I believe this years Codger was at least as successful, perhaps even more successful, as those of previous years. I am sure Bruce will have done his own report and thanked people but I especially want to thank those who turned up on the day as observers or to do other tasks.

There is a lot of arranging going on long before the event itself, (the committee is already planning ahead to next year. We will soon set the date for 2001 and review how things went this year to see if we can make any improvements). We (mostly Bruce) book the land, sell advertising space, arrange sponsors, do pre-event articles for the press, send out the Regs, get first aid cover from St. John Ambulance, mobile toilets from Tom Titt (yes really), arrange the caterers, visit the Talmag trial to check what they are up to, prepare goody bags for the observers, make a pre-laying out visit to plan the sections, order trophies and other things I have no doubt forgotten, (my apologies to those concerned). Don Morley, Derek Tickner-Wand, Jon Bartlett and I went to Hungry Hill to set out the Red, Blue and White routes respectively, on the Saturday before the trial.

But without you volunteers turning up to spend the day doing the observing, scoring, back marking etc all our efforts would have been wasted. I think this is especially commendable given that most of you do not have pre-67 machinery, and indeed that many of you weren’t even born by 1967. I don’t think many clubs could put on such a big event using just their own members. It is a measure of our success that yet again our trial was over-subscribed, unlike the Talmag which has had to boost their numbers by accepting categories of riders they excluded in previous years.

It was nice to see family members there together, hopefully enjoying the atmosphere and the company, not to mention the burgers! Sue and I womanned and manned, in that order, Section 17 and we had a thoroughly good time despite having to wait quite a while until the first riders got round to us. I found the riders to be courteous and friendly and many thanked us for our efforts on the second lap. The weather was reasonable all day, in fact it was quite warm and sunny in the morning! It was a pleasure to see the carefully preserved and prepared bikes, and some riders who were also carefully preserved and prepared, not to mention the idiosyncratic, (to be polite), riders who were not!

So if you were there this year well done, but if you were not able to join us it would be great to see you there in 2001.

Steve Whitmore