TT fortnight has started and what better way to celebrate than to buy a motorcycle! Actually I bought it last week, haven’t seen it other than videos of it running. I am going to visit it in Cornwall soon after the TT and have to figure out a way to get it from there to the Isle of Man .
That’s my third 70’s Honda 400 four Supersport. I had one in South Africa, one in Australia and now this one. Can’t wait to ride the TT course on it, perhaps a teeny bit slower than Michael Dunlop or Ian Hutchison!
The purists will know that it’s the wrong shade of blue but that doesn’t worry me, as long as it feels and runs like a 400 four!
There are non-stop festivals on the Island, before my English trip there was a scooter festival and the Island was overrun with Lambrettas, Vespas etc:
I had my first evening of marshalling for Saturday’s practice. I’m near the finish line this year. Something I didn’t consider when I booked the spot is that we pack up about half an hour or more later than bottom of Bray Hill that I did for the 2017 TT. It’s good that we see the bikes leaving the paddock, and get to see who wins. Glencrutchery Road is straight so it’s very fast but we don’t get the bends that I could watch in Kirkmichael (where I’ve marshalled twice for the Manx Grand Prix and Classic TT), I may go there again for some of the Classic in August.
Talking of Classics, they had Classic Racing on the Billown Circuit near Castletown over the weekend. It is insanely amazing to watch down there. The Southern 100 is held there in july. I saw a t-shirt with a quote from Guy Martin “The TT is a good warm-up for the Southern 100”. We had the day off marshalling yesterday so I went down to watch:
You can see they are just ordinary narrow roads lined with stone walls
Some spectators don’t have a very high survival instinct:
Fortunately the roar of the first bike coming through woke him up before he rolled onto the racecourse:
Yesterday morning I went for marshall refresher training and had a wonderful surprise when about 20 of us got to go up into the race control tower:
We were hosted by the Clerk of the Course, the very admired and respected Gary Thompson. Of course some of us had to have our moments of fame posing with him:
We got to see all the race control equipment and systems, plus the amazing views from the tower. It was a non-racing day so the road in front of the grandstand goes back to being a normal road, Bray Hill starts just after this section:
The spot that I’m marshalling this year is on the corner just before the trees after the paddock in the next photo. This is full of bikes waiting to come onto the course during races:
Then looking down into the paddock – on race days this is absolutely packed with people:
And you can see out to the Tower of Refuge and Douglas Head, that I’ve featured in lots of other pictures as we can see it from our flat:
Anyone can wander through and see all the teams working on their bikes, school kids get taken on outings during the week. in previous years this has been a good autograph hunting opportunity for me as many of the top riders are there for the kids. Senior Race Day is a public holiday.
Last year I felt so sorry for people who couldn’t marshal every day, as they had to go to work, now I’m one of them. However, in previous years I have felt so envious of people who live here, and now I’m one of them 🙂