Downhill racers Rich Thomas and Taylor Vernon race the Weston Super Mare MX Beach race

Well, I have lived in Weston-Super-Mare pretty much all my life. Some of you may know the place, it is a small town nestled away just South of Bristol, known for its donkeys, pier, and in the dirt bike industry the home of one of the Worlds and Britain’s biggest beach race. Basically, up until a horrendous pile up in 2009 1000+ motocross bikes race around the beach down a mile long straight and over man made dunes the size of houses and other features. Since the pile up in which 40-50 riders ended up in hospital the riders have been capped at 600. However, things still get pretty wild.


As you all know, I race mountain bikes but will pretty much have a pop at anything. I have ridden dirt bikes for the last 5-6 years or so for fun and love it. The years have gone by watching the beach race, thinking I’d like to have a go but never got around to it with mountain bike commitments and the last few years with uni. 2012 was different; I decided to have a cheeky pop.

A couple of my good friends in Weston have raced it more times than I’ve had hot dinners so they helped me get ready and told me what to do and what not to do. The whole prep and looking at the track on the way to and from work is so exciting, it was all new to me and I haven’t done a different race for years, always just downhill, the build up was really cool, a few of us watched the quads and sidecars on the Saturday which race the same format and it just gets you buzzing.


So as per the morning of the race came around pretty quick, Taylor Vernon, that young pikey lad that everybody is sucking off at the moment and his dad came down with Tom Lloyd, my pit man for the race, and we set up the pits and got ready. You put your bike in a big holding area the Friday before the race so it is a mass running start to the bikes then a dash on to the beach to the real start, you start at 3 gates so it is a massive race just to get to the start just before the big straight and onto the dunes. The start really is unreal, getting bar to bar with 500 hundred other dudes going 100mph…

Then, well, 3 hours of roost, getting stuck, running people over, going literally 100mph in rain and sea ruts, getting blasted with sea water and riding over big awkward sand castles haha I hope some of this is portrayed in Tim Lakes little edit from the day. It really was a WILD 3 hours!


So 17 laps later, way too much sand eaten, one new barrel and piston, 5 new sets of goggles and gloves, 20 litres of fuel and easy 60 miles ish completed in just over 3 hours. WILD!

So that is it, it is Thursday and I’m still finding sand in places I never knew existed and have aches I have never had before, but all in all something I believe every junkie has to experience, truly a wild experience, a plus for me being as I got to tear up my own beach and not have the police helicopter out…

Top banana!

Rich came 32nd on the day – nice work lad!

Congrats to Tim Lake at Southside Productions for the awesome edit.
Add him on Twitter at @tim_lake_

Thanks to Jason Vernon and Rob Drinkwater for the photos.