highland lassie

Yup - they're bringing a team over from the factory, and are also planning a big hospitality unit as far as I know.

Andy - can you do the honours? Or am I allowed to edit other people's articles? Ta!

Oh, and the Wednesday route is wrong...it's an old version! Well spotted Perce!! Revised PDF is en route, and will be updated on the SSDT and TC sites as soon as it's available.

Just a wee reminder to everybody that whilst the routes have been published, they are mostly run across private ground, some of which has taken a great deal of work to secure. There are some new chunks of ground in there this year, but please DON'T be tempted to go for a recce of these new areas (or the existing ones!) if you're in the Fort William area over the weekend, or indeed any time before the SSDT. It just takes one irresponsible person going out there without permission for us to lose miles of ground. The future of the SSDT is increasingly dependent on the goodwill of the landowners and bodies that own the ground we use. Abusing the trust they've put in us could jeopardise the entire future of the event, so please just bide your time and wait until Monday 3rd May to be let loose! Thanks, Mairi.

I'm sure the SSDT Committee will have a few bits and bobs that they can donate...I shall ask about and see what we can find. Failing that, I have a few of my own SSDT things around the place - MacMillan helped us tremendously in recent years, so one way or another there will be some SSDT items there to auction!

David - I think you'll find I've already replied to you...no secrets involved, Pipeline is always on the Saturday, and it's right behind the aluminium works at Kinlochleven. I've also explained that Friday / Saturday will be two good days for you because Friday goes round the peninsula with lots of spectator sections to choose from. Much as we don't publish the routes until just before the trial, that's solely to stop riders practising illegally as far as we possibly can - we'll always help advising spectators on groups of sections that are watchable where possible, we're not going to be deliberately obstructive. We can't help much before mid-March because we don't know the routes ourselves until then (believe me, there's a huge amount of work goes into securing the ground that we need each year), and this year things are further complicated by the fact that chunks of our route are still under three feet of snow, but if we can tell you anything that helps, we will!

You promised you'd raid the wife's wardrobe and do the job yourself this year, don't try and get out of it now.

Has nobody come up with something new to gurn about this year?

Rubbish. It's Rogart.

Just a quick reminder that entry fees MUST be paid by Friday to secure your place...no fee, no entry - it'll be reallocated to someone on the reserve list next week if we can't trace your payment! There's a couple of unidentified payments in our bank account too - someone paid

Let's see if you're still rotfl when Mrs Slapshot reads that!!

It's usually March I think...

It's also on the main menu bar across the top of the front page, under 'Community', but failing that, click here.

Your wish is our command! The P65 committee have happily given us a list of entrants - they've withheld the riding numbers to be published in the programme, but the actual riders are listed on the SSDT site under the Pre-65 tab.

Joomla is fab - dead simple to use too, even I understand it! Mostly....we're still working on getting our heads round all the plugins and components, so don't expect anything too fancy too quickly! Edit : That makes it look like I built the SSDT site...I didn't, Fergus gets all the credit for that one! I just did some research to get my head round it all - I left the real work to him.

They don't tend to publish their entry list this far in advance of the trial because it's the main selling point for their programme. I'm sure they'll send it across to us once the programme is on the shelves though, and as soon as they do I'll get it up on the site. Cheers! M.

We did wonder if they'd filled in the wrong entry form...!

There will be much more info on it as time goes by - we've just started it off with the few articles that are relevant to this year's event, and it will be built upon over the coming weeks and months. However, there won't be live chat or forums for the forseeable future. Live chat is a bit of a waste of space, as it was never really used on the old site so we didn't see the need for it on the new one. Forums are a good idea, but they take a lot of monitoring and maintenance to prevent spammers taking advantage of them, and for a site where the forums are really only used for two or three weeks in the year, it just isn't work the costs and effort involved in maintaining them. The plan is that we'll be able to use Facebook and Twitter for conversational discussions throughout the trial week, and the usual 'forum updates' that I run each day will be online as normal. That may change by the time May comes round, but that's certainly the idea at the moment.

Yup, he's riding! As for the web, the webmaster is back in the country today although I'm not sure if he's got home yet or not. I'm so sorry for the delay, we'll get there eventually!

And unless the roads in Kincardine are a vast improvement on those in Cairneyhill, you might not even make the station!

Well there you go! The first day of the 'SSDT' in 1909 ran from Edinburgh to Inverness, 186 miles it was then! I don't think many would have stopped for a dip in the Forth mind you, you're on your own there! It cost 7/6d for a standard entry, and there were twenty six competitors, two of which shared the winners trophy, having covered the entire 760 miles without dropping a mark. Time was described as very tight, and you were only allowed to be a maximum of ten minutes late...and to think folk think it's tough these days! For 1910 the entry list dropped to 19 riders, the severity of 1909 having scared many off. When EDMC took over in 1911 there were quite a few changes made to the regulations governing the event, such as making some of the worst hills optional, and providing special awards for the best performances on these optional hills. That made the trial more accessible and resulted in the 1911 trial having 75 entrants. It might entertain some to know that the introduction of 'optional hills' resulted in many letters of complaint from people complaining about the trial being changed from a proper trial to a holiday in the Highlands....some things don't change! There's a huge history associated with the trial, and the stories that can be told are endless...I'm sure you'll hear many more in the Fort if you get the chance to come over.

Bugger!!! Had to be you that spotted it too!!!

I'm not old enough to remember the 50th anniversary.

This is an issue that always confuses everyone, some of ourselves included! The first 'SSDT' was in 1909 and was a five-day event run in mid-July by the Edinburgh MCC, a small club that had until 1908 been known as Dunedin MCC. In 1910 the event was stretched to six days and took place in June rather than July - this too was run by the Edinburgh MCC. During the time that these two events were run, plans were underfoot in Edinburgh to amalgamate local clubs into one large club. By 1911 the Edinburgh MCC, Edinburgh Waverley MCC and Leith MCC (and possibly others) had been disbanded and a new Edinburgh & District MC was formed from the members of all the local clubs. The 1911 SSDT was handled by the new club and was the first Edinburgh & District MC SSDT. There has been much debate about what should really be the centenary of the trial - many think that although 1909 was only a five day event, it was the origin of the trial and therefore 2009 should have been celebrated. Others feel that the 1910 event was the first six day event and therefore that should be celebrated. However, 1911 was the first Scottish Six Days Trial run by the Edinburgh & District Motor Club and as that was the basis for the 75th anniversary celebrations back in 1986, 2011 is our official centenary. Hope that makes some sense! I'm sure you'll tell me if it doesn't.