Trials and Tribulations

Man, machine, and a whole lot of mud.  Whether the challenge is to coax a vintage car non-stop up a series of muddy hill stages, or manoeuvre a motorbike over boulders and through rivers without putting a foot down, trials events require great technical skill, mechanical know-how, and an intimate connection between a vehicle and the person controlling it.  I've attended a couple of trials events over the past couple of months, carrying a couple of old cameras (one 35mm SLR and a 120mm TLR) loaded with black and white film with the intention of shooting some of the more interesting (read: old) vehicles that I spotted.  I got the roll of 35mm back from the lab a little over a week ago, and wanted to share a selection from my winter wading around the woods in gum boots following the noise of engines.  

Vintage Vroom Vroom

During World War Two the RAF used Goodwood, a country house estate on the edge of the South Downs in West Sussex, as the base for a squadron of spitfires.  When the war ended the Earl of March turned the airfield's perimeter road into a motor racing circuit and the first race was held there on September 18th 1948.

Sixty five years on and each September Goodwood hosts the Goodwood Revival, an event celebrating the circuit's motorsport heyday from 1948-1966.   Of the 150,000 people attending I'd estimate that 90% were dressed in genuine mid-century era fashions which, along with the plethora of beautiful vintage racing cars (including the spectacular Ferrari GTO250), motorbikes and historic aeroplanes meant that I shot an awful lot of rolls of film.  Below is a small selection of ten images from the films that I've had developed so far.  Enjoy the time machine:

GT40

Hair and Helmet

Belle and the Biplane

 RAF

Airmen

Noisy Norton

Home Straight Spectators

 Spannering

Green Light for GO! 

 Guests of the Earl of March

"Sunshine Sunday" Criteria

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.  By Chris Burkard for Surfer Magazine.

Today is "Sunshine Sunday" in the UK, the day when travel agents and tour operators prepare for around two million Brits to look for the light at the end of the wintery tunnel and book their summer holidays.  Maybe you're planning 2013's movements today also, and looking forward to the waves yet to come?
  
Trips, projects, expeditions, adventures - call them what you will (although if we're being picky, you can't plan adventures, they're what happens when a trip or expedition goes wrong), many of us populate our daydreams with these and while away the boredom of long, lonely drives or any other mind-numbing downtime planning and scheming.
This year I'm setting myself some criteria for the projects on my to-do list.  Each trip, if at all possible, has to fall into one of the following two categories:

• An ordinary trip done in an interesting way.
• An interesting trip done in an ordinary way.

It's that simple.  If it's a trip that's close to home or the sort of thing that's common fodder then I'm going to endeavour to do it in an interesting way, and if it's more of an expedition or exploratory trip then I'll probably have to undertake it by the (most likely stock-standard) ways and means available to me.   

These days, you'll be lucky to find something, anything, that somebody else hasn't done already - but that's no reason not to do it.

The six-wheeled truck used to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Over the past few months I've taken a lot of inspiration from the trips that these images are taken from.  The January issues of Surfer magazine and Surf Europe feature a trip to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, a trip that was well documented through various social networking outlets by Chris Burkard and Foster Huntington who had portable solar panels with them to charge their cameras and laptops.   They scored good, fun, cold surf where nobody really expected it, exploring the region in a six-wheeled former Soviet military truck and a helicopter.  There's a great video available to view (it can't be embedded on this blog) through Surfer magazine, here.

Kamchatka campfire.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Around the same time as the Kamchatka trip, Californian pro-surfer Dan Malloy was cycling the length of California with two friends, carrying all of their camping and surfing gear in panniers and on bike trailers.  They travelled slowly, stopping off to surf, visit friends and work stints on organic farms along the coast.  It just so happens, as luck would have it, that Dan's two companions comprised a professional photographer and a videographer.  

Slow is Fast.  Photo by Dan Malloy.

Dan Malloy running out for a surf, the Slow is Fast bicycle trip, California.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Feeling inspired?  There are so many ways that you can go, do, and experience places and faces these days if you put your mind to it.  Maybe it'll be a staycation with a twist, a micro-adventure in your own backyard.  Or perhaps it'll be a trip which you spend more time researching, planning and preparing for than you actually spend doing it.  Either way, it'll make for a memorable one.  One that you can talk about over a drink in the pub when the days are short this time next year.  An experience that might just set the tone, or the wheels in motion, for the next.

Scott G Toepfer takes brilliant photographs of people having too much fun riding around on motorbikes.  Check out It's Better In The Wind.

Mud and Guts

Autumn isn't too far away, and with autumn comes (a bit more) rain.  And rain means mud.

Ordinarily I'm much more of a fan of non-motorised means of having fun in nature.  I think that human powered and silent is the right way to enjoy the outdoors, however every now and then my inner rev-head rears up to have it's say.  Having spent a bit of time wrestling motorbikes around fields when I worked a stint on some farms in the past, I am in awe of good trials riders.
It's a fact of life that in this modern age, motorbikes and quad-bikes have replaced horses as the primary means of moving around large pastoral farms to herd animals and check fences.  And as with any farm-based routine it's developed into a competitive activity where the steepest, rockiest, most slippery, tree-root-ridden route is marked out and taken on by anybody with two wheels and an engine from nearby farms and villages.  Normally a trial is hosted by a farmer who has a patch of pasture that's either incredibly rocky, or that leads down to a stream or river where all of the mud has been churned up by his cattle as they go down to drink.  Cows go out, bikes come in for a weekend and then the land is left to recover.
The world of motor-sports and motorbikes loves it's bright garish colours and massive logos, but thankfully amongst all of the questionable design work you still spot the odd rider on an old bike that's probably been used daily for the past 40 years, or somebody in a canvas jacket or overalls wearing army surplus pilot's goggles.  These tend to be the blokes and bikes that get the attention of my camera.
Nature as an obstacle course, and the wetter and muddier it is the better.

Cool before cool was cool

Dug this one out of the family archives - that's my Grandad on the right, crouched down in a trenchcoat, wild cap (pre bike helmets) and a cig hanging from his lips (because they were good for your voice back then...) fixing his mates bike on the roadside sometime in the mid 1930's...a solid 15-20 years before Brando became an icon in The Wild Ones and James Dean created a counter-culture in Rebel Without A Cause.

The reason why I love this shot so much is because my Gran took it (sitting on the back of a bike was probably my Grandads idea of a good date) with a mark I Kodak box brownie, and that's the canvas case slung over his shoulder. That camera, case and all, is now sat on my shelf. I'm planning on pushing a roll of film through it sometime soon, so we'll see what comes out.

I guess at least if I haven't inherited Grandads easy cool or his vintage iron steed, there's a beautiful old camera in my hands waiting to capture a new reality 80 years on.