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Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb  4

A friend of mine is getting married on 1st September and, not being one to do things by halves, he decided that instead of a stag night he’d have a stag day. I’m not gonna talk about the whole day, though, just the first event …

Too tyred …

As you may have guessed from the title, although some of you are bound to be confused by it, we went to the Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb. This is as it sounds: a hill climb at a place named Shelsley Walsh. What sort of “hill climb”? One involving loud and fast cars, of course! After all, we were a gang of men!

The start line

We started the day at the start line and watched and heard many cars racing off into the distance - we were right in the thick of the noise, fumes and adrenaline. It was pretty amazing to see how fast some of the cars pulled away - I knew there would be some quick ones but I was still impressed.

One of my favourites of the day

Some of the guys were talking about going further up the hill to see a bit more of the action. Unfortunately, though, it’s a bit of a walk and it gets quite steep - not exactly wheelchair friendly. After spotting me in my wheelchair, though, one of the marshals overseeing the start line told us that they do a courier service, i.e. if my mates could lift me into a car (a Toyota Hilux) then they’d drive me and a couple of others up the hill to a better vantage point. This is when the real fun started …

The guy in the driver’s seat said that he’d drive us up the track as if he was competing. “Do you compete?” I asked. “Oh, yes.” The engine revved and we took off! And so we spent the next 50 seconds or so getting a guided tour of the track. At full speed. In a Toyota that was leaning round the corners! It was bloody good fun, though, and the guy behind the wheel had obviously done it many, many times before.

Wheelspin warms the tyres

He took us up to the finish line where the last fifteen or so cars that had done the run were waiting to coast back down - when they did so, we trailed along behind and stopped about halfway to be dropped off.

Unfortunately, I neglected to get any photos from our new position (which is a shame because I could just about make out Abberley Clock Tower) but you can see all I did take at Flickr or view a movie of some cars on the start line:

Please excuse the quality - crap camera, crip hands!

If that file doesn’t work for you, there is an alternate version: 9.2Mb, Sorenson3 codec.

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