Well it's been quite a while since I've been out in the buggy. It all started about 6 months ago. We had an incident in our city where two "off road motorcyclists" caused some trouble with an "on road" motorist. It turned out that these two planks where not "off road motorcyclists" but a couple of idiots that decided to use there shed bikes on the road even though they weren't road legal. They collided with said motorist and then beat him up when he complained - dick heads! All this, and a campain run by the local rag, led to the police in the area having a clampdown on "illegal off road riding" - targeting anything that was being driven off road. They was threats to confiscate any vehicle used in this way. As usual, this was completely missing the point. It was the arseholes that where riding there so called "off road" machines ON THE ROAD that where causing the problems. But I guess it's easier to pick on someone that trailers there machines to a place away from the general public, a place where lots of true off road enthusiasts gather, a place where it is obvious to the general public that machines will be flying all over the place so they are cautious if they venture on to the land....

But anyhow, I did not fancy loosing the Winder, so I've been laying low. So I've been consentrating with my other hobbies.

So 6 months on and I stumble upon a site that I used to use about 20 years ago to ride motorcross on. Then, land that the track was on, was being developed so we got kicked off it. I just happened to pass the place and saw it was being used again by the Motor X boys. I stopped and had a chat with them and they confirmed that they had been using it for a couple of years without hassle from anyone. I had a walk around the land. God it had changed. The surface is shale and it was now not as large as before, but it looked ideal for the Sidewinder. My only concern was there was some rather large hills....hills that I'd think twice about tackling on my crosser. I have not tried any hills of this magnitude before in the buggy.......

Just getting used to the shale

So today we trailered the buggy to this site and I set off discovering. Well I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at the performance of the buggy. The shale surface was quite soft underneath so the tyres got a really good grip. I found a track that turned out to be about a mile circuit. Hitting puddles for the first time made me wish that I'd had a visor on my helmet!! Below is a sequence of shots taken as I was going up/down the start/finish sweeper.

At last a track where I can use 3rd and 4th gear. Speeds of upto about 50 MPH/90KMH was achieved here!!

Well that was the circuit driving done - next was to tackle the massive hills. With teeth gritted I pointed her at the hill and nailed it in 1st gear. Wow the buggy shot to the top with no problem. So I tried it in 2nd gear next. The buggy just plodded up there with no real problem. Coming back down was a bit hair raising with just a back brake. I found it was better to just to let the brake go and let the engine braking control the descents I then practiced blasting up the hill, just before hitting the top, pulling full lock on the steering and flooring the accelerator. This preformed a very trick 180 degree hillside donut .....Kewl!!!

This hill is bloody massive.

It's hard to judge the steepness in these photos

Just look how the front suspension loads up at the bottom

After playing on the hills for ages I found some short dipper jumps. I managed to get "some air" on a few of them but I'm sorry there's no pictures as my cameras memory was full. The next time I go to this site I'm gonna take the video camera.

Watch this space!!!!

Update

Well it seems more bad luck has hit my buggying days. This site got fenced off late 2005. It has come to light that this land is privatley owned and I should not have been on there. I have had an E-Mail pointing this out from the owners and requesting all references to the lands location to be removed from my website. Well this has been done. And a search for another riding site is on