Parakart and Buggy madness in the UK!
This years race series has taken place at 3 race locations.
Hoylake near Liverpool and 2 locations in South Wales, Pendine & Pembrey. (see map)
These are all beaches on the west side of the UK.
Hoylake is unusual as the beach is a convex sandbank, so unless there is a very high tide the beach remains available all day. The sand is a mixture of hard to semi-soft and the wheels of choice are Big Foots.
Gary Box, from the Hoylake club, takes advantage of not having to stop for the incoming tide by running the only 24 Hr race on a beach in the UK!
Teams of 3-5 pilots compete to cover the most distance in the time. One hell of a effort!
Pendine is a long hard sand beach. (approx 3.5m long) Disc or Barrow wheels are the best choice here. One slight disadvantage is that a couple of miles down he beach is the British Forces firing range for all types of ordnance. Sometimes you have to duck as a shell or two whizz overhead!
Pembrey is not far from Pendine, just across the bay. The sand here is also rock hard and Disc / Barrow wheels are best. The hazards we encounter there are unexploded ordnance that has floated or been blown onto the beach! So the rule is don’t run anything over, go round it!
At the far end of Pembrey is also a military/civilian airfield and depending if the red flag is flying we cannot use the last 2 miles of the beach, otherwise the full 5 miles is a blast up to the river and back. Oh I forgot to mention, the last 2 miles also have anti-landing craft structures built into the sand as the army/navy used to carry out beach landing manoeuvres there. Weaving around them is good for a laugh!
The prize giving evening at Pendine was a memorable night especially when the DJ overloaded Pendine’s somewhat limited power supply and plunged the whole town into darkness (That’s DJ’s for you, after they have deafened you, they take away your sense of sight…that only leaves smell and touch…….tricky situation that one!)
Stephen Walt Webb
