North Kent News

By Liam Seamer

As we finally (well hopefully) say goodbye to winter and the rain and welcome spring with the promise of drier trials we look back on the first quarter of the year. This is the first year in many years that we have had a January, February and March combine trial!

January started off with Bexleyheath's annual "extra" combine trial at Ash, we suffered a parking hiccup due to an overnight downpour of rain. However, as a whole the trial was well accepted by the competitors and after the first lap dried out to make an enjoyable trial. February and March were previously vacant months, the NKTC opted to host the events as a collaboration of all clubs as no individual clubs were able to host an event.

In February Bryn Matton of Gravesend volunteered to be clerk of the course and Rob Fleet of Bexley was secretary, observers came from all clubs. Unfortunately Sunday coincided with storm Ciara, wind was ferocious and the rain relentless. The Venue was a new bit of Bexleyheath land at Cobham where they had recently had a digger working on the land, as a result it was soft and slippy......The conclusion of the day, a high scoring but high fun trial! In March, we were originally supposed to attending Horsmonden, but storm after storm has essentially left Horsmonden under water, as a result we again reverted back to the Bexleyheath land at Cobham. Doug Norris of Bexley volunteered to be clerk of the course and Joyce and Alan Miles of OWLS volunteered to do secretary of the meeting duties. As per February observers came from all clubs. Whilst we not blessed with a storm for the March combine we did seem to have relentless rain leading up to the trial, and then a nice little hail shower on the day. Scores were slightly lower than February, but again conclusion was a typically high scoring but high fun trial.

We owe a great deal of thanks to all those involved in making the last two trials happen, without it we would not have had these two winter trials!

Going into the rest of the year the format reverts to normal with individual clubs hosting combines. For April we had planned to go to Chads Farm by Double 5 before heading to Penshurst by OWLS in May which will include last years trophy presentation.