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| The commentary box is where it's all put together. You can just about see Southend Wheeler's Bob
Barber doing the commentary at the firsr meeting ever.
The box is of course next to the finish line and opposite the club room. The wire coming out of the window you can see there is I guess for the finishing camera mounted on the roof. |
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The first meeting was extremely well attended. This view of the clubhouse is from beside the commentary box, looking across the finishing straight. Look how smooth the tarmac appears; it's not an illusion, it's like that all the way round |
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From the front of the club house you can see riders in the dip and across them as far as the City |
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It's a very green site indeed. |
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This circuit is by no means easy, as you can see by the expressions of these riders as they crest the steepest part of the course just before the finish. I had already long since jacked it in, hence my ability to take these photos. The reason is the rise in road on the final corner. |
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And here is that corner. Doesn't look like much does it?
Take a look at the view first of all; almost all of them from Hog Hill are like this, green vistas. Nice isn't it? Pictures never show you how steep a road is, and this one is even more deceptive. Look carefully and you'll see the road actually disappears down behind that bank you can see on the left. |
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| The narrow strip of tarmac is in fact the other side of the circuit! This is the real challenging part of the course. | |
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This, the strip in the foreground, is the rise up to that corner. It looks almost flat,
but is far from it. It rises gently, kicks in the middle, then kicks again around the top corner.
This also shows how some of the lower part of the circuit is laid out, and how the two independent upper and lower circuits work. |
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| This is a first impression, August '08. Looking at the crossover to create two circuits, it looks like there are two triangles, where the bollards are, and the roads meet in the middle. That can't be right; it would mean you couln't use the two circuits at the same time, which I understood to be the entire idea. | |
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Regular riders will remember how windy it would be at Eastway, even if everywhere else was
calm. Hog Hill is pretty expsosed too and on the first day it really was blowing. Let's hope this
isn't the way it's always going to be.
Nice to see full medical backup, even with their own place to put the support vehicle. Can't get too much of that, accidents do sometimes happen. |
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| This is incidentally one of the few directions of view from the circuit where you can see much in the way of housing or indeed any building at all. | |