It may have been mid winter and on top of Bodmin Moor, but the weather was just perfect for racing as glorious sunshine smiled upon the competitors signing in at a chilly 8am. It was the first round of this SW Enduro season and the atmosphere was trembling with excitement as riders enthusiasm bubbled over.

Halvanna is known to be a toughy, as although the course is a fantastic mixture of moorland woods type going, the long wet winters rain soaks in deep and after only a few laps the hard work begins!

This year was no exception, Mike Roose and his ever hard-working CVMCC crew had marked out a wonderful circuit for the 100 strong entry who were eager to earn their first points of the season!

At 10 am sharp the flag drop and 13 Championship bikes screamed into life sideways around the first fire-road bend and tore off toward the distant woods with No3 Jason Fraser leading from No1 Gareth Andrews and No4 Andy Gilbert.

For spectators it seemed all to brief, but then 23 Expert riders started and came howling around the first corner with No24 Carl McIlroy leading the fray from No33 Charlie Richards. The action was intense as they entered the first narrowing woodland trail.

The large Clubman entry started shortly afterwards and the woods soon became infested with frantic dirtbikes.

The laps were fairly long for a H&H and the Champ boys took around 25 mins for their first awesome lap. Unexpectedly No10 Pete Wilson was leading the way from No12 Jon Tarr, with Jason Fraser chasing them hard. Even more unexpectedly leading all of them were two Experts - who had obviously got a turning wrong somewhere!

However No14 Pete Bulley and No24 Carl McIlroy had realised the error of their ways and asked at the lap scoring what should they do? It was decided to let them ride on and make adjustments at the end.

The next surprise on the menu was a similar occurrence when two minutes later the first Expert arrived proper No22 Rob Richards, with Clubman No51 Steven Jewell chasing him! It was quite a wait before any more Experts arrived so there must have been some tricky bits out there causing all sorts of problems. Another 3 minutes down the line the Clubmen starting pouring through - and really hard on the gas too!

By lap two Pete Bulley was still holding off the championship riders but J Fraser was now hot on his tail. Expert McIlroy was still holding 3rd spot with Champ class No9 Jack Twentyman pressing hard tucked in behind.

The soft track surface was already starting to churn over on lap three and much of the terrific trail was showing signs of becoming a narrow slippery line waggling over the root infested forest floor.

Gareth Andrews turned all the tables around by lap 3 and lead the way from Bulley still holding down second spot from hard man Fraser. Tim Lewis No13 was now starting to shine aboard his diminutive TM125 and was right on Frasers tail. No7 Bradley Williams was next in line just in front of Twentyman. Then No2 Steve Dustow who was riding very smoothly putting his trials skills into practice ahead of a Devon man No8 Ian Putt.

About an hour and a quarter in Tim Lewis had fought to the front. He knew he had to ride hard as he anticipated having to get an extra pit stop in - compared to Andrews and Fraser - to fuel up the thirsty small tanked 125 screamer. But Fraser was still only 2 bike lengths in arear. No10 Pete Wilson had now reappeared right up in 3rd spot ahead of Bradley Williams and Steve Dustow. But in 6th place was a new challenger in the Championship class, Steve's brother Chris Dustow was charging hard and about to give Steve as bad a time as he could!

While this battle royal was going on, Steven Jewell - the wayward clubman, was still pushing very hard and determined to show his capabilities to all and sundry.

Then suddenly the sound of bikes was interrupted by the ominous sound of helicopter blades - which during race day is always a bad sign and this time as expected it was unfortunately for us, - Chris Shorey had taken a tumble and broken a few ribs.

I quickly spied the accident sheet and saw that Andrew White was also down with a twisted knee - and aspiring young Jamie Paget had had to call it a day when his left foot introduced itself to on of a hundred a tree stumps!

It was also initially feared that Mark Carhart had done a serious nasty, but 'fortunately' his wrist escaped with only a severe spraine.

Gareth Andrews front disk got seriously bent during the race - so much so that he had to rip the whole front calliper, hose and lever assembly off to continue. But after a few very hairy laps trying to race without it, decided to just play for a while instead!

At 2 hours Fraser was now lapping the other championship boys with relative ease and leading Lewis by 1 minute. The two Dustow brothers were starting to have a real scrap and eventually in a very cut up boggy wood section Chris muscled his way past Steve with throttle pinned open at all cost. So keen was he to hold a lead that he nearly threw it all away when exiting onto the next fire road - when he couldn’t wait for the bike to straighten up before going WOT (wide open throttle). His bike slewed side to side violently tank slapping, while Steve's smooth progress was definitely gaining on him!

Wayne Davey enjoyed the forest road sections.

All spectators waited to see what the outcome would be and stood at the next convenient viewing place to watch the excitement. Chris was still leading but Steve was only a few feet behind and definitely not giving up. However it soon became clear that there was no way that Chris was going submit his lead and he eventually went on to a fantastic 3rd place finish.

Jason Fraser had ridden a superbly controlled race to romp home once more in 1st with a hard charging Tim Lewis only one minute behind in 2nd spot. Bradley Williams took 4th with Steve Dustow settling for 5th.

This man won with apparent ease once more. Is anyone going to 
be able to challenge Jason Fraser this year?

It was a great days racing, but make no mistake it really was very tough. Halvanna although a Hare & Hounds event, always was and no doubt always will be a true enduro.

Report - Adrian Harris