I was a little bit nervous about today. Trail riding at AJP, there were 2 level 1 people - booked on a half day - and 3 level 2 people. This meant that Martin and I would be riding in separate groups. I was responsible for navigation, safety and - crucially - mechanics and repairs.

Fate, with that wonderful irony she has, made sure that she laid it on pretty thick as you will discover.

Martin took out Colin and Pete on a couple of PR3s (Jane and Nadia) and I had Mark, Andy and Ray - all on PR4s. I was on Queen Madge II - herself a proud PR4.

Mark was huge. Like tallest-man-in-the-world huge. Stood next to Chief, he'd make Chief look like I look when stood next to Chief. Try and get your head round that one. He was about seven feet tall, with hands the size of shovels. The funniest part of the day was when he was game enough - with enough of a sense of humour - to have a go on a PR3, which he did just for the comedy value. It turned out that he lives less than four miles away from me, where he runs a used car garage. Strangely enough for a used car guy, he had a massive amount of integrity - probably one of the reasons why he's been in business for 25 years.

His mate Andy was a fireman. Not just any fireman either - he was a nuclear fireman working in a nuclear research plant. I spent the day calling him "Atomic Sam" - which he rather enjoyed.

Ray was an ex-Para, ex-SAS, currently employed as a firearms cop in London. Only 715 days to go until he retires - at which point he will be touring America for a year in a motorhome. He spent some time travelling across South America on foot - the highlight of his trip was when his boat capsized in the Amazon due to a freak tidal wave. He spent four hours swimming against the Amazon river before he reached dry land, and this was a holiday.

You're dying to know how the 260cc PR3 worked out. Well, first off, her name is "Godzooky". Remember Godzilla? Well Godzilla had a nephew - a fiery little thing called Godzooky. I wish I had thought of that one, but it was actually Chief.

Godzooky had issues with her gearbox, which seized up a few miles out on the road. Martin had been working through the night - till 6 this morning - trying to get her ready. The gearbox wasn't a happy bunny. Godzooky went back to AJP, and another bike was produced.

But, the day worked well. Having two groups of us out on the Plain worked really really well. For one thing, two groups of three and four are less conspicuous than a group of seven. This avoids any potential Land Warden issues. Which would obviously be an issue if we were winging it anywhere. Which, obviously, we're not. Of course not. I mean, we don't - ever - venture beyond signs that say "No Civilian Vehicles". Of course not.

And there's the etiquette I was banging on about too. If we see somebody, we slow and stop and wait. Some guy was out with his dog, so we stopped and slowed and waited. As we waited, it gave him the opportunity to break out his camera and start taking pictures of us, our bikes and stuff. We were, quite obviously, hooligans intent on rampage and destruction - why else would we be on motorcycles?

As the guy took pictures, he and I "discussed" the legality of this particular route. It occurred to me, and I pointed out to him, that he only has the opportunity to take pictures because we ae being polite and considerate. If we were actually the hooligans he thinks we are, then we'd have sped past him, showering him in roost, and he'd not be able to take any at all.

I don't know what his frame of reference was. Perhaps he had a beloved dog that was run over and killed by a hooligan motorcycle tearing up a footpath. Perhaps he just hates motorcycles. Whatever his thinking, it was clear that we had two completely different ways of looking at the world.

Laws get made in response to behaviour. Laws tend not to get made without making some attempt to solve something that is perceived as a problem. Speed limits on roads for instance - these laws exist to try and cut down the number of accidents and deaths - which are the highest in Europe. Laws about where you can and can't ride a motorcycle - these laws exist to protect walkers, cyclists and horse riders from hooligans tearing around on dirt bikes with no regard for the safety and well-being of anybody else.

And the Laws which get made criminalise people who are not criminals. They may well solve the problem of the small number of people who just don't give a shit about anybody else, but they also criminalise the people who actually try and be responsible.

That said, this guy is the first guy we've met who actually turned out to be a proper dickhead. Most of the people we encounter use their judgement - they see that we are not causing trouble and are grateful to us for stopping and not interfering with their enjoyment of the countryside. They recognise that we can co-exist, all that it takes is a little bit of common sense and a little bit of manners.

In an ironic way, that guys actions have made it less sensible for us to stop and be polite. Much more sensible to just barge him out of the way, since then no pictures get taken. That doesn't make sense. OK, forgive me ranting a little. I'll stop now.

Apart from less issues with the Land Warden, it's quicker in two small groups. The pace is much much quicker, and I'm not really sure why. The best thing of all is that it is just so much slicker, so much more professional. The highlight of my day - believe it or not - was seeing how happy Martin was with his whole "Level 1" / "Level 2" strategy. Seeing it fall into place. Seeing the plans that he had made materialise in front of him. I was proud, very proud, to be part of that.

When the Level 1 guys pull up just behind us at an obstacle we are just leaving, it is slick. When the Level 2 guys see the Level 1 guys going through a lesson that they just skipped - because they're advanced - then it is slick. It was a privilege to have been part of making that happen. It was an honour to have been able to help Martin realise his vision, in the same way that Martin is helping me realise mine - riding the lightest 4-stroke bike in the world to Dakar.

We met up in the farmers woods. We showed the guys the enduro track we had laid out, and then we let them swap bikes and play around for a while. Colin snapped the clutch cable on Jane. Poor Jane. Sat there with no clutch cable. The little PR3 who had so faithfully taken me round Dawn to Dusk, sat there all helpless and forlorn with no clutch cable. Colin thought that he had snapped the clutch cable on the bike he was riding - he didn't realise that it was Jane.

The guys I was with were, at one point, ribbing me about getting paid for doing this. Their jaws dropped when I told them that I didn't get paid for it. How on earth could they possibly understand why I do this - and do it for nothing?

Mark asked the killer question - "so why do you do it then?". Thank You. I'd like to Thank the Academy.

I explained that I do this because Martin and I are working on building an AJP PR3 into the lightest rally bike in the world which, when complete, will ride the Paris-Dakar:

"Are you good enough to do the Dakar?"

"No. Definitely not yet anyway."

"But you're doing it anyway?"

"You've got two choices. You either say 'I could have done that', or you're in the back of a sweeper truck saying 'at least I gave it a go - at least I done that'. Which one would you choose?"

"I'd give it a go"

"Exactly. So the odds are against it. But it's all about having a go. Anything can happen. Maybe, just maybe ...".

And why not? I am not the best rider in the world. I don't aim to be, and I don't claim to be. I have balls, and if I fail to make it then it will be because I am airlifted out - I will absolutely never give up. There is nothing else that I have going for me, other than an insane belief in myself and a refusal to give up. This is not a recipe for success, but it is certainly a recipe for knowing that if failure comes then it won't be because I wimped out.

We caught up with Martin and the others at the big mud hole that I have ended up in the last couple of weeks. As usual when we stop, I break out the maps and start trying to get a position fix - even if I already know where I am. The way to learn how to navigate well is to navigate lots, and I have to get that triangle of error down to something that at least puts me in the right country.

There's a line of electricity pylons almost directly over my head, going in a straight line to the bottom of a steep slope. Perfect. I can take a bearing right along it, then compare it to the one on the map to see where I'm going wrong with this whole magnetic north / grid north thing.

But they pylons were not on the map. None. No pylons. So begun the most almighty hissy fit Salisbury Plain has ever seen. Martin points out that pylons aren't marked on maps, probably just to wind me up.

Out came every map I had and I then went over them. "Look! Pylons! Pylons! Pylons! Look above me - pylons! Look at the map - no pylons!". I don't think that any of the guys had ever seen anybody get quite so passionate about pylons before. I was proper cross about it - especially when the resulting triangle of error put me close to somewhere in rural Wales. Which would have been fine, if I was in rural Wales, but I was in Wiltshire.

More work needed, but a lesson learned. Maps are an approximation, and might not show everything that you can see on the ground.

So we're tramming along all day. Mark was really really good. An ex-trials rider - what the Portugese call a Trialisita - he had no problems at all. Andy, another ex-trials rider hadn't been on a bike in some time and had problems with confidence. At one point, he thought that ot was better if he just took the half day and got Martin to come pick him up.

I got a hold of him and told him that he better not dare. We started this day together and we will finish it together. He was concerned that he was holding the faster guys up. I told him that we are not four individual riders - we are a team of four riders. We will go as slow as we need to - we finish together. Andy became a different rider after that. As his confidence grew, so did his skill. The skill was always there, but he needed confidence to bring it out.

And this is what it's all about at AJP. It's not about being the fastest or the sexiest. It is, for me, about helping people learn what they have inside themselves. Helping them to find that part of themselves which they knew they had, but which never comes out in normal life.

For some people, it's as simple as going through a rut. For others, it's just falling off less times than I do. But, if all I can do is send people home with a sense that they have discovered something new about themselves - pushed themselves to limits that they never thought they had - then that makes it worth it.

It occurred to me that there is a big difference between being able to do something and being able to teach it. Sure, I can ride ruts, but can I teach somebody else to do it? Can I help them find - within themselves - the courage and confidence that it takes? You can teach technique, but you cannot teach confidence. Confidence comes from within. Confidence can only be encouraged, it cannot be taught.

And Andy's confidence grew as the day went on. Remarkably. Well done Andy.

Then it all went a bit wrong. I was riding through a really horrible patch of mud when I just stopped dead. No friction on the clutch. That clutch, which had been slipping all day, was cooked. Two feet of mud, and I grind to a halt. Gentlemen, start your piss taking engines.

Not only that, but we are as far away from help as we can possibly be - we are just about to start heading back again. Nice.

So here I am, in the middle of nowhere, with a cooked clutch and its the first time out by myself. Fate, wonderful sense of irony that she has, was pissing herself. Ray is full of advice about waiting for the clutch to cool down and the like. But I know a cooked clutch when I see one - this needs replacing, it will not fix itself. I did the only thing I could do - call Martin and arrange a rendezvous. Yet the rendezvous leaves us two miles to travel to get off the trail.

I start pushing the bike through horrible mud and deep ruts. Mark, Andy and Ray - absolute troopers - take turns in helping. It is, as I have been saying all day, a team effort.

It's the first cooked clutch I've encountered. And there's no Martin. I am on my own.

We happen across a Pikey - or traveller - and I ask him if he has a rope we can borrow to get this thing towed to the road. He does, but is reluctant to give it to us since he is fearful that he won't get it back. I assure him that I will come back with his rope, but it's a mile and a half to the road and will he please help us?

We set up the tow - footpeg to footpeg - with me riding in front and Mark (the brilliant trials rider) on the broken bike. Through two miles of ruts, mud and shit we tow the bike. Thank You Zippy (blogs passim). I wonder, for a minute, what it must feel like to tow a bike for 100 miles through dunes. I hope I never find out.

We get to the road and wait on Martin. Since we were stopped, I break out the maps and do the whole position fix thing. Over the road there are not one, but two lines of pylons. On the map, there are two lines of electricity pylons. Brilliant. You got to love Fate's sense of humour.

Martin arrives about 20 minutes later with a fresh bike on the trailer. I return the rope to the traveller - it's the right thing to do. Quick piss-take about clutches and cooking and we're off again.

We came back through the woods and down a steep and muddy hill. Mark and I reached the bottom and waited for the others. As we waited, I said to Mark:

"Normally when we go down this hill, the two guys in front make it down nice and slow but the guys behind - for some reason - try and do it much much quicker. When they hit all that shit near the bottom and they're going too quick then it goes a bit wrong."

"They fall off?"

"Yes, exactly like those two did there"

It was like synchronised spillage. Andy and Ray came belting round the corner of this steep hill, both grabbed a front brake at the same time, and both fell over and hit the deck at exactly the same time. Andy's was a little more spectacular though. Falling off wasn't quite enough for him, oh no, so he launched himself through the air and hit a tree. He got up, covered head to toe in mud, grinning.

When we got back to the edge of the Plain, I cleaned everybody's number plates for the road journey back to AJP. We had 3 completely knackered muddy guys, each of whom was grinning from ear to ear.

I couldn't help but feel a little bit proud of myself. These guys have had a ball. I did that.

If you ever see somebody who looks like they need a smile, give them one of yours.

So Martin won't be on a PR3 tomorrow, he'll be on the Husaberg. He's a little disappointed with this, because now we can't have our little feud. The other PR3s have been lent to people who want to try them out - so there will still be 3 of us on PR3s tomorrow.

But, just to be sure that he's got a chance of winning, Martin poisoned me. I don't know what it was, but I was sick as a dog last night and all of today. I mean, there's trying to get an advantage but ...

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