Mud, Sweat and Cheers!

The BEASTs (Boreatton Science And Engineering Team) Racing Team invited us to join them at the 73^rd National Scoutcar Championships with BERP their newly engineered pedalcar that they’ve been working on over the last term or two. We therefore had a practice on our Explorer-sub-unit-thingy-night meeting on Thurs. It was forecast to be a wet race and as the skies stay resolutely dry, we thought we had better bring our own water (pistols) and we invited the older scouts to join us – bad idea – we all ended up very wet (although the pedalcar and track stayed dry so that plan didn’t work...). Not much preparation for racing but fun in a soggy sort of way...

Anyway, we thought we would combine it with a trip to the Cliffhanger Outdoors show and make a weekend camp out of it seeing as we were travelling so far. However, the organisers turned out to be a bit more indoorsy than scouts and cancelled the show when there was a spot of rain forecast! Arghh! – plan B! We managed to book dirt-buggies for the Sunday – dirt-buggies love the rain!

I must admit, that I didn’t really know what the pedalcars would be like and thought it might be a long day just doing a couple of races, but I was wrong (just like when the scouts persuaded me to go to the national rifle champs – I should have known – national scout events are always great fun)!

BERP (Boreatton Experimental Recumbent Pedalcar) was a new entry so we had to start at the bottom of Division 2 for scouts and Division 1 for the explorers, but from the start you could see that the BEASTs’ dedication and engineering skills had created a winner – BERP is small and low, but in smart Boreatton Old Gold and Blue livery, he looked sleek and fast on the start line. 

As the lights turned green he slid seemingly effortlessly into the lead and continued to accelerate away from the rest of the field. Almost silently, compared to the other racers, he stunned the commentary team as the scouts lapped and re-lapped the opposition – Way to go BEASTs! Winning, and in style!

With such a car, how could the explorers fail? Ah – hadn't accounted for the explorer's total lack of mechanical empathy and they managed to break BERP... the chain came off three times for the explorers – I think we need to practice more next time, but even with lost time in the pits we won the Division 1 Team competition and came second in the Division 1 Grand Prix! We lost at least a couple of laps in the pits as Pete repaired BERP and then repaired him again(!) but each time we came back out we cruised through the field and we were catching the eventual winners in the final laps, but not quickly enough... despite the largest, brightest (cool team T-shirts) and noisiest support in the paddock...

So – a triumph for Pete and the BEASTs – we won all but 2 of the qualifiers (one when a scout took BERP flying over the tyre wall and when he rejoined he came back to 2^nd running out track as he tried to overhaul the leader) and the eventual trophy haul was: Scout Division 2 Team Champions, Sprint Champion, Grand Prix winners, Explorer Division 1 Team Champions, 

Explorers Division 1 Grand Prix 2^nd place, Leaders race 2^nd place (hurrah for Pete – of course I’d have beaten him if I hadn’t been protecting BERP in the wheel-to-wheel battles after being boxed in at the start ;P )

most travelled entry :) and, of course, the main prize for the event - Best Engineered Pedalcar.

Wayne Bulpitt – the UK Chief Commissioner was there to present prizes (mostly to Boreatton!)

 and sit in the BEAST Pedalcar! 

Way to go BERP and Boreatton Racing scouts!

After that, the next day’s dirt buggy racing seemed destined to be anticlimactic – but hey – they’re Dirt Buggies! – you can’t do anticlimax with dirt buggies!




 Lots of Mud and grippy carts at the limit. Great fun...