on one hand shrewsbury is nearest station but its right out of the way on the rail network (well unless you live in wales or the west midlands. best off getting a cross country of west coast train to stoke-on-trent (big mainline station), or even go to Crewe and get a train or bus (Ariva No 52 to Hanley) over to stoke.
The X64 or just 64 (ariva) goes from Hanley bus station, stoke train station, newcastle (under lyme) down the A53 right to shrewsbury (the A53 is the main road the lane to Hawkstone is off). similarly if you're going to shrewbury this is the only bus out of shrewsbury (i think, unless one goes up the A49 to whitchurch)
for timetables check out the arriva website (click north west)
get an ACU trials licence (OK affiliation), but to do this you need to join a club first, so work out which local club you want to join, as they have to countersign the form (the form is on the ACU website)
your entry fee for each event covers your insurance, although you may want additional personal accident insurance (depends how much of a crasher you are) from companies like CICA
its not normal practise to put championship fulls in the handbook (we don't in MX) but for Trials and Enduro you generally do
because so few people (the 60 or so on the list) can enter it the T&E committee are (as i understand) sending the rules out to the relevant parties - ie clubs, riders, etc (thats what John Collins told me when i asked him!)
a) you've got the 2nd question wrong in the eyes of several respondents ....
Q1's choice are wrong / false, as very few people work for the FIM or ACU (betetter put prehaps as FMN or even just governing body), do you mean volunteers working for the FMN on various committees???
these statical exercise require very careful thought about the questions and to whom you are asking (are the response from TC balanced, representative, etc)and what answers you expect to get?
i think you also need to distinguish between what levels of riding your are trying to illicit form the respondees, specifically about level of riding; club, group, centre, regional, national, european, international and more importantly IMHO for what kind of trials, sidecar, pre65, novice, advanced (expert, inter, etc)
a question my mother has about this issue, when the bike is stuck on an obstacle by the sump guard (etc) and then gets going again has the bike stopped (and thus a penalty) or have they stopped and dabbed or something else ???
pleanty of discussion, photos, etc on the main MX message board (MXTrax / adenalintrip) - mxtrax.co.uk (and go forums)
i went and it was excellent - biggest crowd I've seen there, at a guess 10,000 paying meaning a TMX number of 30,000. last race was the best, billy mac holding on for so long, only getting passed by stribors on the hill and then stribors holding off Everts to win by a whisker.
tortelli wasn't trying at all (its a pres season international) and Smets wasn't great but still a legend!.
i would argue there is a lot of riders down south - we have many clubs and no shortage of events in any of the southern centres
But IMHO the "national" scene passes us southerns by as the trials are all way up north, and a greater emphasis is thus places on normal centre events (IMHO)
at our busiest trial (130 - inc chairs and experts) do 18 to 20 sections and send evens one section 1 and odd to section 9 or 10 - mixing all classes up
we manage to do 2 laps comfortably in winter with time to spare, but don't feel we can take more than 120/130 otherwise you do get queueing
(southern fairy!)
I'm Crap At Trials!
in Introduce Yourself
Posted
don't worry mate, we all start somewhere