Of course they don’t call it that anymore. It’s now the “International Six Days Enduro.” Same sort of badly tuned chainsaw tailpipe vibe, though, with lots of slipping and sliding and shaking of eurotrash fists at sproinged sprockets and fouled plugs along the wayside. Then some accountant with a stopwatch, a spreadsheet, and a hangover figures out who won, and gives them a paperweight.

Except for interregnums for two wars (the good ones, natch) they’ve been running some form of this race, or competition, or ugly pageant, or goat path-clearing scheme since 1913. It’s hard to tell you how to win, and I can’t pronounce most of the winner’s names anyway, so let’s picture ourselves in a pub, next to a peat fire, with a pint in our hand and a song in our hearts, while the dulcet Manx tones of the local commentators flood over us via the wireless. Beats standing in a ditch in the heather while some Spaniard goes by sideways mumbling jesucristo at his clutch:

We’ve got mud. We’ve got more mud. Look, there; there’s some more mud now! Oh, dear, I think a stone was mixed in there with the mud. Yes! We’ve found some muck there, to forestall monotony. Mind, the mire, fellows.

Oh, dear, we’ve got mist, now. There’s some more mist. Now some drizzle mixed in with the mist. Ooh! Foggy mist has now appeared. Looking forward to misty fog. Interestingly, I used to snogg and shag and whatnot with Misty Fogg back in University. But I digress.

Ooh, the Frenchman has some sort of clipboard violation! Give him a yellow card, or a caution, or a paddling, or a bath, or whatever the penalty is, and declare a winner from whoever hasn’t the brains to be here in the pub with us already. Where should we eat offal today, Percy? I hear Clague’s Chophouse has a special on organ meat bubble and squeak.