Rick Broadbent of The Times says: "The most astonishing events I've witnessed as a sports writer are Usain Bolt's head-wrecking 100 metres in 2008, Liverpool's impossible come-back against AC Milan in 2005 and the TT every year."
Tom and I have been talking about going to the Isle of Man TT races for years, well this year, we did it. Just got back a couple of nights ago and it's the usual early start for work this morning, but this is my TT diary from the five-day trip.
This was the weekend of the Queen's diamond jubilee and so we had a later Whitsuntide bank holiday (or spring bank holiday as it is now called) plus an extra bank holiday for the jubilee. It meant I could book one day off work and, combined with weekend and bank holidays, see two race days, Mad Sunday, a practice day and have a day spare in case any racing was postponed.
We flew across from Gatwick on Thursday night, courtesy of FlyBe, one of the budget airlines. It flies from Gatwick to Ronaldsway, about 10 miles south of Douglas, the main town on the Isle of Man. It's quite a small plane, holding about 100 people and with twin turbo-prop engines, rather than jets. It takes about an hour, so we were landing in the Isle of Man at about 8.45pm and then had a half-hour taxi ride to our first hotel, the Empress.
It's on the seafront at Douglas and was quite a nice place. There were lots of steps up and down the place as part of the design and people obviously fell over a lot because there were "Mind the Step" signs everywhere. We dumped our bags and headed down to the other end of the seafront to get some food and a drink in the Bushy's beer tent. There are bikes everywhere during TT fortnight, all types and from all over Europe. Lots of French and Germans, plenty of Italians, but also Fins, Spanish, Hungarians and Dutch.
Douglas seafront has a fairground and a couple of beer tents from the two breweries on the island - Bushy's and Okells. We had a pizza in an OK Italian place on the seafront and then crosssed over to the Bushy's tent for a couple of pints before bed. It was fairly busy, but a pleasant night so people were able to stand outside and watch the bikes going up and down the promenade.
Next day was the last day of practice and qualifying and that started at around 6.15pm. We had decided to watch from Quarterbridge, the first sharp corner on the track and one that comes at the bottom of a fairly steep hill (there are a lot of hills in Douglas, never mind the whole island).
The Isle of Man TT is an odd form of racing, called a time trial, although TT stands for Tourist Trophy, not time trial. For safety reasons, the bikes don't all start together where the first one past the line wins like a normal race - it would be carnage on these roads - so riders start at 10-second intervals and each one is timed as they go round. There are commentary points, but it is useful to have a radio, so you can tune in to the commentary and know who is where on the track and in the standings. Tom was going to bring his radio but had forgotten to pack it so first job was to try to find a cheap radio. One shop had them for £2.50, but I couldn't get any stations either on FM or MW when I tried it. The woman in the shop assured me they were very good and said her husband used one. I thought it was worth a try at £2.50 and even felt I was ripping her off when she threw in four batteries. Outside, the radio didn't seem any better - hum-hum.
Next stop was a walk up to the pits and paddock. They don't race along the seafront, but on the main road just half a mile up from the front and when I say up, I mean up a steep hill. We walked through St Ninian's churchyard, a popular viewing point, and then along to the pits. It's a very relaxed atmosphere at the TT. Riders and mechanics just wander about and you can look at and into their worshops and see the bikes being prepared. We saw John McGuinness and Karl Harris and also had a look into a few workshops including Guy Martin's.
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| Mechanics working on Guy Martin's bikes |
Tom knew that his old MCN colleague Adam Child (Chad) was racing in the lightweight class. It was his first TT and he'd already done a 100mph lap, which was pretty impressive. We stumbled across his workshop by accident but it was interesting to have a chat with him about the racing. He was worried about qualifying and had to be within 15 per cent of the leader's best lap time and to have completed eight laps. His bike, like all the other lightweights, was a 650cc twin and you're allowed to change anything you like on bike or engine except the crankshaft. Most riders use parallel twins from the Kawasaki Versys street bike and Chad was using that engine. The chassis was made up of various bits from other sports bikes and his brother (who works in a breaker's yard) was his mechanic. His bike makes about 80bhp and would reach 140mph. He said the faster ones has some really trick parts and would get 15mph more than that. Chad is flat out around long sections of the course and can't afford to shut off or he'll lose precious speed that he'll never get back.
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| Chad's lightweight racer in his pit |
It was a lovely day, warm and sunny and, mid afternoon, we decided to get some food for the evening session, so it was a trudge back to town. Bushey's beer tent was a magnet and we had a happy hour in there watching the bikes go by. We tried a new beer called Shuttleworth Snap which was immediately declared the beer to drink. Like meeting the perfect girl, we both knew it was the one.
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| In the Bushy's beer tent |
We sat on the bank, ate our sandwiches and drank some wine. We'd got two plastic glasses full of wine, sealed with a plastic top (which I'd carried carefully from Douglas) plus a bottle of wine with a screw top. It was really hot in the evening sun and I was glad I'd bought some sun-screen.
First out were the sidecars and they really take the bend in a series of bites. The TT is a bit of a one-off and sidecar racers are a one-off in a one-off, whatever that is. I gave Tom a little lecture about the dynamics of riding (or driving) a motorcycle and sidecar, which I think he enjoyed. Next up were the 600 Supersport machines and the Lightweights. We saw Chad go through, nice line and right on it, but a little while later the red flag came out. One of the Supersports had an engine blow and had spread oil on the track. There wasn't time to clean it up and get a full session in so they packed it in for the night. Poor Chad still hadn't got in his crucial eighth lap.
Both Tom and I were pretty footsore. I think we must have trudged 10 miles that day, much of it up and down hills.
Saturday was the first race day, where we'd see the Superbike TT and the first Sidecar TT. Racing starts at 11am, but we needed an early start because we were changing accommodation. We had booked things quite late and couldn't get a hotel for the whole five nights, so we were two days at The Empress and two days at The Palace, with nowhere to stay on Saturday night. In the last week, Tom had been able to get us a place with a chap who was trying out the Homeshare scheme for the first time. This is where locals rent out spare rooms through the IOM tourist board. We'd had to pay £200 for the one night, but it was better than sleeping rough, especially as it rained heavily all night. Anyway, he'd agreed to pick us up from The Empress in his car and get us sorted out before racing started. His house was 15 minutes walk from the bottom of Bray Hill. He was a nice chap and had a nice house, so I think we fell on our feet.
Bray Hill is a residential road coming out of Douglas, it's a long downhill stretch with ever such a gentle bend with crossroads at bottom, before the road goes uphill again over Ago's leap and down again, braking hard for Quarterbridge. We were watching from the crossroads, literally a few feet from the bikes. There was a little stand made out of scaffolding in a front garden, but we were standing leaning on the railings they'd used to close the road. John McGuinness was first off. From our position, we were able to hear the commentator say he'd started and we heard the noise of the start over the tannoy, then we heard it again as the sound travelled down towards us, followed by the bike rapidly accelerating up through the gears. Within seconds the rider is in view, coming down the hill with the bike's bars flapping over the bumpy surface. He comes past us perhaps 10 feet away doing 150mph and, when he crosses the camber at the crossroads and hits the bottom of the hill, the suspension is fully compressed and there's a crash and blast of road dust in the kerb as he uses all the road. McGuinness starts like a rocket, you can't believe the speed - there's almost a violence about it as he fights to keep the bike under control. Before you have time to get your breath, another rider is coming down. He's not as fast as McGuinness, clearly getting the measure of things, then Guy Martin comes down absolutely flat out. How the hell does he keep that up for 37 miles x six laps?
After a little while, all the riders have started and it's quiet and you can listen to their progress around the course. Within minutes of the last ones passing - they are doing a mile every 30 seconds on average - the first ones are back again. This time it's more spread out and the race starts to take shape. It's a battle between McGuinness and Australian Cameron Donald with Guy Martin being dropped in third. McGuinness controls the race, every time Donald gets close, he pulls it out again and the final pit stop is brilliantly fast, putting McGuinness in a commanding position that he never lets slip. Guy Martin can't get his rear tyre off due to a problem with the wheel spindle and has to do four laps on it rather than two. It's McGuinness' 18th TT win and it was a privilege to watch him do it. We're pleased he's won, but the TT is not like any other race. No matter how partisan the fan, they cheer the winner. If you win the TT - you deserve to!
After the Superbike race, we walked up to St Ninian's Church where there were some refreshments and toilets and we watched the sidecars for a while, then walked up to the return lane and stood there as they came in. Sidecar race was won by Dave Molyneux and Patrick Farrance - a polular win as Molyneux is a Manxman. He looks so happy. Some of the pairs are so drained they seem to struggle to ride back to the pits, others are pumped and high-fiving the crowd as they ride past. I see more than one pairing give each other a gentle pat as they head back, not a celebration, more relief and gratitude.
There was time for a pint of Okells (nice, but not as good as a Shuttleworth Snap) and then we walked back down to Bray Hill to see the evening practice session. This was Chad's chance to get his eighth lap and we saw him go through, so fingers crossed.
We really were tired today after being on our feet all day. It was a bit of a trudge back to the house, but Steve (our landlord) and his partner Plum (not sure if that was her name or his pet name for her) were preparing their tea. He made us a gin and tonic, which was very nice and then suggested some places to eat. We were ready as I'd had nothing but a slice of cake since breakfast. More walking, but we found an Italian place on the front that was busy, but we were able to have a beer upstairs until a table came free and then we were taken briskly down.
Dinner wasn't rushed and I had a nice chicken risotto, but we were attended to immediately and as soon as we got up to pay, there was a waiter clearing our table and when he turned round to leave, there were two people sitting there ordering their food. Our after-dinner plan was a visit to the Bushy's beer tent, but it was rammed and not a great deal of fun. It was cold and a little blowy, so we couldn't stand outside and drink in comfort, also the Miss Wet T-Shirt competition was due to start right next to where we were standing, so we left and walked down to the Villa marina where there was a stunt show being prepared.
It was a triumph of hype over substance with the commentator Christian laying on the Californian cool. The warm up act was a team of supermoto riders making a lot of noise and pulling a lot of wheelies, but the hilarious idea of a scooter/supermoto relay race didn't work at any level. I knew what was coming because I'd been stood next to the chap who was running the team at Bray Hill earlier in the day and he'd told me all about the show - at great length! Next up was a trials rider doing the usual stuff (technical and not much of a spectacle) and a stunt rider pulling the usual wheelies and stoppies. All the time Christian was giving it large:
"Wow man that is rad.
"Awesome
"Sick - that's so sick, it's hepatitis B."
There were three dolly girls in short pleated skirts, but their quilted anoraks rather spoiled the sex-bomb image. One even had her hood up, but I can't blame her - so did I.
The big event of the night was the Moto X stunt team. A couple of Frenchmen that got the full build up from Christian.
"Man these guys are crazy, they just love to jump moto-sickles, they are only happy when they're 60 feet off the ground."
Well it turned out that they weren't crazy at all. After one test jump, they said the sidewind was too strong and they couldn't do it. Christian did his best to spin up the danger, the risk, the disasters that could befall and how much stronger the winds were just 30 feet off the ground.
That just left the stunt rider pulling some "rad" (which I've just realised is short for "radical") wheelies so we wandered off for another beer. The tents were too full and the prospect of meeting Miss Bushy's Wet T-Shirt, Saturday, June 2nd, was too awful so we steered clear and wandered back towards the guest house finding an Okells' pub called The Prospect a little way up the hill. It was warm, dry and they served beer out of glass glasses. What's more, I managed to find a seat near a TV screen and they were showing highlights from the BSB races at Snetterton. We'd watched those earlier in the week, but it was good to see the highlights again. We were looking out for somewhere to watch the MotoGP on the Sunday, so we thought this might be a good bet.
Back at the house, Steve and Plum had retired, so we crept into our rooms and settled down for the night. As soon as I was in bed, the rain which had been light and blowing, turned into a downpour lashing against the window. I was pleased that we'd managed to find a roof over our heads for this night. Plan B, which was a tent on a campsite at the other side of the island, didn't look at all attractive.
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| Mad Sunday was stormy Sunday. This is the prom at Douglas |
Steve works in banking for Lloyds and Plum was either a radiographer or worked in X-ray at the hospital. He was probably pushing 40, she was around 30. They were a nice couple and made us very welcome. It was like staying with friends rather than being a couple of lodgers.
The Palace's claim to fame was that it was a casino. Back in the 1950s, the Isle of Man had more relaxed gambling laws than the rest of the UK and had done very well - Las Vegas style, if not scale - by catering for tourists who wanted to experience the thrill of a casino. Nowadays, there are plenty of casinos on the mainland, so there's no need to fly or sail to Douglas. There's still a casino, but glamorous it isn't and a good chunk of it has been converted to a health club, which doesn't look as if it's doing much better than the casino.
In any event, we had a nice room (a suite with a sea-view because that's all that we could book) but we couldn't check in on Sunday morning because we were too early. The plan was to find a pub and watch the MotoGP from Catalunya, but Tom had forgotten to leave the key at Steve's and so we had to walk back to deliver that, which we did via a stormy promenade where the waves were crashing over the railings. We then tried to go to The Prospect (last night's plan) and bumped into a former colleague of Tom's from MCN - the editor's secretary, who had been made redundant, but who now seemed to be doing quite well in bike PR and working for a website called bikesportnews.com. She was really pleased to see him and we had a nice chat walking up the shopping street behind the promenade.
The Prospect was shut and so we walked back into town and found a rough-looking pub that was actually rather nice. In one room, we managed to get the TV turned up and arrange ourselves in rows - bar stools, table stools and sitting on the floor - so we had tiered seating to watch the racing. We had the comfort of table stools in the middle row and it was a good race, won by Jorge Lorenzo. Nice to watch it among so many fellow enthusiasts.
The question was: where would we watch the TT racing from tomorrow? Tom was keen to try Hillberry and Chad had said that the riders were so close there that they could high five the crowd as they rode past (well they could if they weren't doing 150mph and just about to tip into a gentle right-hander). I'd bought a large-scale map of the island and so we set off to walk to Hillberry and perhaps Creg Na Barr to scope it out for the morning. It's just over three miles from Douglas to Hillberry and it looked a good spot, with a small stand, chairs on the raised verge and some tea shops and a toilet. We started out for Creg, but about half a mile up the road, we could see the route ahead and there didn't seem much point going on at that stage and just adding five miles to a seven-mile walk. We decided to watch the race from Hillberry and resolved to set off before 8am to get there for 9am. If Hillberry was busy, we'd hike on to Creg. On the way back, we got ourselves a picnic for next day - cheddar cheese, crackers, strawberries, a bottle of Burgundy (with a screw top) and some Pringles. We got it from SureSave, the IOM equivalent of Tesco. It was billed as the supermarket where the riders do their shopping and there were pictures outside of John McGuinness with a shopping trolley. It was quite a good supermarket, but had some funny ideas. Some of the produce was unbranded, some was from Waitrose and the freezer section was from Iceland. Tom liked the idea, he said the middle class could sneak some frozen crispy pancakes into their bag and the chavs might accidentally buy houmous and find they liked it. I guess on a place as small as the Isle of Man, there's no room for class division.
Back in town we were both quite hungry and decided to try an Indian meal. Tom likes those as they always have plenty of vegetarian choices. We got an OK place - Tom said his meal was lovely, but mine sat a bit heavy and I was ready to stretch my legs to help it go down. As we were walking along the promenade past The Sefton, Tom's ex-colleague spotted us and knocked on the window to come in. She was with her partner, Gary Pinchin, who is MCN's BSB reporter and who was there covering the TT. We had a nice chat and picked up some inside info. Chad had suffered a bit of a scary lap in that final practice. Just after he'd gone past us at Bray Hill on the previous day, his fuel filler had sprung up and he'd been showered with petrol. He'd panicked (not surprisingly) and had almost crashed at Quarterbridge. He'd managed to pull over, get the filler back on, wipe his visor and complete the lap. He managed a 90mph lap, which wasn't very fast, but it did count as a lap and therefore completed his eight laps to qualify.
We also heard that Michael Rutter had made an uncharacteristic mistake at the start of the Superbike TT on Saturday. He'd been on the start line thinking he was in first gear, but the bike was actually in neutral. When he dumped the clutch, it didn't go anywhere. He realised his mistake, but instead of letting the revs die down and then putting it into gear, he slammed it into first while it was still revving. Gary said you could hear the gearbox disintegrating. Rutter did get going, but he pulled in after a lap.
After that, we stopped off at the Okells' beer tent and had a pint there while we watched the evening's stunt show. Christian was in "rad" form, the dolly girls looked as cold as the previous night and there was a new host who we'd not heard much from the night before, called Sally Stardust. She was basically there to agree with everything Christian said - agree enthusiastically. The best part of the evening was when she started to do some audience interviews and kept picking foreigners who couldn't speak English. We had the Supermoto/Scooter relay, except that we almost didn't because someone called Kevin Blackstock had the keys for one of the scooters in his pocket - what a shower! Kevin was located after several appeals and a 10-minute delay, but guess what - it was again too windy for the stunt guys to perform.
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The view up the course from Hillberry
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The biker would possibly have been one of many we saw setting off for an early lap of the course in the morning sunshine. A lot of people might have tried to get a quick lap in before the roads were closed for the races, having been rained off on Mad Sunday. We heard later from Andy Downes of MCN that he'd overtaken a car on double white lines and been hit a glancing blow by a car coming in the opposite direction. He'd lost control and had gone under a BMW 4x4 coming in the opposite direction. He'd died instantly.
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Enjoying a glass of Burgundy trackside
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A good example is the T-shirt pictured here. It's a commemorative T-shirt for Mad Sunday 2012 and it clearly doesn't depict sensible riding. It's not a good message at any level, but this T-shirt is for sale at the Isle of Man tourist information office. Now, I might be labelled a killjoy, but that almost seems like official government endorsement to ride like a complete maniac.
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| Not the best road safety message is it? |
The roads didn't open again until about 8.30pm, so we had a bit of a frustrating time stood waiting so we could walk back to Douglas. We got back in time for a drink with two MCN lads - Andy Downes and Steve Farrell (Faz).
That was our racing done. We had Tuesday as a spare day in case the weather interfered and racing was postponed. As it happened, race days had good weather and the storms came in between. And Tuesday was another wet day. We thought it might be nice to get a coach trip around the course, so we got one of the horse-dawn trams along the promenade to the tourist information centre which is near the ferry dock. The trams are a tourist feature and are pulled by a single horse. All the horses have name tags and we'd been playing a game of horse-tram spotting all week. The horse pulls a tram with 30 people on board pretty easily and trots along at a fair old lick.
We couldn't get a coach trip, apparently they don't do them during TT fortnight, which seems a little silly, but then the road does get closed quite a lot so perhaps it does make sense. We had a wander around the harbour in the rain and then spent a couple of hours in the museum (which was doing a roaring trade). Guess where we spent our last hour on the island - Bushy's beer tent, of course.
I'd arranged a ride back to the airport with Dave, our friendly taxi driver from the journey in. He told us a really good story:
He lives in a house in Peel, overlooking the sea. One summer morning, he couldn't sleep and got up and looked out of the window. There in the bay was a submarine on the surface. He'd never seen one before and so was quite surprised. As he watched, he saw a rubber dingy launched and sail towards the harbour. A little while later, it returned and was brought back on board and the submarine sailed away on the surface.
He was at the yacht club that evening and was telling his mates the story. They were pulling his leg and saying he'd had a dream, but the harbourmaster had been listening and afterwards, he came up to him and asked him if he had seen a submarine because, if he had and it had landed a boat, Peel harbour was entitled to a docking fee and for a submarine, it would be a substantial sum. Dave said he definitely had and he'd seen a boat leave the sub and return some time later. He didn't see the boat land, but he saw it sail into the harbour.
A few days later, the harbourmaster phoned him up and asked if he could come round to talk to him. He said the Royal Navy had said it had no submarines operating in the Irish Sea that day, but could he show him some silhouettes of submarines to see if he could identify it. Dave said there were several sheets, but he was sure he could positively identify one particular sub that was an American vessel.
The harbourmaster thanked him and said he'd make some further enquiries. Of course, the US denied having any submarines in the area and the harbourmaster said the police hadn't reported anything. Dave was a bit grumpy because it looked as if he was telling a story, so he started making his own enquiries. He was quite smart because he worked out who might have been awake or about at the time. First place he asked was the old folk's home down the road and he found two night staff who had seen it. He also got a dustman and, in the end, 15 people were able to corroborate his story. Some had seen the boat land, pick up a person from the quay and sail back to the submarine.
It didn't cut any ice with the US Navy, they maintained their denial and the harbourmaster never got his big fat landing fee.
Dave reckoned they were probably picking up a crew member who'd been unable to join the sub when it had sailed and so they'd flown him out to a quiet spot to pick him up. Nice story to end our time on the island.
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