Devon TRF Group Forum

I booked on to this as my mate Glenn is from Worthing in West Sussex and he comes down to Devon all the time. Obviously we have the best lanes, and the highest lane density, so who can blame him.

I was looking for an excuse to go to his part of the world and see if there was any good riding to be had - my assumption was that it was going to be flat and boring farm tracks.. 
However you can see in the little yellow area NW of Worthing there is a cluster of lanes and this is where the dirty weekend is based.

Another major attraction was that it was based at Hollycombe Home Farm (https://www.hollycombehomefarm.com/) which is well known for its meat based food products, a concept of which I am a big fan, and breakfast evening meals included, a bar, and limitless July sunshine!

So Friday started with predictions of thunder and lightning and a decent amount of heavy showers throughout the weekend, interspersed with 25c heat.  
After a 5 hour M5 nightmare (let's not go in to the series of poor decisions that led to this), I discovered that I had left my tent poles at home, after a few calls and blaming the kids, my wife found them in the camping chest, where I left them. 

No matter I decided to sleep in the back of the car, I'm a shortarse after all. We set up a tarp between the cars to sit under in the rain and all was good.
Mine is the green bike with the blue Toyota, Glenn was in his extra long wheelbase Caddy Life, a great laners vehicle, sandy plastics on his CCM MT230.



After a quick cuppa by 530pm we had moved up to the bar.
Camping was in field below the barns where the food and bar area is, a 2 min walk and we were next to a big steel barbeque, loads of bench seats and cold beers, cider etc. They had quality beer from https://firebirdbrewing.com/, the IPA "Work Ethic" was cold, citrusy and really easy to drink.
Images below from earlier on Friday evening..

Friday night they provided us with a very high quality burger, some crispy roast spuds, and a coleslaw with a bit of chili bite, see below. It was really, really good quality. Our only complaint was that we could have done with a second serving, one lad bought a 2nd for £10, forever known as "two burgers guy". We hung around long enough that at the end they handed out all the left over spuds. Happy days. 

As it was warm I ended up having too many pints. 

It started to bucket down at 4am and turned to drizzle by 7am, despite this I slept soundly. I wonder why?

Bacon rolls were presented from under a gazebo on the campsite with a mobile coffee van run by one of the farm staff. A couple of flat whites and some brekky and my hangover was nearly gone. A good thing about local brewed real beers is that they are a bit less chemically than commercial stuff, so despite dehydration, I felt OK. 

There were about 160 people present with bikes ranging from the smallest (a teenager and her XR125, who rode very well), our MT 230's, a lovely late 70's Suzuki TS250, ,an 80's 600 tenere, the usual range of enduro Husky's, KTMS, Sherco, Kwak Honda, Yam etc, CRF L and Rally, Kove, Voge, and all the big bikes including a few BMW 1300GS. oh lets not forget the guy on a custom bandit (yes a 1200 bandit) with cut off seat unit, H bars and knobbly tyres. 

They provided us with 3 sets of routes, all based on local green lanes.

From easiest to hardest:

Adventure 
Beginner
Intermediate

Inside each of those was a north and south route, short and long. 

My previous assumption about the lanes being a bit boring we went for intermediate short south on Sat.  The main reason being that the rainfall radar showed things to be bit better that way, plus it was all going towards Glenn's gaff in Worthing and we wanted to see what his "local" lanes were like. 
Via the handy Green Road map overlay feature, the yellow circle shows the start/end at Hollycombe.



The beginning of the route was a bit congested as it coincided with most of the routes including the adventure ones. The first lane was a simple fire road,  it was slippery and slightly off camber in places. Here we came across a few adventure bikes who had bitten off more than they could chew.

As we progressed we saw fewer and fewer other riders, coming across an absolute hero of a bloke on a BMW1300GS who had just exited out of a lumpy muddy narrow lane, was covered in mud and smiling head to toe. He had to admit defeat, but damn he gave it a good try. 

The lanes turned out to be varied and incredible good fun, loads of gorgeous farmland, horse pasture, loamy forest and a couple of properly tricky lanes, including one climb at "Frogmore" that could have been a Devon lane. Lots of rock and slippery clay, roots and all the stuff we love.

This one started with a couple of rock drops with wheel traps that got us both stuck, but with a bit of pushing and remembering our training from Dean and Rom we got through easily enough. Then a nice long river bed and rocky climb out that had my bike working hard. I love my mitas xt-454 terraforce back tyre, just digs in and chugga chug chug goes my little Chinese motor. 

I noticed tyre marks high on banks and in places I could never dream to ride, so despite struggling through everything, we knew there were some really useful riders about who made these lanes look simple.  It is important to recognise real talent, mine is the ability to make a simple lane look difficult.

I had a long rest after that. 

The weather was fine all day, overcast, humid and muggy but it did not rain once.

We stopped for water and lunch at https://www.batandballclanfield.co.uk/, conveniently on our route, in the bottom south west corner of the map at Hambledon. The birthplace of cricket apparently. Decent food and coffee. 

We did 80 miles and were out from 10-4, there was a short queue for the showers. With two showers amongst 158 blokes and 2 women, I had mild concern, but as sensibly there were no women in the queue the 3 blokes ahead were done in minutes.

Back to the bar...
As is usual on these things, you overdo the drinking on the first night and can't do it on the second. I struggled with 3 pints.

As we mingled around the set tables they were handing out canapes, a lamb arancini ball that I may have had quite a few of.  And a fancy polenta and parmesan cake which was also bloody lovely. 
In front of the barbq was a lamb on the roast,  looked and smelled amazing.

We sat down to be served vast amounts of meat, roast spuds, and really nice roasted veg that was all endless and so delicious. Really top quality food that for me was a great highlight to an already fantastic day.



I thought I could not eat another thing, but they brought out this pavlova, which was massive. I found room, and it was v tasty. 

Sunday the weather looked to be more consistently wet, and after having a word with myself I decided to go for it anyway. More bacon and coffee..

Intermediate north short.



As it was a bit damp we headed out early, with a promise to quit if it pissed down.

Similar to Saturday, an immensely variable set of lanes, fewer real challenges except one little hole that could only be crossed by bouncing off the bank to the side. After sending Glenn as crash test dummy I had the route and technique sussed to do it in one. 

Devils punchbowl was good fun and there were a lot of lanes that crossed public access areas with kids and dogs which had me second guessing the map.

This one below was a watery lane full of slabs of lumpy fixed rock and then little marble fields like this, very enjoyable.

We returned to the campsite around 2pm having done 80ish miles, 6hrs with a short break for coffee in Alton. We had one little shower about 30 mins before we got back, then it rained like hell all afternoon on the drive to Exeter. 

A few people were already gone, but plenty of people arrived back as we packed up. 

Would I recommend the Dirty weekend? Yes/no/maybe.

It seems like a lot of money for 2 nights camping, food, a t-shirt & stickers and some freely available public routes.

I love working out routes on the GRM and if I arranged the camping myself , I could have found places to eat and done it all for probably half or less than £250, including a tshirt. 

However chatting to Henry Crews the organiser, he knows all the lanes and has selected the best ones, I cannot argue with that both days were glorious. On my diy trip  there would not be a congregation of great bikers and their kit, it is hard to find food that good (Hollycombe do a feast for £75 a head), it really was that good, and there are no camp sites in the area with onsite bar/food anyway. 

I'm all in for next year. 

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