After land working all weekend in a 125-acre (50.5 hectare) field and watching Oliver Brindley finished in third place at the Williams Grove Half Mile, I couldn’t help but think about the possibility of marking out and grading up a Greenfield Half-Mile! After using Google maps and measuring three of the Half Miles in the 2019 AFT calendar, I discovered one would easily fit in the field that was still half stubble and being torn up as the research was taking place.
After a quick chat with my dad and a message to Toby Hales, Matthew Traves and Gary Birtwistle to see if they were keen to dig in a help, the idea actually started to seem like a good one. The track wouldn’t be permanent, but seems as it was only the beginning of September and this field wasn’t going to be planted with Spring Barley until the beginning of April, even with a poor Lincolnshire winter, there'd still be a couple of months to get chance to ride it, right? It’s one thing marking a track out and cutting it into shape, but grading it up nicely would be totally different ball game!
Me and the lads discussed how we’d be able to grade the track once we had marked it out, and the amount of water the big lap would take to get it anything like the quality we try to run Greenfield Dirt Track at. We decided it didn’t really matter! This was an idea we’d joked about for a couple of years and there isn’t any other clay half-miles in the UK, so bugger it let’s have a go! If it doesn’t go to plan, we’ll just put our MX wheels back in and run it deep like Mablethorpe sand racing!
TO BE CONTINUED...
Read our feature on George and the Greenfield family in Sideburn 38 OUT NOW.
