Lake Bala in North Wales

Mike Hopkins spent two days at Lake Bala in North Wales back in the Autumn, he was preparing to measure Guy Martin’s world record attempt to be the man that has ridden a motorbike on water the furthest. The whole build up and attempt was shown on Channel 4’s “Speed” on 5th January with Mike featuring in the program on a number of occasions, sometimes in picture and others the spoken word! The crunch came on the penultimate scene where the engineers, Guy and Mike sat down and revealed the distance travelled across the lake by hydro-planing. Mike had accurately measured the distance using the optics of their Leica TS15 total station and then lasered a point off a target once Guy was safely out of the water. The distance measured was a staggering 63.56m over a water depth of between 1m-13m. Although on the program Mike came across as saying that this was a new world record, the order of these words was edited from other sentances that Mike had spoken in the scene, as he knew that it wouldn’t class as a world record because the Guinness Book of record wanted a minimum distance of 100m to start this record off. Mike thinks that 63.56m should be the new world record – who else has ridden a motorbike across water more than 1m deep and had it measured by a qualified professional – and who is nutty enough to try it again?