35 other competitors turned up to the Glan y Gors circuit a couple of weekends ago, but none had been there practising the week before – victory was surely mine.

Or perhaps not, because it turned out that lots of them actually owned and raced their own karts, and had been coming to the circuit for the last ten years. Eek.

Over the course of the next three races, the gulf of difference in talent between the top of the field (other people) and the bottom (me) became apparent. Halfway through race three I was lapped, and realised that everyone else was hitting the kerbs with reckless abandon, whereas I had actually tried to stick to the rules about not destroying the karts in such a manner. Alas, this wasn’t the only cause of my lacklustre performance; I was just a lot slower than people with a lot more experience. I much preferred the final race, as it took place in the rain, which was a lot more predictable than the greasy damp conditions in which we ran the first two heats.

Dad had a bit more rough-and-tumble, getting shunted into a couple of spins, and Gareth looked much happier by the final race as he worked out that you rather unintuitively (is that a word?) have to try and accelerate your way out of a spin. None of us made it into the final, but I suspect we’ll be back there soon regardless.

We then met with the girls and spent a scintillating afternoon at the Christmas market at a National Trust property, Erddig. In fairness it wasn’t too bad, although Gareth did beat me in a running race through the formal gardens. Gutted.

After a big family meal on Saturday night, we made our way home on Sunday via Peckforton. Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I wax lyrical about a mis-spent youth on pedal bikes every time I mention Peckforton, so I’ll try and forgo to much reminiscing this time and just say that we (including the dog) had a lovely brisk morning run, and I then reversed the route for a fast lap at maximum effort. Lovely.