Here’s an update on progress at the end of day 2 building the new 4X track for the Vigo World Cup. I didn’t bother with an update after day 1 since the digger didn’t turn up until 6.30 pm!! It was meant to arrive at 8am but hey, this is Spain – manyana, manyana. To be fair to the organisers here, this isn’t unusual. It happens at a lot of venues. Still, when it did turn up, it was just what I’d asked for, a 22 tonne tracked excavator. They also started delivering dirt, with 4, 8 wheeled trucks trundling onsite in rotation.

I always ask organisers for good drivers but usually I have to make do with what I’m given. Luckily, here in Vigo, we’ve got a good’un. His name is Manolo, and he’s a demon digger driver. First up we had a look at the remains of the old 4X track. He picked up the idea of what we were trying to do pretty quickly. He got cracking following a line of tape, tracking through the thick forest. This line will form the basis for the track. It’s pretty steep near the top so we need to create a road onto which we build all the jumps turns etc. Normally, this would take a few days but Manolo stormed through it and we already have a roadway for the track from top to bottom. 10 straights, 9 turns and about 400m long. First half pretty steep, second half flatter.

They also delivered, a second, 22 tonner to level the motocross track which is currently…… well, was, sat on the bottom half of our track. I hate to plough stuff but, in this instance, our need is greater than that of the motocrossers. They’ll have a blank canvas to play with after the World Cup, so it’s all good. They’re happy enough.

This quick progress is lucky. There are some pretty strict environmental constraints on the planning permission, that’ll take some time to sort out. Tomorrow, we’ll get 2, D6 bulldozers delivered. We need these to push the dirt, up the roadway into position on the track. Normally we’d use a dumper but they only have small weak dumpers here and the track is too steep for them in parts. This should take a few days so I’ll write again once we start building some jumps.

An old local guy told us to look out for the wolves which live under a big rock on the track. I think with 100 tonnes of machinery we’ll be safe. (there aren’t any wolves by the way)

The photo shows Manolo, Anton, who helps me with my Spanish, and Jesus, the big boss.