Cobwebs, blown Two big things you can learn from trials
‘People’ say riding trials helps on the road. A sceptical John Westlake gathers his friends about him and takes a course. You know what, those ‘people’ are right…
The body position required to get a trials bike round a corner is deeply weird. You tip the little machine one way by pressing with your inside foot, stick your knee out the other side, straighten the inside arm and do something with your hips I never quite mastered. Around me in a sunlit field on the edge of the Peak District, various road-riding mates are flapping their knees while swerving erratically or going round in circles. Every now and then I stop my practicing to watch. A bunch of 50-somethings in motocross jerseys blundering randomly about on tiny motorcycles is a mesmerising sight. It’s like a modern art installation with added giggling.
With turning mastered (ish) we set off across the farm where Trials Day is based – chief instructor Stu splits his time between teaching people to ride trials and raising cattle. Both occupations involving the control and motivation of dull-witted beasts.
After a bottom-clenching ride beside a lake we stop next to a copse sprouting from the 45-degree slope of a dam. ‘To get up here you need grip not revs,’ explains Stu as it dawns that he expects us to ride down and then up the ridiculous incline. The trick is to get engine chugging happily in first – the two-strokes are amazingly torquey – then plod uphill with just enough weight over the back wheel to provide traction but not so much that you loop. This balance requires a feel for grip, something in short supply at first.
But, amazingly, after a few goes most of us get the hang of it, reining in the natural urge to give it a handful and instead deploying what might even pass for finesse. Who’d have thought that such satisfaction and glee could be generated by titting about at one mile per hour?
After lunch we climb into the hills, razzing up farm tracks and across fields, watching in awe as Stu’s three golden retrievers pelt up the mountain (they cover 15 miles with us during the day). The afternoon is a joyous blur of simple trails and magnificent views interspersed with new challenges where skills learned in the morning are put into practice. More or less.
The course is cleverly structured, with each afternoon section increasing skills and confidence without us noticing. By the end of the day we’re all attempting things we would never have considered possible at 10am, and – for the most part – succeeding. When Stu says it’s time to head back down, the child in me is disappointed because I want to keep playing, but the 53-year-old is relieved. My forearms are aching and I’ve got that last-trackday-session-of-the-day feeling that skills and sense are waning. Afterwards one of the lads asks Stu if any of the skills transfer to road bikes and his answer (see below) is entirely plausible. But that’s not why you should do this course.
Do it because it’s a life-affirming day of laughter with your mates, and after the year we’ve all had it feels like motorcycle heaven.
Stu Day has been teaching trials techniques to road riders for over a decade. Here are the two crucial skills he’s found transfer directly from dirt to tarmac…
1 Feel for the controls. Because you’re going so slowly tiny changes to clutch, brake and throttle position have a huge effect on the bike. Trials teaches you to be far more sensitive and aware of the controls when you’re back on your road bike.
2 Feel for grip. This is the main advantage of doing trials. On a trials bike you spend all the time feeling what the bike is doing – you’re feeling how much traction there is and how stable the bike is. It makes you more alert to what the machine is doing, so when you go back to your road bike you’re more aware of what’s happening. If you ask most road riders how much grip there is, most don’t know because they haven’t been feeling for it. On a trials bike, you’re doing that all the time.