Motor Sport: Bingley's Martin Crosswaite made easy meat of the sixth Yeadon and Guiseley club's trial at rain-swept Eldroth, near Settle, where the ten observers and 51 starters took a battering from the weather.

Crosswaite took the expert class from Guiseley electrician James Noble and Skipton teenager Paul Preston, who was third overall and top novice.

New class C National Youth champion James Dabill was ninth on the hard course against all the adult riders, the Leeds lad more than holding his own on the slippery stream-bed sections.

Retired postie Norman Pickles slipped from his GasGas at the fourth section into a murky pool of water.

But the 69-year-old from Denholme squeezed the water from his riding gear, emptied his boots and went on to finish ninth in the clubman class.

Fresh from his world round victory finale in Norway, Silsden's Dougie Lampkin jetted to Val d'Isere, near Grenoble to compete in a hillclimb slalom with Graham Jarvis, Steve Colley and Bruno and Chris Camozzi and four other French riders. Victory went to Bruno Camozzi in a run-off against the clock with Lampkin.

The eight starters were cut to four after morning qualifiers. Colley missed a flag and failed to make the final quartet, which was further reduced to two grand finalists.

Dougie throttled the factory Beta too hard and nearly nose-dived off the bike, allowing the elder Camozzi to blast away to the top. The Yorkshireman had won the initial eliminator from Bruno Camozzi and Graham Jarvis.

Results: 1 Bruno Camozzi (GasGas); 2 Dougie Lampkin (Beta); 3 Graham Jarvis (Scorpa); 4 Christophe Camozzi (Beta); 5 Gregory Iragos (GasGas).

Cullingworth's Jamie Forrest kept a cool head at Grafton Lodge Farm, near Boroughbridge while other competitors in Ilkley Motor Club's autotest struck trouble. Only 12 drivers finished the 18 speed tests on a corn stubble field out of the 30 starters.

Deep ruts did some damage in Adrian Tate's class, 12 out of 13 failing to make the distance as Tate's elderly Golf GTi survived the pounding to win its class.

Haworth garage owner Chris Leeming went down fighting to his wife Lorraine, whose spirited driving gained her the ladies award in the shared-Toyota Celica. She also bettered her husband's times on the tests.

National autotest star Dave Mosey won the front-wheel drive class.. The Guiseley driver's total times bettered the rear-engined Skoda times of Otley's John Brogden.

The Isle of Man and the Manx Two Day Trial tops the weekend agenda for many trials riders in this region. A total of 250 solo competitors and a further 31 sidecar outfits will be headed by multi-British champion Robin Luscombe, who will be hoping for yet another Manx ceremonial sword of state to add to his vast collection.

Spen Valley's popular time and observation trial next month is off because English Nature have banned use of the land under an SSSI ruling.

"We have used the land for 30 years without problem. There was no apparent damage to flora or fauna - it is only used for three hours once a year,'' said Spen Valley trial's official Steve Smithies. "The order was set in 1995 but we were not informed until a couple of weeks ago."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.