The Nationals were held at Bracken Rocks in Derbyshire, which is a private competition site usually used for motorcycle and mountain bike trials. It’s a perfect spot, with camping on site and lots of ROCKS.

The event was very well organised, with 2.2 and Super Class competitions taking place over the day on two courses each. Usual rules applied (5 min limit, points accrued for reverses, roll overs and repositions, points take off for each gate passed). We stood at the bottom 2.2 course for the morning session and were hooked from the start. Loads of people I’ve told about it said it sounded a bit dull, but it damned well isn’t! It’s pretty intense watching them crawl, scramble and twist across the rocks. I enjoyed it a ton!

The competition was certainly stiff in the 2.2 class, with many experienced operators with some really sweet rigs.

We also wandered up to one of the Super Class courses to watch the supers tough it out. The course looked nigh-on impossible from where I was standing! It soon proved difficult, but by no means impossible, as we realised why they call it Super class. Insane rigs with everything going to make them crawl rocks. The feats they pulled off were immense, climbing almost vertical faces, twisting in all sorts of mad directions. Great stuff.

I had a great day and so did the guys I was with, and I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank the organisers, competitors and all the people involved for making it a really fantastic even. The sun even shined all day, a total miracle on the UK!! :hehe:

So now I’m going all out to build a comp rig of my own. It’s gonna be a blast, I know it is

Photos from the event are posted here:

http://flickr.com/photos/pixel_mason/sets/72157606149671185/

RC stuff costs a ton less and is easy to do on a kitchen table or in a small workshop. You can also involve your kids (I don’t have any yet, but it’d be a useful thing if I did).

So I have 2 projects planned now:

1) Buy a HPI Wheely King RC Monster truck and set about modding it into a demon rock crawler.

2) Restore my brothers old Nissan King Cab Tamiya truck

See, my brother and I did this when we were kids but I thought I’d ‘grown out’ of it. More the fool me, I forgot how much fun building, running, breaking, fixing and servicing these things was. Also now I’ve got access to a workshop and tools, can get metal stock, and am getting a bit handier with metal working, I can do a lot of mods using custom hand crafted parts.

I can’t wait to get started. Stories and pictures are sure to follow!