WELSH ISDT TRIBUTE
The Classic Bike team tries to retrace the route around mid-Wales taken in the 1961 International Six Day Trial – an optimistic attempt to emulate the top dirt riders of the day...
Known as the Olympics of Motorcycling,the International Six Day Trial (ISDT) was one of the world’s biggest sporting events, attracting top teams and star riders. The likes of Vic Brittain, Sammy Miller, and Jim Sandiford all competed, and – rather brilliantly – ordinary riders can still follow in their wheel tracks today.
For the Classic Bike summer outing, I’ve planned a route that follows some of the 1961 ISDT course around mid-Wales. It’s ambitious, given that the CB team are not Milleresque in their riding talent, but editor Hugo is very enthusiastic. It gradually dawns on me that this is because he’s salivating at the idea of comedy breakdowns and hapless riders fashioning exhaust valves out of a blackthorn bush...
We gather for a group meet in the caff at the boating lake in Llandrindod Wells, which has seen plenty of ISDT activity over the years – Llandrindod played host to the ISDT seven times between 1933 and 1961. During those heady days, the boating lake was an assembly point for the riders – just as it is today.
The similarity ends there. though, as I can immediately see why Hugo was optimistic about breakdowns, befuddled stragglers and chaos. The editor’s Matchless does not appear to have been maintained since the early 1990s, Callum Ives’ Ariel looks lovely but is fresh from a rebuild, and John Westlake’s 1999 Husqvarna is a field bike that scraped through its MoT yesterday. Only Adam Smallman’s XT500, photographer Chippy Wood’s XR600 and my Gas Gas Pampera look likely to finish the day...
For the purposes of our trip, I’ve cribbed some of the route from day five of the 1961 event. Re-creating original ISDT routes in their entirety is nigh-on impossible due to the closure of some rights-of-way and, in the latter years of the Six Days, sections would be run on private land and some of these tracks don’t exist any more. No matter, because it’s still possible to get a flavour for the ISDT by riding long-established byways used back in the day and which nowadays feature in modern events such as the Welsh Two Day enduro. It feels like an honour to tread the exact path so many legends have traversed.
The bikes fire up and we clatter out from the lake past Llandrindod Golf Club and begin the steep, rocky climb up Careb-Wiber Bank. From there we carry on towards Pawl-Hir hill so we can thread our way across country and connect with the intriguingly-named Water Breaks Its Neck trail. Careb-Wiber and Pawl-Hir make a great start to the ride, because y
