Another trip to the Isle of man to watch the TT races. What are the headlines from the week?
How hard does John McGuinness work? We had a small insight into his week.
Was the Senior, the best TT race ever?
This year we were better organised and we had accommodation for the whole week in the same hotel (the Palace, part of the Best Western group). It’s not a bad hotel, but it’s not a £200-a-night hotel, which is what it costs you in TT week. It used to be the casino when the UK had more draconian gambling laws and the Isle of Man set itself up as the Las Vegas of Great Britain. People would come across to gamble and the Palace was where it happened. It represents ’60s architecture at its worst and the casino just looks sad (which it probably is since Britain relaxed its own gaming laws so that it’s now possible to run big-money casinos in other, more desirable places, such as London).
Apart from the price, it served as well enough, although the wi-fi is the worst I’ve ever come across while still actually working. We set off a day later this year and flew from Luton airport. For me, this meant a ride to King’s Cross, meet up with Tom (who took the Eurostar from Brussels to St Pancras), train to Luton Parkway, bus to the airport, fly to Ronaldsway then taxi to the hotel. It all went really smoothly with everything running to time.
I’d hired bikes from a chap called Gary Fitzpatrick, who runs Isle of Man Cycle Hire and arranged to pick them up from his unit at the Sea Terminal. It was quite tight time-wise, so I hopped out of the taxi while Tom went on to the Palace to check in. The bikes were pretty good, they came with a pannier, locks and helmets (although I’d taken my ski helmet) and had 21 gears, although I think I used the bottom three or freewheel pretty much all week. There are not many places on the Isle of Man where it’s level ground for cycling. Apart from the hills, cycling is a great way to get around, although traffic in TT week it pretty crazy and the A roads were not especially pleasant. For Tom and I (used to cycling in London) it wasn’t too bad, but much better when we found cycle tracks or B roads.
I set off to wheel the bikes along the prom to meet Tom who had checked in, but had to stop by the fairground because the cycle track had closed (to accommodate fairground and beer tents) and the pavement was too narrow to wheel two bikes side-by-side. While I was waiting for Tom, I had a rummage through the panniers and found spare inner tube and pump (as promised). I also found the front brake of my bike was only just working. It looked as if the cable had slipped. I’d need two good brakes on the steep hills. I thought about taking it back to Gary, but there was a combination tool in one of the panniers and one of the hex keys fitted the cable adjuster. It was a two-minute job to fix and the brake was fine.
After meeting Tom, we headed back to drop off the bikes at the hotel and a pattern was set for our week’s cycling: Tom bombed off in front, using all the “tricks” of London riding (running red lights, hopping onto the pavement and weaving either side of cars) leaving me to trial in his wake. When I was nine, I took my Cycling Proficiency Test as an agreement with my mother to let me have a bike and I can’t shake off the old training. Back then, if a policeman saw you riding on the pavement you would be told off (and I have been). No-one has that discipline or seems to care nowadays and rules just get ignored. On the promenade, people walk in the area marked for cycling and vice-versa. The final insult was a cheeky young girl who leaned out of a car window and said something rude as it overtook me. Tom thought that was hilarious.
The Palace staff were very good about the bikes. We could have locked them against the fence around the car park, but they were always happy to open up the storeroom inside the lobby for us to put them in there.
After stashing the bikes, we set off on foot to Bray Hill to see Friday practice, the last before race day. Bray Hill was really busy and the little grandstand at the bottom was full, so we sat by the kerb on the side road drinking tinned lager waiting for practice to start. Later in the week, that grandstand was the scene of an accident when a rider lost control and his bike crashed into the side of the stand injuring 11 people.
I’d brought my old radio with us so we could listen to Manx Radio for race reports and news; and first news was that the Superbike Race, scheduled for Saturday would be postponed until Sunday because wet weather during practice week meant that riders hadn’t had enough time on the big bikes. Instead, the race would be staged on Sunday (so-called Mad Sunday) which was a first in my experience. It wasn’t long before the practice session was red-flagged because of a house fire and the need to get a fire engine onto the course. It seemed to us that there would be no more to watch that night, so we headed back into Douglas for our first visit to Bushy’s beer tent. The Shuttleworth Snap was as good as last year, but Bushy’s was very busy - in fact the whole island was very busy. In particular, there were lots of Australians in our hotel. many had signed up on package tours and they said it was good value to visit the UK because the Australian dollar was so strong.
Bushy’s has a bit more class than Quid’s Inn, but this year’s clientele were perhaps a little less golden than in previous years. They certainly spilled more beer - as you approach Bushy’s the pavement turns from grey to dark brown where beer has been dropped. Stand in one place too long and your feet will stick to the pavement. The beer guts were stretching TT course T-shirts and pulling the maps of the Mountain Course out of shape; the fat lasses were showing rather too much flesh and there did seem to be more tattoos than ever before. One chap, who was clearly very proud of his because he had his shirt off even though it was not that warm, has a random, unco-ordinated theme of Superman, 007 and one extolling the virtues of being born in Yorkshire (there were more, but I didn’t like to stare). No-one would dream of having a tattoo to tell the world they were born in Cambridgeshire. I don’t have a tattoo and have no plans to get one, but if I did (and if I was going to cover my body in them) I think I’d give it a bit of thought and try to get some kind of theme going. This chap clearly just wandered into the tattoo parlour, opened the pattern book and chose something that took his fancy that day.
Women carry as many tat’s as the men and they do seem to have as little idea of what to get as their opposite halves. Butterflies are a more common theme (you don’t see those on the blokes), but there are plenty of skulls and snakes on the girls. The more thoughtful have profound poetry (or more likely, song lyrics) inked into the epidermis. If the government imposed a tattoo tax, we could solve the country’s spending deficit overnight.
After Bushy’s beer tent, the promenade is taken over by a fairground, then the Okell’s beer tent and a viewing area opposite the Villa Marina where the road is closed so the Monster Energy stunt show can be staged. Okell’s is the older, more traditional beer on the Island; Bushy’s is a relatively new company and clearly better at marketing (the Okell’s beer tent is much quieter and the pavement still blotchy grey rather than dark brown and sticky). When I first came to the Isle of Man, when I was about nine, one of the things I remembered was the smell of boiling malt and hops as we walked back to our guest house. The old Okell’s brewery, up the hill behind the Villa Marina, is now converted to luxury apartments and I guess the beer is now brewed in some edge-of-town industrial estate.
On Friday night, we ate at Paparazzi, a biker-themed Italian restaurant which has quite good food, sensible prices and also gets you in and out very quickly. You walk up a flight of steps and the top part of the restaurant is given over to an entrance hall, a large, locked empty room with a motorcycle parked up (I guess that’s for special parties or receptions) and an even larger lounge. As soon as you enter the lounge, a waiter pounces. “How many?”
“Just the two of us”.
“Sit there, you’d like a beer?” Of course we’d like a beer, so we sit with a Peroni and wait until our table is ready, which it normally is within 10 minutes. Later in the week we go in when it’s a bit busier and we’re worried that we might have to wait too long. Tom asks the waiter how long, when he brings our beer and the old guy who runs the place sets off on one: “How long? I don’t know, we can’t say. How can we see the future? We might be dead tomorrow, who knows, You don’t know what’s coming. You’re on holiday, enjoy your beer. Relax.” It looked a little worrying at first, but we took his advice and he sat down with us for a little chat.
“Where you from?”
“London,” I said. It always seems easier to say London, rather than embark on a long explanation of where Thorney is in relation to Peterborough (and London). As soon as I mentioned London, he understood why we seemed to be in a hurry. Our table was ready in no time and we were led downstairs. Service is brisk and they get through the customers quickly and efficiently, but you’re not hurried. There’s lots of biker memorabilia, including posters signed by Neil Hodgson and a set of leathers from Carl Fogarty. It’s a good place to eat.
Saturday was to be an early start as we wanted to watch the racing from Ballagarey and we didn’t really have a view on how long it would take us to cycle out there. Tom set off very purposefully (quickly), didn’t stop at the supermarket (as we’d planned) and I was soon trailing him by over a hundred yards. I was not having a good journey. I’d put a front wheel in a tram slot on the prom and almost fallen off, then I’d cycled up one of the steepest hills in Douglas, going down to gear 1 of the 21-gear bike. We came out on Bray Hill where we’d watched the evening before, then headed up over Ago’s Leap and down again to Quarterbridge. Bradden Bridge looked a good place to sit (there were lots of seats set out opposite the church) but Tom was already way ahead. We went through Union Mills and then up a long hill to Ballagarey where we found a field with an open gate, a couple of cars parked and a TV scaffold but no camera. It was right by the place Guy Martin had crashed in flames a couple of years ago and we decided to set up camp there for the day. We were soon joined by a Scouser in a car, who had arrived in Douglas the night before and was a bit grumpy when I told him the Superbike race had been postponed.
It turned out Tom’s watch was set on CET and so he thought we had less time before the roads were closed. That’s why he was rushing. He now set off in search of a shop to sell food, but had to cycle most of the way back to Union Mills, returning (very breathless) with crisps, water and Snickers bars. A lady turned up and told us that we were trespassing, it was private land and belonged to her parents-in-law who lived in the big house opposite. The Scouser left to find somewhere else and when he’d gone she mellowed a bit and said we could stay, but not to let anyone else in and if anyone asked say that Michelle had given us permission. She said the parents-in-law were quite old and got a bit jumpy if people went in the field. There was a good hour before the roads were closed and I did send a couple of people on their way, then Michelle turned up again to take her son to climbing, so I guided her out of the blind entrance onto the road (got to keep in with the local landed gentry).
It was a good place to watch and the old couple came out of their house to their gate opposite to where we were stood to watch the first bikes go by. “Were we the cyclists?” the old lady asked. I said that we were and I was sorry but I hadn’t realised it was private and had her daughter-in-law told her we were there. She said it was her grand-daughter-in-law and she had. They were quite a nice old couple and he told us that he’d been a course marshall, sweeping the road in a car before the race for many years, including the first TT after the war in 1947 (he must have been pushing 90) and now his son was a course marshall.
He would have been interesting to chat to, but the bikes were starting to go by and any hope of a conversation disappeared. In the quieter periods, swallows would come and perch in the telephone wires above our heads, chattering madly. They were nesting inside the stables of the old couple’s house and it was nice to see they left the top half of the stable door open so the swallows could fly in.
There were a couple of practice sessions (about and hour) and then the sidecar race 1, followed by more practice and the electric bikes last of all.
From our gate we could see a good half mile of track. From the right, the bikes came around a gentle, flat-out bend, clipping the kerb as they came into vision, bucking or weaving as they hit a couple of gentle dips in the road (or what would be gentle dips at normal speed) and then keeping it pinned until they flashed past us, down a hill, over a crossing and disappeared into the trees up the next hill. The bikes are in top gear and the throttle is wide open. The faster guys use all the road and they flash past you at over 160mph with a shockwave of noise and air pressure that is stunning. The sidecars appear around the bend already drifting and you get a great head-on shot of them moving sideways before they correct the drift as the road straightens. They are noisier than the solos and the shock of air as they pass is greater too.
It was a good place to watch from and during lulls in the racing, I’d checked the map and seen an old railway track running down in the valley. I thought that would be a good way to get back to town before the roads re-opened and so I suggested to Tom that we headed down after the sidecar race to watch the rest of practice nearer to town. I thought we could get all the way back to Quarterbridge and so it proved, although we did have to lift the bikes over a couple of gates. The track was well made and had a nice, constant gradient like the Parkland Walk that runs from Finsbury Park to Highgate where Tom used to live. There were lots of bluebells out and as the old track ran into a deeper valley, the damper ground was covered with wild garlic in full flower and smelling like a Catalan starter course. The track took us under Bradden Bridge and on to Quarterbridge, which was packed, but we locked the bikes up behind the pub and watched the end of the practice session, including the electric bikes. We even managed a beer from the pub.
The first race win went to Tim Reeves and Dan Sayle in the sidecar event. The pre-race favourite (and fastest man all week) had been Manxman Dave Molyneux, but he just didn’t have the pace in the race. The Birchall brothers looked as if they would win, but had to retire when the sidecar wheel hit a kerb. Later in the week, we saw the wheel in their pits (they’d put it on display) and it was well mangled. They had some consolation by winning Sidecar Race 2.
Guess what we did in the evening? Bikes back to the hotel, Bushy’s beer tent and then a long, fruitless search for somewhere to eat.
On the prom, there’s a new fairground ride this year which is quite amusing to watch. There’s a line of plastic, bucking bulls and people sit on them six abreast. The idea is to try to stay on the bull as it wiggles and jiggles. All the bulls make the same moves and it’s quite funny to watch. Some people are better than others, but the bull always wins in the end.
Down at Bushy’s, the new attraction is a bungee jump. There’s a massive crane next to the tent and you get hoisted up in a basket and jump out at the top. There was a steady stream of takers on Saturday night, but the entertainment value soon diminishes. One chap came down in his underpants, but the best laugh was the chap who got to the top and wouldn’t jump. He was up there for a while, but they couldn’t persuade him to do it, they even tried giving him a helpful push, but he was hanging on too tight. In the end he was winched down, head in hands to hoots of derision.
All the restaurants along the prom and side roads were full, even Paparazzi couldn’t find us a place, so we wandered all the way back to the Palace to eat there. They have a set dinner, which is pretty good value and afterwards we sat in the bar for a few drinks. We weren’t sure what to have, we both fancied a negroni, so Tom set off on a mission to teach the barman how to make one. To his credit, the barman had heard of one and even had a pretty good idea of what was in it.
The big attraction in the bar was a harpist and singer, who had a really eclectic mix of songs in her repertoire. It ranged from the sugary-sweet Cranberries (pre Zombie) to Guns & Roses and Bowie’s Life on Mars. Some of them worked quite well and she had a sweet voice, but often got the pace of the song a little wrong. She was selling CDs and I would have bought one as a birthday present for Tom, but she wasn’t there after Saturday night, so I’d missed my chance.
Having the bikes meant we could range further afield. Last year, we walked to Hilberry and had thought about heading up to Creg-ny-baa, but when we saw how far it was, we’d had second thoughts. This year, we were on two wheels (even if they were pedal-powered), so Creg was well within reach. I checked the map and found a route which took us out on the main Laxey road then there was a B-road heading towards the mountains and a small track we could take which cut across and brought us out just above the pub at Creg-ny-baa. Most of the route was uphill as we were climbing from sea level to about 300 metres, so I spent a fair bit of time pushing my bike (or in that bottom gear of 21). The plan worked well, although the last section of the trail was very rough and stony, so we had to push the bikes, but it would have been too steep to ride anyway.
Creg was packed, there were lots of bikes there and the one-way system that operates over the Mountain section comes to an end at Creg, so there were lights filtering traffic down off the Mountain and also across into the pub. The pub itself is pretty grotty, it’s not the sort of place you’d drive out to on a summer’s evening for a pleasant drink and a bite to eat; alongside it is a permanent grandstand - the sort you get in the Isle of Man, knocked up by a local welder from angle iron, which makes you grateful that their construction ambitions didn’t rise any higher than five rows of seats. It was £15 each for seats and we were a bit short of cash. It was either seats or beer, so we went for beer.
There was a bit of a promo area next to the pub. Some girls were giving away energy drinks and John Hopkins (the former GP and Superbike rider) was there signing autographs. There was a hired grandstand at the other side, which seemed to be part of a corporate thing and there were lots of folk along the bank further down. We chose a spot there between some local youths on flashy mountain bikes and some Germans. It’s a stone and earth wall, which proved quite comfortable to sit on, although I had to nudge a bit closer to the Germans when I found I was sitting on a nest of rather large ants.
Mad Sunday was limited to being a mad morning only with the Superbike TT being staged in the afternoon. From our position, we could see the bikes come down the hill from Kate’s Cottage towards the 90-degree bend at Creg and then accelerate hard past us down to a left-hander, then down again past Hillberry and back into the outskirts of Douglas. We were as close to the bikes as we had been the previous day at Ballagarey with some of them so close you could high-five the rider, although you’d probably get a broken hand.
The first time the Superbikes came past, the Germans nearly jumped out of their skins, then whooped with excitement. Like Ballagarey, there’s a violent shock of noise and air when a bike goes by and it’s easy to spot the top 10 riders by their speed and commitment. We were rooting for John McGuinness and Guy Martin, but McGuinness made an uncharacteristically slow start and Martin faded after being in contention for a lap. Gary Johnson ran out of fuel in lap two, while pushing for the lead and then John McGuinness has a 60-second time penalty for speeding in pit lane, which left Michael Dunlop as the comfortable winner; although McGuinness did set a lap record on the final lap.
The plan had been to ride back down the road to Douglas, but we decided not to wait until the road re-opened but retrace our route of the morning. The stony section meant we had to push the bikes even though it was downhill. There were a couple of people walking the track and also a chap on a BMW R850GS with full pannier set. He was most uncomfortable and pulled up to say the track had looked much better on the map and did we know whether he would get through. I said the stony section was not too long and he’d be fine. 50 yards further on he almost lost it, but then he disappeared from view. Two dirt bikes came down soon afterwards with the riders out of the saddle, speeding down the hill with the back wheel bouncing from rock to rock. Once past this section, it was good going and we were back in Douglas in no time at all.
That evening, Ian Hutchinson and John McGuinness were giving a talk in the hotel, hosted by Neil Hodgson and we planned to watch that. Hutchinson famously won five TT races back in 2010, but then had a dreadful accident at Silverstone in a British Supersport Championship race (see my blog). His leg was run over, broken badly, pinned, didn’t take, surgically broken, grafted and is now being stretched to make it the same length as his good leg. He tried to make a comeback last year, but it couldn’t be and he now plans to get back to racing in 2014.
I don’t know if Hutchinson will ever race again and in some ways I hope he doesn’t. He probably won’t be the same rider he was before and I think he’s suffered more than enough pian for his sport. The talk was organised for Sunday night in the expectation that the Superbike TT would have been raced on Saturday, so Sunday would have been a day off for McGuinness. Despite racing six laps, including setting a lap record on the final lap to get onto the podium, he was only half an hour late, which didn’t matter because the first part of the evening was a talk and slide show by photographer Stephen Davison. He showed a selection of images taken that day and then some of his best images from the TT and Irish road races. He’s got some great shots and plenty of anecdotes too; Tom would have like a bit more f-stop info, but I was happy just to see the images.
After that, Hodgson, Hutchy and McGuinness took to the stage. Hodgson played host, asking the questions and steering the conversation. I have to say, he did a great job, he should have his own chat show; although both Hutchinson and McGuinness are natural talkers. There was lots of good stuff - Hutchinson’s debut in the NW200, how he came to ride in the Manx and then the TT, about his first time on the island to watch the races.
McGuinness was full of praise for Michael Dunlop, but also spoke about the fact that Honda had dressed him up in Joey Dunlop leathers and a replica of his last TT winning bike as a tribute to Dunlop (who won his first race for Honda 30 years previously). It was the big surprise of the day and McGuinness as good as admitted that it had wrecked his head before the race began. He was distracted, he didn’t feel comfortable dressing up as Joey Dunlop and he didn’t want to mess up the race by crashing or by going too slow. On the opening lap, when he often destroys everyone, he said he thought he was going really fast, setting a blistering pace and when he got his first board, he couldn’t believe how slow he was. Speeding in pit lane, he said, was a schoolboy error.
The record-breaking lap to get third (he averaged 131.671mph) meant McGuinness was able to break Joey Dunlop’s record of 40 TT podiums later in the week when he also took his TT wins tally to 20 (six behind Dunlop). After the talk, McGuinness stayed on to sell some books and sign some autographs, we finished at well after 10pm and he was racing in the Supersport 1 and Superstock races the next day.
Last year, we watched from Hillberry and it’s a good location, so we decided to go back there for Monday’s races. You can see the bikes for a long way, you’re really close and it’s good to be near the finish line (well about three miles from the finish). There are lots more people at the TT this year (I blame Guy Martin and the film Closer to the Edge for making it so popular). There are more people at all the viewing points and the prices have gone up. Entry to the Hillberry grandstand last year was £5, this year it was £8, although you did get a cushion thrown in!
Last year, we’d had a marathon session because a traffic fatality had to be dealt with just before racing started, but this year, we were on time. As on Sunday, Michael Dunlop looked absolutely on the money to win Supersport Race 1 and then the Superstock with a record-breaking last lap to catch Gary Johnson whose private Kawasaki had set the pace but then had an oil leak on last lap. Dunlop looks unstoppable this week, he wants it more than anyone. He’s always been a committed rider and that’s coming across this week. You can tell the difference in pace between the top 10 riders and the others, Dunlop looks a league above everyone this year. He’s lost three stone and he’s on a works Honda superbike, he’s learned to be a little more corporate and to exploit the Dunlop brand rather than picking a fight with everyone.
The racing was brilliant and, at one stage four or five of the top riders were bunched together in the Supersport, so it seemed almost like a British Supersport race. There was clearly some time between the riders on the road, but no gaps.
After the racing, there was a practice session for the electric bikes (just the one lap) and John McGuinness managed an unofficial lap record close to 110mph. He then did a parade lap on a Paton single-cylinder bike that he’ll ride in the Manx later in the year. That’s 10 laps he’s done - almost 400 miles or four back-to-back MotoGPs at race pace - everyone wants a bit of John McGuinness.
We cycled back to town in no time, great to be going downhill most of the time, although the last bit down to the promenade was really, really steep, so that you needed both brakes on from the top of the hill. I was pleased I’d given myself a bit more bite on that front brake.
That evening, it was another few beers in Bushy’s. The bungee crew had packed up (I think they’d exhausted the supply of thrill seekers with cash), but there was a band playing rock covers (why is it that people think that if you ride a motorcycle, you’ll like rock music?) and the pavement is looking blacker than ever. After beer, we needed food and I was determined that we’d get some proper fish and chips. We knew there was a place up the hill from last year and so we walked up there, found it open and got our food. It was a proper fish and chip shop and we were able to get back down to the promenade quite quickly to eat in one of the little gardens. The fish and chips were perfect.
Time for a leisurely walk back to the hotel. We stopped for one at the Okell’s beer tent and to watch the stunt show, which was largely the same as last year - same stunts, same presenter (who thought the stunts were “radiculous”), probably different girls, but they looked the same. Imagine having that gig on your CV? What did you do in 2013? I was a Monster Energy drink promo girl. The jumpers were getting pretty high, the girls didn’t have their anoraks on and hoods up this year and there was no scooter race (thankfully). The part of the show we caught was stunts by a couple of trials riders and they were pretty good. It was much better than the usual wheelie/burn-out show. A few riders were watching: Guy Martin was at the top of the wall of the Villa Marina deep in conversation and ignoring the show completely, while Tarron McKenzie (Niall McKenzie’s younger son) managed to get himself a mention. After the trials bikes had finished, the Monster Energy girls strutted around, throwing things into the crowd, while the commentator attempted to whip the crowd into a frenzy yelling “free stuff, grab some free stuff”. It was like feeding pigeons in the park and I said if any free stuff came my way, I’d throw it back at the Monster Energy promo’ girl in an ironic gesture, but none did. Back at the hotel, we were able to watch the Supersport race on ITV4 in Colours, the sports bar-cum-nightclub on the ground floor of the hotel. It’s great coverage on ITV, but the bar is an awful place - your feet are literally sticking to the floor on the beer that has been spilled and not cleaned up for a week! Once the TT coverage is done at 10pm, the disco music starts, bouncers suddenly appear on the door and you can’t hear yourself think. Tom says the place gets packed later on.
In the bar, we did pick up a flyer for an open-top bus tour of the Mountain Course. We decided that next day, when there was no racing, we’d head up to the paddock, take a look around in the morning and then take the bus tour - £20 each. Next morning, Tom discovered it was also the Ramsey sprint, where people just turn up with bikes for drag races along the promenade. We were now spoiled for choice, but I wanted to see the paddock, so we stuck to the original plans and phoned through to book ourselves tickets on the bus.
It was a glorious day - warm and sunny - We cycled to the Villa Marina, pushed the bikes up the long hill to St Ninian’s and then rode across to the pits, locking the bikes to some security fencing around the temporary paddock hotel. At the TT, the paddock is open, so you can wander round, watch them working on the bikes and also spot a few riders or well-known faces.
When we walked in, there was John McGuinness giving yet another TV interview, his assigned PR girl on hand with clipboard and watch to steer him through a day of corporate interviews and “appearances”. He didn’t look weary of the circus, but everyone wants a bit of John at the TT. I don’t know who the interview was with, but he was talking for a local audience about how much people on the island got behind the event and what it meant to them. He’s visited a junior school in Laxey (another corporate appearance) and the children had made a TT course in the playground and brought their scooters and bikes in to race around it. John thought that was great - it would never get passed the governors in England. Could you imagine the meeting after little johnny was taken to hospital with a broken arm? Who thought building a TT course and letting the kids race around it was a good idea?
A little further on there was the familiar (to me) sound of an unsilenced single. I recognised the Manx Norton before I recognised the rider - Guy Martin. He’s had a tough week and he’d just ridden the old bike up and down the pit lane (without a helmet) and was riding it back to the Norton tent. Martin is like a pied piper. He has to keep moving or the crowd gets so deep that no-one is going anywhere. He was soon surrounded and the crowd followed him back to Norton’s stand, where he had a chat with the bosses before heading back to the Tyco workshop.
Norton is racing a superbike (its own chassis, but with a tuned Aprilia V4 engine) in the Superbike and Senior races. They also have a couple of their road bikes there, re-imagined versions of the old Commando - perhaps the ultimate British parallel twin? The bikes are hand-built at Donington Park and they do look really good. At £16,500, they’re not cheap, but if I won the Lottery or my Premium Bond came up, I’d probably have one.
In the Tyco pits, Guy was deep in conversation with his mechanics. His Superstock bike was parked up there, covered in flies. I guess the bike partly assembled was his Supersport machine for Wednesday’s race. Good luck against Michael Dunlop - you’re going to need it.
There was plenty more to see - the busted wheel of the Birchall brothers’ sidecar outfit, Cameron Donald’s second-placed Superbike machine minus fairing, but with the podium laurels draped around its handlebars, an electric bike in the Mugen pit with a big sign on it saying “battery charging, don’t touch”. That would also be in action on Wednesday.
It was good to go up into the grandstand and drink in the view. The road was full of bikes riding the course and the pits were full of bikes and bikers strutting and posing. I saw a fantastic Isle of Man Arai helmet, price £800, reduced to £600 (another thing I’d buy if my Premium Bond won big) and there was our open-top bus parked up. We went along and paid and we had a seat with our name on it on the top deck.
It was a lovely, warm sunny day and we set off a little cramped, but full of anticipation and enthusiasm that even the rather dull commentary by Manx Radio’s Roy Moore couldn’t overcome. You don’t really get a feel for the course in a double-decker bus, but it gives a great view of the scenery, there are some really posh houses (a lot of money on the Isle of Man) and it’s also interesting how many little viewing points there are around the place. It was interesting to go through Ramsey and to see how steep the hill is out of town and how tight the hairpin is. As the road opens out further up past the Gooseneck, you can see the wide sweep of Ramsey bay and beach and across to the Scottish coast. From the top of Skiddaw in the Lake District on a clear day, the Isle of Man can be seen and seems so close it looks as if you could touch it, but today there was a haze and the Scottish coast was barely visible. You couldn’t see the mountains of the Lake District.
We’d gone through the Gooseneck and were climbing steadily when we were pulled to a halt. Some bikers had stopped in front of us. We thought there had been an accident, but they’d stopped us because the bus was leaking diesel. There’s nothing worse (except black ice) than diesel on a road. It’s a nightmare for cars, it’s deadly for a motorcycle and here we were spreading the stuff all over the TT course with bikers coming past at a rate of knots.
We could have been responsible for a dozen crashes and injuries, so thank goodness the bikers had the good sense to make us pull over. The driver had no idea what to do and diesel was coming out with a steady gloop. A bucket was produced which caught some, but there was soon a puddle spreading under and behind the bus. The police were called and closed the road. The bus owner (who was on the trip) got underneath and claimed to have sorted it out and, after a delay of about an hour (just as the council clean up team arrived) we were allowed to carry on. Manx Radio’s Roy Moore was droning on about racing lines, the Guthrie Memorial and Conor Cummings’ big crash and I just wanted to be back in Douglas. I felt really bad that this creaky old coach had made such as mess all over the course. Someone said it was still leaking and we pulled over, then carried on to the Bungalow where we were stopped again. When the police and council caught up, they said the bus was going nowhere, but that left us stranded miles from anywhere. What were we to do?
The driver hadn’t got a clue. We got some cock and bull story about a bus to pick us up in Laxey if we got the Mountain Railway down, but I didn’t believe that for a moment. In fact the Mountain Railway was having its own problems, there were too many people and not enough trams. They don’t allow you to stand up (a strange rule in a country where health and safety inspectors are as rare as hen’s teeth and when the Mountain Railway travels at all of 20mph. Anyway, two coaches went down before we managed to get a seat, but finally it delivered us to Laxey (we got a nice view of the wheel) and I bought tickets on the Electric Railway back to Douglas. The ticket seller said we’d have to wait for a few trains because they were very busy, but we managed to squeeze on the first one. The trains are two carriages, one enclosed and one open. We were in the open one, but holding on tight and it was a warm and pleasant evening (the train only does 30mph in the really fast stretches - we could almost have run back faster). We ended up in Onchan, the wrong end of Douglas, miles from our bikes, we’d missed the window to drop them off and were both a bit grumpy.
Tom wanted a trip to Bushy’s beer tent and some food; I would have preferred to sort the bikes before beer, so it was a bit of a grumpy couple of pints (by me) and a pizza at Paparazzi plus more Peroni which gave me a swilly belly on the long walk uphill. I had a bad feeling about the bikes, but they were safely locked up where we’d left them and the ride downhill (as ever) was pretty easy.
The one consolation of the day was that Tom was able to sell the story and pictures of the bus debacle to MCN. Tom said we should have gone to the Ramsey sprint and perhaps he was right, but it was good to go round the paddock. I’m glad we did that.
Next day, we got up early to drop the bikes back and I phoned Dave, the cab driver from last year, to take us back to the airport. We sat at Ronaldsway waiting for the plane to Gatwick “watching” the Supersport Race 2 unfold on the TT website and wishing we were staying for the whole week. Dunlop won despite a brave ride from Bruce Anstey and I thought Ian Hutchinson’s amazing five wins was going to be equalled or bettered - bettered because Dunlop was also racing in the Lightweight on Friday, so he could make it six wins in a week.
As it happened, he pulled out of the Lightweight to concentrate on the Senior. The Senior itself was red flagged when a bike crashed into spectators on Bray Hill and restarted at 4.30pm, which meant I could follow part of the race on the website from work and part via Twitter on the train. It was a hell of a race to end a hell of a week’s racing.
Some said it was the best TT race ever, but I don’t know. The drama of Hislop v Fogarty or Agostini v Hailwood takes some beating, but it was the fastest TT ever - John McGuinness’ 131.671mph on Sunday; Michael Dunlop’s 131.22mph on a pretty much a showroom Fireblade in the Superstock was incredible, then followed with 128.667mph on his Supersport bike. In the Senior, the first six riders lapped at over 130mph on the opening lap; there were 14 separate 130mph laps and eight 131mph laps.
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