Reg Porter Rd 1 : The Tourist Trail

Sunday 10th November saw Round One of Lewes Wanderers’ annual Reg Porter Trophy – The Tourist Trail.  This three event competition is run by the club over the winter months in an effort to encourage people out onto their bikes during the winter months.  Eleven riders turned up outside Boots in Uckfield for 9am on what was a cold, but bright and sunny morning even if the roads were awash with the effects of heavy overnight rain.

Club Runs leader Ian McGuckin had taken it upon himself to devise a relatively simple 23 mile route up through Piltdown to Fletching and then south via Newick, Barcombe and Offham to the club’s home town.  Skirting Ringmer to pass Glyndebourne Opera House and finally through the charming village of Glynde before taking refreshments at Middle Farm, Firle the competitors would be required to answer 19 questions of varying difficulty based upon things they could supposedly see along the way.

Tourist Trail at Middle Farm by Paget Cohen

Fastest around the course was Paget Cohen, who arrived with a quarter-of-an-hour to spare, but having missed some of the clues so he only scored 24 out of the possible 33 points on offer.  The only other rider to finish within the 11 o’clock time-limit was last year’s winner of this event and the overall Trophy Rob Pelham who again proved his mastery of this particular challenge with 25 points accrued making him the leader “in the clubhouse”.

Darren Haynes collected the most marks with 27 out of 33, but as he plus James Geldart and Dom Lowden finished 11 minutes after the hour they were each docked 1 point for each two whole minutes they arrived late. Hence Darren was placed third with 21.5 points while James and Dom each scored 26 points for their answers, but that was reduced to 20.5 and a tie for 4th.   Dan Street (25 points – 5.5 penalties = 19.9) was 6th ahead of Martyn Crawford (17 - 8 = 9), David Wilkins (12 - 8 = 4), Stuart Kirkham (16 - 14 = 2), Graham Knowles (16 - 14 = 2) and Peter Fox (15 - 14 = 1).

Finishing positions were then converted into points for the overall with Rob collecting 30, Paget 29, Darren 28 and so on down to Peter with 20.  Rob will thus go into Round 2, the freewheeling on 19th January well placed to retain the title he won last year.