In this blog Ian Hawkins gives us a photographic insight into life at Armadale as the Monarchs contemplate a final season at the track and the prospects of a move to a new facility in time for next season.
Hi
More concentrated dross from the home of the Monarchs. Wednesday 28th got off to a wet start washing a very muddy fence from Friday's mudbath. Heavy overnight rain had made the circuit very sloppy but finally good drying conditions assisted by the wheel and mesh dried the track out amazingly quickly. We were again left with pumping out the large puddle between the pits and the perimeter fence aka the swamp.
There were also a number of swallows and house martins swooping around obviously glad to escape the warmth of South Africa!
On Friday there was a slight problem also to do with the wet stuff when a water pipe behind the fourth bend fence which had been covered by the sludge dumped there a few weeks ago was accidentally cut through when extracting some of the now dried out shale for redeposition on the track. This was easily fixed however. There was also a minor problem with the operating valve on the sprayer which is rather flimsy plastic item, now mainly held together with self tapping screws and tape.
The PL meeting against Sheffield was memorable for a very bad looking first bend pile-up resulting in Arlo Bugeja crashing through the fence taking out four fence panels, bending three fence posts and severely straining our small stock of spare boards. Happlily after almost an hour's delay for repairs the meeting was concluded without further incident other than a slight contretemps between Kalle Katajisto and Paul Cooper who both stopped on the third bend after the race to exchange their views on the subject. Also happy to report that Arlo did not sustain any serious injury when he was finally persuaded that going to hospital was a good idea, having initially refused to go in the emergency ambulance which turned up along with the local police due to the emergency services having been informed of an accident involving three motorcycles but omitting to mention that it was during a speedway meeting!.
Wednesday 5th May was largely taken up with fence repairs and starting painting six new boards as well as making repairs to less badly damaged panels by bolting kick boards on to them for use as spares. Friday saw the completion of this and the final restoration of the fence. As this is now probably definitely our last year at the Scotwaste Arena a minor tour of our outstanding features is included.for your undoubted delight.
Before the meeting NL guest rider 16 year-old Kyle Howarth of Bournemouth had a practice session and looked very good, later borne out by a beating Chris Neath into third place behind British Final qualifier Andrew Tully during the meeting. An extremely good future prospect and a great advert for the National League.
The match, a KO Cup first leg against Rye House was somewhat uneventful other than some sharp gating - sometimes a little too sharp - by the Rockets and wholehearted effort by Joszef Tabaka who was possibly overtrying, resulting in two heavy falls and a wrecked machine. Linus Sundstrom performed very well for Rye House supported by Jordan Frampton and Chris Neath but Monarchs eventually came on a little stronger later in the meeting to win by 51-39.
Promoter John Campbell also announced that land had been acquired for a new track for 2011, details to be provided on Monday, all however subject to planning consent. Sainsburys are also to get a response to their development proposal very soon.
