Flat-track school: Skills

The white heat of competition: old friends do battle at Boastie’s flat track arena…

Peak hilarity occurs at 2.36pm when chief instructor Peter Boast (ex-pro speedway rider, British and European flat track champion, TT racer and sometime Bike road tester) has to get past ex- Bike editor Dickie Fincher (first time on a flat track bike, two false hips, likes a pie). Dickie knows Boastie’s coming because that’s the nature of this particular race – the fastest rider on one team has to lap the slowest rider of the other one to win. Boastie closes on Dickie like a peregrine falcon diving on a pottering pigeon, but he hasn’t reckoned on this pigeon’s cunning. Instead of taking the racing line, Dickie hugs the inside of every corner, leaving Boastie no room. It’s made all the more entertaining by the riders’ outfits: Boastie looking professional in motocross gear, Dickie wearing an old boiler suit. He looks like a plumber who’s stolen a child’s motorcycle.

Then comes the moment. Boastie drifts out of the long left hander and is alongside Dickie, clearly aiming to ride round the outside at the next hairpin. We scream a warning, but Dickie’s blissfully unaware, taking his usual inside line. Boastie gets on the power and looks set to pass on the exit. The overtake looks inevitable. But Dickie sees the danger, runs wide and nerfs the chief instructor into a hay bale before pottering onwards to victory.

And riding the little Honda CRF100S is even more fun than watching. We’re inside a barn Team Boastie have transformed into a flat track arena. It’s an all-weather flat track dream.

When you go for the first time, you get structured lessons from Boastie’s team of coaches who can turn complete beginners into confident drifters in a day. But because all of us have been before, Boastie decides to do races instead.

For those of us not used to the white heat of competition, it’s an intimidating prospect, even if we are all on 10bhp bikes that will never get out of second gear. The nerves last until the first race, when it transpires that our levels of idiocy and incompetence guarantee that it is very difficult to take any of it seriously. We have people on the same team knocking each other off. We have someone forgetting the course (there are four corners). And I concentrate so hard that I lose count of my laps… during a two lap race.

As we’re staggering around getting ready to go home (it’s quite tiring for old blokes), the general consensus is that this is the best day on bikes we’ve had in years. Get some mates together and go: you won’t regret it.

‘Our levels of idiocy mean it is very difficult to take any of it seriously’