TORC go TORO
As most of you know sitting in the sun for two weeks in Spain can be a bit of a boar! But spending 3 days off roading in Spain on a bike would be bliss. So that’s what 5 lads from TORC did last October when we took a trip to TORO Trail near Malaga in Spain. Ger O’Grady, Matt Burke, Chris Matthews, Andrew Reeves & Derek Kehoe were the luck lads that got the permission slips signed off by their better halves and off they went.
Flying in on the Sunday afternoon to enjoy a few beers and watch the Moto GP our first surprise was that Andrew had misses his flight the previous day and had to pay €200 for a one way flight. A bit pricey that, when you only had to pay €150 for a return flight in the first place. Jeeees I hope she was worth it Reevesy!!
That evening and many beers later we meet up with Lyndon from TORO Trail and the bunch of lads he had out that day on the bikes for a feed. At this stage we noticed that being inland and away from the tourist spots of Malaga and Marbella, beer and food was very much on the cheap side. So no complaints and the food was top-notch stuff as well.
Monday morning with a full Irish in the belly and we were off on the bikes. You could see the look on Chris’s face! It said something like; “I should have brought my KTM450 to pull this TT-R 250 round the hills”. We all picked our bikes trying to choose the ones that had the best tyres but little did we know that with the dry trails slicks would have been just as good as you can see from the photo of the tyre I ended up with and not a bother on it for the 3 days.
So for the hills we headed. To make life easy for himself Lyndon has what he calls play areas where you are let loose and he can jump off his bike and start taking a few photos and take a rest. And boy did he need the rest with us lot. Normally his average group are made up of a mix of lads who do and others don’t do any off road, so the pace is kept at a speed that suits the slower in the bunch. So to have a group of lads that all race enduro was a first and there were no slow speeds or rests. These play areas are an array of make shift MX tracks made by the local lads or dried up riverbeds with various jumps and hills to play round on and see what the TT-R’s could really do…which is a lot more that you think and when you saw what Andy and Chris were doing on them you really start to think that getting the best bike in the world isn’t going to make me any better or improve my chances of winning and Irish Enduro Championship any day soon!
The photos speak for themselves, sun, food, beer, bikes and a whole load of laughs. I think the best laugh in hindsight was the “Canyon”. A local play area where Lyndon would time all the clients around this track. The record was about 2:13 on a fully specked Enduro GAS GAS, so Reevesy was dying to make a go of it after a few practice laps on the supped up TTR! This one had a race can better carb set up along with a few other tricks. Off he went on the first timed lap and he came in at 2:02. So naturally we wound him up to do a sub 2 minuet lap! In the mean time we were also getting onto to Chris go give it a lash, but unfortunately he went on like an auld woman with all sorts of excuses the main one being we had to go back and finish the last round of the Irish Championship in Tinahealy and didn’t want to break himself up, which I guess was fair enough. However as Chris didn’t manage to even finish one lap in Tinahealy I bet he lies awake at night thinking I could have beaten Reevesy around the Canyon. In the mean time Reevesy did another timed lap and came in at 1:59. Check out the video clips of him finishing the lap!
So that was it, 3 days biking in the sun and the only water we saw was the few river crossings we had to make. There were plenty of other laughs and incidents to talk about but my fingers are getting tired. Best thing would be to go over and try it out!
What’s even better is the fact that one of Andy’s mates did the canyon in 1:57 on one of the standard TTR’s. Guess who’ll be going back this year?
You can check ou TORO Trail at www.torotrail.com
Selection of photos from the trip!