when people had a moment to talk to me over a much-needed cuppa!
Certainly, there were some teething problems. Jim the organiser had brought along a projector but it took a while to find the screen to show the movie, and I was expecting a whiteboard or flip chart, neither of which materialised, but on the whole I think it went well for a first run of a new format presentation.
In between times of course, I was free to wander round and see what else was going on.
Martin Hopp and his team of instructors from Hopp Rider Training were out on the track doing a subset of their normal training from up at Cadwell Park, with a “machine preparation” session, a frank talk about crashing and the consequences, slow riding and braking exercises, and plenty of track time.
I was interested to see that Martin got the trainees to actually lock the front brake in a straight line.
This “lock and slide the front” thing is something I’ve been demo’ing for years on the “urban” section of my Survival Skills 2 day course and the City Riding / Collision Avoidance courses but perhaps I need to do it on the Bends course too. For the time being I’ll stick to demos rather than getting trainees to do it but hard braking is clearly an area that many riders with cornering problems are weak on, not least because many riders never practice emergency stops.
Martin’s instructors also worked on the exact same approach I suggest for smooth stops – modulate the front off as the speed drops down to walking pace, and finish with just the rear, stopping left foot down, something an IAM rider commented was the way he used to do it before he joined the IAM!
I have to say the ability to do braking exercises on a track is useful, but I do have slight concerns about the difference in grip between a wet track and a wet road; the only surface on the road that is equivalent to a wet track is the ‘Shellgrip’ anti-skid surfaces. You need to go away and practice on the surfaces you normally ride on, not rely on what you think you have learned on a track!
To my mind possibly the most interesting presentation of the day was by a chap from Avon (tyres, not beauty products!).
He was obviously extremely knowledgable about tyres – I got a chance to chat over tea and he was off to talk to a government committee on bike safety about bike tyres the following day, so clearly knew his rubber.
The most thought provoking observation he made was that in the conditions (13c, and wet) the tyres that would work best on the track would be the high silica sports touring tyres, NOT the supersports tyres.
Yes, I said on the TRACK, not just the road.
He said the sports touring tyres would offer just as much outright grip as the softer tyres under the wet conditions, and furthermore wouldn’t need warming up but would work from cold. The supersports tyres would need to be worked hard to get them up to temperature, and worked hard to keep them there!
The obvious conclusion is that for anything but dry, warm roads on a sunny mid-summer day, you’re better off on a sports touring tyre! Go back to this “Don’t crash on the gas” post just a few days ago and see the relevance of this expert opinion, and the danger of running too sporty tyres in the wrong weather conditions.
There’s another one scheduled for September. Contact:
Jim Newman – Road Safety Coordinator (motorcycles)
Somerset Road Safety Partnership, Somerset County Council, County Hall, The Crescent, Taunton, TA1 4DY
Tel: 0844 980 00 28 Fax: 01823 423439
e-mail roadsafety@somerset.gov.uk
Personally, I’m available for available for talks to clubs and groups throughout the year! Drop me a mail.
