Entertain Yourself for Free. No 2

Just volunteer for something.

The all pervading sense of helping out with a venture or event is tremendously heart warming and can also be fun if you are in a sphere of activity in which you actually have an interest.

This was certainly the case with me in my second consecutive year of marshalling at a round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire.

I got a good position on the early section of the very gruelling and downright nasty course in the bottom of a wooded dell.

I had to move about to prevent the onset of hypothermia in April . This took on the appearance that I was chasing the thin, but warming shafts of sunlight penetrating the forest canopy- a bit like a demented Hobbit.

Apart from a few posh sounding people who had evidently wandered into the woods with no prior knowledge of the major sporting event being played out and who wanted to know what was going on, "I say, smashing, and all that on a push bike, what", my only company for a total of 12 hours in the wild over the two days was the regular passing through of the top quality field of mountain bikers.

The video below is on the first lap with the riders in a rapid procession which, lap on lap, diminished to a tight group of leaders, amongst them the World Champion, the current leader of the World Cup Series and respective National Champions from europe and the americas. By the mid point of the race the field straggled past with the tail enders just a few seconds ahead of the leading riders.

To view the video just have some patience for the first minute or so. The quality is poor because my camera phone is ancient, we are talking only 2 megapixels. The vegetation does entertain in this first minute by moving about in the spring breeze and does give some degree of ambience. The lad on a trial bike is not joy riding but is the lead vehicle. In reality it was quite noisy with the marshalls nearest to me blowing hard on their whistles to alert those down the course of the approaching race. My ears were ringing for a good week after the event from this persistent high pitch of a synthetic pea on metal.

The rather irritating nasally and frankly nauseosly sycophantic narrator providing what is a pitiful audio commentary is me.

QUESTION: How many mountain bikes did you count? Answers via the comments box please. No prize offered but you will be remembered for your persistence and eye to brain co-ordinational dexterity which is a mighty useful trait and may one day save you from getting run over by a herd of cows or a fleet of buses.